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DIY Mac mini Overclocking
mirko writes "So, you wanted a 1,42GHz Mac mini but either because of some distribution woes or because of your tight budget you could just get a 1,25GHz ?
Don't worry : Leo Bodnar just found out how to overclock your machine. Of course, you'll have to open it prior to anything else but you already know how to do this."
The G4 is crippled by its 167 MHz FSB, so how about overclocking that for some real performance boosts?
esp. when the bus speed is a paltry 167 Mhz. The real weakness of the G4 is it's bus, not what clock speeds you can crank it up to. Hell, even Dell's low end offering offer at least a 533Mhz bus....
Monstar L
$300 bucks? let me guess you used a case you already had, a hard drive you already had.
The componets are similiar to new PC's.
Your case is about 12 times the size of the mini. Heck even mini-itx systems end up being nearly twice the size.
So you spent $300 for a motherboard and CPU, because you already had everything else, and you can 'build' a mini for cheaper?
Yep you are officially not the target audeince.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
When it comes to the Mac mini, you might want to consider this:
The default warranty (if you don't buy the extended AppleCare) is one year.
This is a $499 electronic device.
A 1-year hardware warranty on a gadget this cheap is worth, what? Maybe $50?
So whenever you are considering doing something like this (and yes, overclocking pretty much alwasys voids warranties, even if all the early FUD about opening the mini case turned out to be false), the judgement call you need to make is: Will this mod be worth more than about $50 to me?
In the case of this mod, it's a way to turn a 1.25 GHz mini into a 1.42 GHz mini.
But for $20 more than the price of upgrading the HD from 40GB to 80GB, you can get an actual 1.42 GHz mini with an 80GB drive already installed, and keep the warranty intact.
So in this case, no. Probably not really worth it.
However, on a system this inexpensive, it's really just a matter of time before some people start coming up with interesting hacks which are more than worth it.
I doubt the mini will replace the X-Box as the hardware hacker's favorite toy anytime soon, but it will be interesting to see what happens over the next year or so.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Sure, those are the odds.
:)
But the chances go up there are going to be more failures now.
Especially if the 1.25 chips really didn't certify at 1.42. Some times, 170MHz makes all the difference. Especially if they are doing it to up thier distributed.net speeds.
Pretty Pictures!
The 533 MHz bus on a P4 is actually 133 MHz quad pumped. The actual thruput is less than what would be possible with a "real" 533 MHz FSB. However, even the 133x4=533 MHz FSB is still faster than the G4's 167 MHz FSB.
Where the low end PCs really suck is with their onboard integrated chipset graphics. "Intel Extreme Graphics", "VIA DeltaChome Graphics", etc are major performance killers. They zap CPU and RAM bus performance and are overall ickky. If you want a fun experiment, try some benchmarks with a PC with such integrated graphics. Then install a PCI Radeon 7000 (very low end GPU) and disable the integrated graphics. BOOM, instant huge performance boost. Basiclly, any GPU is better than no GPU. Or perhaps more correctly, real dedicated gfx RAM is better than sharing system RAM.
Actually the Cube has proven to be pretty good at cooling judging by the number of processor, video and hard drive/CD/DVD upgrades for it.
You can get up to a 1.7 GHz G4 processor upgrade and there was even a Dual 800 MHz G4 upgrade offered at one point. Some people have been able to put in nVidia GeForce 3 and ATI Radeon 8500, 9000 Pro and 9200 graphics cards in these things. Not to mention you can put a full-size hard drive into it.
The Cube will probably end up being a lot more upgradable than the Mini, but the Mini sure has a better price.
--
Join the Pyramid - Free Mini Mac | Free Flat Screens
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
Well, they're RELATIVELY slow. DV only needs to use FW in 100 mode anyway, and it only uses around a third of THAT bandwidth running along at 1X. Modern external desktop FW drives give you pretty much continuous full FW 400 bandwidth, way more than enough for iMovie style usage.
That was classic intercourse!
Erm, no. The warranty is never valid if YOU break it, only if it breaks because it's faulty. If YOU break it, it's insurance that comes to the rescue, maybe. :)
You're right, and I also think that removing soldered jumpers from the motherboard will definitely void your warranty.
Did you see the size of the jumpers?!?!?! Crazy small...
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
How can you get modded Informative and not even read the article? The modification just bumps the 1.25 to 1.42, which is also a stock speed. The 1.25 and 1.42 are identical cases and whatnot...so it couldn't possibly overheat more than a stock 1.42 would.
The author says you can take it to 1.5, but that it caused glitches.
As for warranty- mod it in a year when you want something to console you for owning a machine with close to the worst warranty in the business (1 year lots-of-questions-asked...and 90 days telephone support.)
Please help metamoderate.
Your right about avoiding this as a permanent solution. I applied this jumper trick to an older G3 model and over time even with additional cooling the performance tailed off until I was forced to switch back the the base settings.
