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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."
Stewed apple.
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 ?
No, not really. 1.42 GHz isn't really so much faster than 1.25 to justify voiding the warranty.
Is the jump from 1,25GHz to 1,42GHz that great an improvement. Yes I know how many operations are done in every Megahertz but in my mind, the point of the mini was not speed but rather using less power for simple things. My e-mail, browser, Word, soltaire, etc is not going to open that much noticably faster with this bump.
I like more speed as much as the next guy but the next guy didn't buy the Mac Mini for speed.
-Teiresias
So you are saying the warranty is valid only if you don't need it? :)
Well, if you're just moving up the speed from 1.25 to 1.42, cooling shouldn't be an issue since they are shipping minis at the higher speed in the upgraded one.
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.
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. :)
Troc
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
$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.
Did you check the jumpers? Good luck while playing with them.
If you can build a machine on practically a single PCB, that small, with DVD-reading and CD-RW capabilities, and sell it for under $500...
If you want the same specs as a Mac mini for less, go look on eBay or a second-hand reseller (try 2ndchancepc.co.uk). The point of the Mac mini isn't to have top-of-the-line components - it's to be a usable, cheap box for your Mum or Dad to just pick up and plug in.
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
First of all, the mac mini is cooled passively... It is designed to dispate the heat of what stuff Apple put in there. I know the attitude might be to do it for the sake of doing it, but why ruin a perfectly good mac-mini through overheating with it, with a relatively small gain in performance. I hope people don't do this in the long run as a permanent solution.
Although the Mac mini is said to be extremely quiet, it does have a fan. considering that Apple does produce a 1.42 MHz model, speeding up the 1.25 is probably not going to produce more heat than the system can handle.
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.
Good point.
I bought a 512 MB 1.25 GHz Mac Mini last week. It's been a pretty sweet little machine. iMovie works great with MiniDV video, I don't have a HDV camcorder to try HD though.
Garage Band ROCKS! 18 tracks of audio of different formats and it keeps on trucking!
I haven't tried anything harder than Warcraft 3 or Sim City 4 on it yet though.
I want one. badly. But the Mac mini is a perfect example.. I can't justify paying 500 dollars just for an operating system.
Actually, it's not just an OS. There's word processing, presentation, photo, video editing, and music creation applications provided as well. And I hear that they even throw in a cute little computer as a bonus.
This is for the electrical engineers:
Why is the MoBo blue? Is there a signifigance to the color of the board? Or did Apple just pick it because on the order sheet it was "aqua"?
Because Red mobos run the fastest, and Apple didn't want to make the Mac Mini too fast otherwise it would have killed G5 sales.
The school district that I work for has been looking for a sub $500 video editing and DVD playback solution (budgets are REALLY tight these days). How does the Mac Mini stack up (with and without overclocking it)?
You can't get one for less than $480, and that's for the 256 MB combodrive version.
I bought a 512 MB superdrive Mac Mini last week. It works great for video editing, it's actually a pretty fast little machine.
BUT... transcoding from DV to MPEG2 takes awhile. Editing and even designing the buttons and menus for the DVD image is fast as can be, but be prepared to wait *at least* an hour before the finished DVD pops out after you click the burn button.
Why the hell not? Some engineers like to take a little pride in their work and make things look neat - have you never seen the inside of a PowerMac G5?
No wires.
Not one.
That was classic intercourse!
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 I would assume that the 1.25 is made the same as the 1.42. I have the 1.42 myself and it runs quite cool while being extremely quiet (as long as you aren't reading a CD/DVD).
If you bump the 1.25 to 1.42 I'm sure it's fine. I wouldn't want to bump the 1.42 any higher as it's not worth voiding the warranty for the TINY speed increase and the possibilty of the case not being able to handle the increased heat.
If you check your preferences you will notice that you can block stories from the homepage on various topics, including Apple stories. Any "hardcore computer nerd" worth his salt would have noticed this immediately.
Smeghead every day of the week.
