Windows w/Mac Mini

My sone is wanting to load windows 7 on his mac mini. The problem is we don't have an external DVD drive for the disk... Question... Is there a way I can burn an image onto a Flashdrive (or something like that) and let his mini load from that?

You can if you have Windows 7 on a PC:-

Installing Windows 7 through Boot Camp with no Optical Drive on a Mac Mini « Liza Shulyayeva

Otherwise one way is to use a Windows 7 .iso and Toast Titanium:-

http://thenextweb.com/lifehacks/2012/08/05/install-windows-7-boot-camp-no-optical-drive/

Is he wanting to do this so he can run PC games on his Mini? If so tell him not to bother, the Mac Mini only has the Intel HD 4000 graphics chipset and would struggle to run anything more demanding than Team Fortress 2 at native resolution.

While the Intel HD 4000 is not exactly designed for gaming, it can run most games that are not demanding. Also, few folks realize that the HD 4000 will borrow system memory according to how much is installed.

With 4 GB of system memory installed the HD 4000 will borrow up to 512 MB as needed, however, with 8 GB of system memory installed it will borrow up to 1 GB as needed. A big difference in performance....

chscag said:

While the Intel HD 4000 is not exactly designed for gaming, it can run most games that are not demanding. Also, few folks realize that the HD 4000 will borrow system memory according to how much is installed.

With 4 GB of system memory installed the HD 4000 will borrow up to 512 MB as needed, however, with 8 GB of system memory installed it will borrow up to 1 GB as needed. A big difference in performance....

Click to expand...

I wonder, with Windows 7 installed could he overclock his RAM or would that be locked down in the bios? HD 4000 graphics show a significant fps gain going from 1333 MHz to 1600 MHz system RAM. Since the Mac Mini comes with 1600 MHz RAM what if that could be increased to 1866..........? Sorry if that is a noobish question, my overclocking knowledge is limited to what I've learned from building my own gaming rig. I've never felt the need to access any sort of bios (if Apple even calls it that) on my MBP or iMac. They do everything I need them to do right out of the box no tweaking necessary.

Edit-I want to apologize to the OP for derailing the thread. Here is everything you need to know regarding installing Windows on any Mac without an external DVD drive.
Installing Windows 7 with USB Flash drive on Macbook Air

Overclocking the RAM in a Mac is a good way to create a $1000-plus paperweight. These machines are VERY finely engineered for their expected tolerances, not for overclocking.

chas_m said:

Overclocking the RAM in a Mac is a good way to create a $1000-plus paperweight. These machines are VERY finely engineered for their expected tolerances, not for overclocking.

Click to expand...

That is what I suspected but have no hands on experience with on the Mac side of the fence.

In addition to what chas stated, there really is no practical way to over clock a modern Mac. Keep in mind that Macs do not have a BIOS (Macs use EFI) or employ motherboards with removable speed jumpers. Even if you were to install faster memory, it would still run at the system set bus speed.

The Mac Pros and their predecessors the Power Macs had "engineering room" for overclocking exercises (though I saw many a melted processor when I was doing repairs from those experiments; most people just don't know when to leave well enough alone ...), but the iMac, Mac mini and notebooks are all very finely tuned to their built-in heat dispersal range. Plus, what chscag said above. I can't say it's *impossible* to overclock them a bit, but you'd definitely be skating a fine edge and are likely to cause more problems than the very minor speed improvement would ever be worth (and there's no practical way to achieve it anyway).

I appreciate all the replies... Not sure why he wants to but what the heck... We did install more RAM in his mac mini (8gigs) I've actually got my imac duel booted with Windows 7. But all I use it for is Quicken and Microsoft Office. Otherwise I'm on mac. I've actually thought about trading with him because I know I'll never max out my graphics lol... I'm gonna give harryb2448's idea a try... Will let all know the results...

Well so far it has worked... I'm having trouble making my flashdrive bootable... You have to go into windows and in the CMD prompt clean, partition, etc the flashdrive then type (bootsect.exe/nt60h... From what I understand this is the command that makes the flashdrive bootable. I've tried it on my imac (in Bootcamp) and on two other Windows computers. That command is not recognized on any of the computers... I may just breakdown and buy an external CD/DVD drive...