Funnily enough, the BMW Mini One can be 'overclocked' too. Like the CPU in the two Mac Mini models, both the One and the Cooper have the same 1.6 litre engine, the only difference being the engine management software. Must be something in the name 'Mini'...
You must think in Russian.
It's not an issue. If you can cool a laptop, the mini is EASIER to cool. For various reasons - including external power supply, 184-pin RAM, and size of fan compared to Powerbook fan.
Actually, this might be interesting to use for underclocking. Take your Mac Mini 1.42, underclock it a bit to 1.25, and it's even less likely that the included fan will turn on. Makes it all the more of a silent computing solution.
They do this type of thing all the time at silentpcreview, although they gain a bit more (by way of silence) because they can also adjust the CPU voltage down once the clockspeed is reduced. Just a thought. -- Paul
OpenSource.MathCancer.org: open source comp bio
Yeah, the mini is three times the price of the Xbox, assuming you buy no accessories for either. The only benefit I can see as far as using it as a media player or similar is that you don't need an Xbox to USB cable. It's a lot faster and has more memory (and storage), even in the lowest trim, but the Xbox is cheap as hell.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I also found that this picture makes a great desktop wallpaper...
Kudos to the guy photographing this stuff.. He took some pretty good shots!
Just when you make it idiotproof, some idiot builds a better idiot.
Does anyone know if you can overclock a PowerBook? I know that overclocking notebooks is generally considered a bad idea (heat dissipation), but if you can overclock a mini, why not? I've got a much used and abused 12" 867 AlBook that I would love to get up to 1 Ghz.
The only benefit I can see as far as using it as a media player or similar is that you don't need an Xbox to USB cable.
I see a few others.
1. The mini is very quiet, the X-Box is notoriously noisy.
2. The mini video card is modest by modern PC standards, but vastly superior to the one in the X-Box.
3. The mini is ready for use as a media server with no hacking required. iTunes is a fantastic app for storing your music library. Plug an EyeTV 500 into the firewire port, and you've got a digital broadcast Tivo-alike. Install VLC (which is a free download), and you're playing full-screen videos of whatever gray-market stuff you find on the Internet. The DVI out plugs right into most modern HD televisons and projectors without the need for an adapter. Plus, all of this can be controlled with an IR remote from Keyspan, which I've seen on the web for as little as $22. The built-in bluetooth and 802.11g options are nice to have, as well.
That said, it's not perfect.
1. The CPU isn't really fast enough to give you full-frame 1080i HDTV via the EyeTV. Not the end of the world if you are using an XGA or WXGA projector, but still...
2. You need a USB break-out box to get surround sound... but at least the OS supports both Dolby 5.1 and DTS.
3. Hmmm... actually, that's the whole list.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
So why oh why does apple sell a 500 dollars computer with 2 year old components.
To meet a price point, while retaining the build quality they want.
It has occurred to me that making it so tiny DOES make it desirable, but it must push the price up. Would I be as tempted by a $400 Mac which is slightly larger than the Mini, about as powerful, with a cheaper full-size HDD?
My head says yes: all I want is a cheap way to try out Mac OS (because although I don't expect to like it, I'd like to have an informed opinion).
My heart says no: it's appealing because it's so small.
I'm not really clear on how overclocking would necessarily be detectable, and thus void the warranty. If I go in and change the jumpers, melt it down, change the jumpers back - how is Apple going to know?
My other observation is whether the 1.25 vs 1.42 models are really different? Is it maybe just a marketing distinction, and the only difference is the jumper settings (I have certainly purchased hardware that has been crippled this way from other brands.)
But having said that, I gave up overclocking years ago. Systems are so much faster that it doesn't seem worthwhile to trade-off speed for reliability.
Apple colours its boards based on their classification.
Red boards are pre-production and prototype boards, blue ones are "customer ready" boards that will be shipped as the final product.
I think they use orange as well - the logic board in my iBook was orange.
Not true. I have a 5 year old Toshiba PIII laptop with a fan in it. When it comes on, it comes on loud and fast. There is no slow and quiet spin up and as a result, it is very noticeable and annoying.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Please read the intelligent posts above.
A 1.42 GHz model probably puts out the same heat as the 1.25 GHz, not more. It's all about efficiencies and yields during manufacturing. The 1.25 GHz chip is either inefficient or inaccurate at 1.42GHz so its sold at 1.25 GHz where it is stable.
Overclocking the 1.25 to 1.42 GHz probably will require more power (and thus generate more heat) than the properly spec'd 1.42 GHz chip.
I would bet the chips are the same core in both, but the default 1.42 chips are certified qualitywise to run at that speed. Overclocking the 1.25 chip to 1.42 should really be no big deal.
The 1.25GHz chips are certified to run at their temperature while running at... 1.25GHz. The 1.25GHz chips are going to run warmer at 1.42GHz, even if it is the same temperature the 1.42GHz chips normally run. Thus they are running at a termperature not certified to be stable. While they may be stable now, come summer you may find they are unstable.
