Tim Gaden12 June 2006, 11:30 PM
Love the small form factor and good looks of your $999 Mac mini, but wish it had more grunt than a Core Solo processor? If you don't mind voiding your Apple warranty, upgrading the CPU to Intel's next generation will deliver the speed you need.
Love the small form factor and good looks of your Mac mini, but wish it had more grunt? If you don't mind voiding your Apple guarantee, upgrading the CPU could deliver the speed you need.
Savvy Mac mini users have conquered the process and are reaping the benefits. Paul Stamatiou upgraded his 1.5GHz Core Solo Mac mini to a 1.83GHz Core Duo and posted a how-to on his blog.
Tommaso Alvisi went one better and shoe-horned a 2.16 GHz Core Duo into his Mac mini, again posting an illustrated how-to for others to follow.
In the past, CPU upgrades have been complicated by the ever-increasing heat output of faster chips. Computers were sometimes unable to cool the new, faster chips, leading to an expensive meltdown.
Now, due to design advances, new generations of chips run at similar or even cooler temperatures. The Core Duo chips, for example, generate the same amount of heat as their Solo brothers.
Still, you might want to hold off for a little bit. The next generation of Core Duo chips are just around the corner. Codenamed Conroe (desktop, due in July) and Merom (mobile, due in August), Intel claims that these Core 2 Duo chips will offer a 20-40% performance boost whilst using less power (and thus generating less heat).
The Core 2 Duo chips will be 100% back-compatible with Yonah chips, so whatever you can do with a Yonah you will be able to do with them.
An enterprising Taiwanese Mac user has already shown that the Merom upgrade is possible. Macenstein ran the page through BabelFish to discover that the end results of the upgrade are impressive:
The souped-up Mac mini beats two dual G5s in an MP3 to AAC conversion.
It's time to warm up your putty knife.