Mac mini upgrades

steveo · 27 Jun 2011 at 06:52

i currently have a base spec mac mini 2010 hooked up to my tv for plex and as a backup for my imac but i have noticed this past week or so its been getting sluggish with the standard 2gb of ram in there, my plan is to stick 8gb in the imac which should be here in a day or 2 and stick the 4gb that was in my imac in to my mini, thankfully there the same spec (pc3-8500)

am just wondering if i should stick a bigger faster HDD in there possible a scorpio black 500gb which is on offer with ocuk i have looked at the 750gb 7200rpm drives from WD and seagate but they seem to be hit or miss with them, would i notice much difference as the HDD in the mini atm is a 5400rpm 7mb cache 320gb drive :confused:

an SSD is not on the cards for me guys so try not to suggest them

thoughts ??

steveo · 27 Jun 2011 at 10:23

just ordered the scorpio black should be fun to install

steveo · 27 Jun 2011 at 12:09

cant justify the cost of a SSD for what the mac mini is used for, might stick one in the MBP when the cost comes down and the sizes increase

steveo · 27 Jun 2011 at 22:20

DezUk said:
I recently purchased a mac mini simply to run Plex as a media centre for HD content. Works a treat but as mentioned you do notice a little lag at times. Again this is the base model so 2Ghz core 2 with 2Gb ram and I was thinking if sticking 4Gb in there would make much difference. Reason for the ram and not the SSD is that all my media is on an external USB drive, so I don’t see the SSD making much difference in that department.

same here all my media content is on 8TB of external drives, the mac has been great but 4gb should work a treat as when i have looked at istat its been showing as 40mb free when theres been apps open with plex playing 1080p mkvs, 2gb just isnt enough for the mini

steveo · 29 Jun 2011 at 07:47

well the HDD and the Memory upgrade went well apart from getting the airport plate back in properly for some reason it wasnt sitting right when it went back in, managed to fit it back after some blood sweat and foul language, right away you can tell the difference the mini boots up in less than 30 secs (over 1min before) apps open near enough instant now, did a xbench test before i changed any of it so will post a before and after see if theres a change there

EDIT: holy crap scary moment time just then, been updating plex again from scratch and the mini shut down, went to pick it up to check and the bloody thing was piping hot, opened her up to check all the connections and the fan connection while in it was not pushed down all the way so no fan blowing

steveo · 30 Jun 2011 at 10:02

Somnambulist said:
Heh, having watched the drive installation videos on YouTube, it is rather a fiddly process involving a lot of unscrewing, disconnecting and careful pulling. Almost makes me want to use an Apple Certified Reseller/Repair person. How are your temps/fan noise now? I find the Mini gets rather hot and loud when streaming YouTube vids for any length of time, which is why i'm thinking about an SSD since temps won't be an issue and therefore neither will fan noise.

tbh it was pretty easy, the fact that it was the first Mac that i was taking apart and working on was more unnerving than anything and doing it at 10 oclock at night after a 12 hour shift didnt help.

with everything installed and working ok and plex finished with the library updates the temps have settled down to between 45/55c, when i have been watching a 1080p rip last night on plex the temps were about 70c give or take a few, though i dont think i have Hardware Accelerated H.264 enabled in plex yet which will reduce the cpu load by about 30/40%