I'd like to know how high you can clock one of the 1.4Ghz models, though I doubt I'd do it myself if I had a Mini; those jumpers are tiny, and it's not like you can put a big ol' HSF on the CPU to compensate for the heat, at least not without ruining the Mini's appeal.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
To be frank, both the Xbox and the Mac Mini can make great media boxes. They both have different benefits as well.
To address the parent:
1. Xbox noise: I haven't noticed it to be noisy at all. Even with the additional fan a added to help cool the upgraded drive it is still quiet.
2. Both Xbox and Mac Mini video cards are decent for a media box. Both can be output to HDTV. The Xbox can also output 480p and 1080p to VGA monitors with a special cable.
3. The Xbox requires some hacking to get it to become a media pc. This may either be considered a pain in the ass, or fun depending on your view. The modchip solder job is not all that complex (say compared to a PS2). There is no option for video recording on an Xbox this can be a down side. The Xbox has a remote as well.
Since we all no the Mac Mini's benefits - what can you do with an Xbox?
You can swap in a large hard drive (I went with a 160GB, you can go higher) for media storage.
Install Xbox Media Center (XBMC) which gives you:
audio playback (I'm not sure what codecs, MP3 of course)
video playback (DVD, MPG, DIVX, XVID, Quicktime etc.)
picture viewer
Internet streaming audio support
The current weather report
Streams all media types off of Samba shares on the network if you don't want to put them on the local Xbox hard drive.
XBMC is a slick menu driven application which is very simple to use while sitting on the couch. In depth configuration is accomplished through easy to edit XML files. It is also skinnable, so you can make the interface match your living room decor. It integrates all of your media access into one nice program.
If you want more information check out:
www.xboxmediacenter.de
So what else do you get with a modded Xbox? Well, the big thing is games. There are emulators for just about every old console and computer system available for Xbox. So if playing Atari's Adventure or Super Mario Brothers on your big old HDTV sounds good - this is the way to go. Plus you get to play Robotron with two joysticks just like back in the arcade. All of the emulators work nicely with the standard controllers - so there is no question of while my controller work properly with this emulator (as occurs int the PC world).
If you are interested in seeing what kind of Emulation is available for the Xbox check out:
Xport
The Xbox itself has a huge library of games which you can still play on your modified Xbox. Xbox live might be iffy though.
You can of course also install a full blown Linux installation on the Xbox if you like (as you can on the Mac although you hardly need to).
For information about Xbox Linux check out:
Xbox Linux
How much does this all cost?
$150 Xbox unit
$30-$70 Mod chip
$100-$150 Hard drive
You figure on spending about $300 or so for the modded setup.
One thing should be mentioned. Modding the Xbox is illegal, using emulators is pretty iffy too and certainly against copyright law if you don't own the ROMs etc. Most Xbox applications are illegal as they are built with Microsoft's SDK but are not licensed from Microsoft. You can't even download the apps off of a web page. You need to go to the super secret (not really) IRC channel to get the super-secret (not really) access to get the files.
So Mac Mini vs. Xbox? If you like hacking around, don't mind the legality issue, are comfortable with using FTP and whacking XML config files, have a strong interest in gaming (both current and historical) and don't need DVR functionality, the Xbox is a really fun and extremely hackable little computer.
Myself, I think I want both of them.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Are you sure the graphic chip on Xbox is inferior to the one in Mac Mini? I find it almost impossible to believe.
You find it almost impossible to believe that a low-end integrated chip in a three-year-old set-top console which currently sells for $125 for the entire system and was intended to connect to TV sets is inferior to a low-end GPU card from a $500 computer with DVI output that was just released this month? Okay.
To answer your question: Yes. Yes I'm sure. I own both. The ATI Radeon is a better solution.
The X-Box puts the PS2 to shame, sure. That doesn't mean it holds up to the standards of a real AGP-based video card, even a low-memory one like the 32MB 9200. Notice that HALO (the original "show off what the X-Box can do" game) actually only ran at about 30 fps on a standard-definition TV set, and sometimes it couldn't even keep up that sluggish pace.
The Radeon 9200, on the other hand, actually seems to perform better than the GeForce 5200 FX Ultra which is currenly loaded into the Apple iMac, in spite of having half the video memory. It's a pretty darn good card.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
As others have pointed out, basically it's no problem. A few weeks ago a PC laptop using friend visited and we needed to swap some files to my iBook. We both had wireless cards, but his was "broken", and hadn't worked for some time according to him. Luckily my wife knows Windows (I don't) and had it fixed in short order. Getting an ad-hoc wireless connection between the machines was then the work of about 2 minutes, mainly spent grappling with the arcane network settings on the XP machine, which turned out to be configured oddly - In the end it was much easier to simply change the Mac's settings to go with the PC's existing setup. From then on it was child's play to drag and drop files between the machines. My friend was impressed that it seemed so easy as he normally struggles with connecting his laptop anywhere (given its settings, probably no surprise), though to be fair he was an ex-Mac user forced to switch to a PC by his employer.