The hard drive is only 4200RPM
While a faster hard drive will give you better scrubbing performance, you don't really *need* to have a fast drive for editing DV.
The DV codec that most of us use with our camcorders is DV25, which is 25 Mbits/sec = 3.125 MB/sec.
DV editing was fine on notebooks even 4 years ago on the original "toilet seat" iBook.
"...when you consider how small of a share of the market they have."
Yeah, same with all these Linux and Firefox stories!
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Then your iMac Mini will be about as valuable as a melted iMac Mini! This will give a whole new meaning to the Rip, Mix, Burn media campaign.
If every single computer user was a geek then you'd have a valid point, but you fail to realize 0% of the worlds computing population care about that stuff.
Surely geeks must make up some non-zero percentage of the computing population.
I just got a mini yesterday and it runs very cool . compared to a Powerbook. The internal fan comes on when the CPU temperature reaches 55C (could even be 60C), which only happens during games or other really processor intensive applications.
Even then, the aluminum case remains room temperature (feels cool). The fan itself is very quiet. During light use (Internet, word processing) the Mini is absolutely silent and operates cool to the touch.
The Powerbook on the other hand gets almost too hot to touch when the CPU hits 55C, and the internal fan is rather noisy in comparison.
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!
Mac Mini does come with some pretty nice software out of the box. To me this makes up the difference between the price of a Mini and the price of a low end PC ($300 Celeron/Semperon + Radeon 9200)
Mac OS X (Windows XP OEM costs at least $50)
iMovie - editing software, better than Avid FreeDV or Microsoft Movie Maker 2.0
iDVD - DVD mastering software for making menus, etc, and burning to DVD
Garage Band - compose, edit, and mix music
Also included, but not too useful for schools:
iPhoto - sort, edit, and print digital photos
iTunes
Xcode - software development suite for C/C++/Java
Quicken 2005
Nanosaur 2
Okay, I'll feed the troll...
Darwin on an Athlon 64..... sooooo sexy.
I've got good news. It's already happened/happening.
From the Darwin FAQ:
Q. What is Darwin?
A. Darwin is a version of the BSD UNIX operating system that offers advanced networking, services such as the Apache web server, and support for both Macintosh and UNIX file systems. It was originally released in March 1999. Darwin currently runs on PowerPC-based Macintosh computers, and is being ported to Intel processor-based computers and compatible systems by the Darwin community.
I see a bunch of posts discussing the fact that the mini will have problems cooling the overclocked CPU.
/. can answer anyways.
Too lazy/busy to do some real research here, I know that someone here on
The same case is used for the faster processor. How different are the processors themselves? ie, The mini has already been designed to handle the heat output of the 1.45GHz, so how much more heat (if any) would an overclocked lesser cpu generate?
Is cooling the overclocked chip even a concern?
Why is the MoBo blue?
They come in all colors depending on the shop that makes them.
If you would like, you can call this Steve's "blue period."
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
People complaining that the hack is really not worth voiding the warranty are missing the whole point. It is just the coolness factor out here. Somebody, somewhere figured out that by setting those specific tiny little jumpers (I still can't believe how tiny they are), the Mac Mini could be overclocked and shared this info with the whole wide world. Appreciate that and just think about what *you* have figured out lately. Losers.
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 extremely quiet because the fan is on-demand. Mine only kicks in if I'm doing heavy computation or accessing the drives extensively. And when it does kick in, it slowly ramps up to speed. When the "heat event" is over, the fan slowly fades away. My SparcStation 5 worked similarly.
Trust me. This is an inactive account. Regardless of what the
So, that says nothing about how cool it runs, but how well it dissapates heat.
The Powerbook radiates heat through it's case, while the Mac Mini is either keeping it internaly, or venting it in a more focused manner. (exhaust fan)
Pretty Pictures!
I think this is a result of the open competition between manufacturers, and as longa s Mac's are the toy of a single company, they will always lack this aspect of providing what the customers REALLY want or need, but only what the company is willing to provide.
Actually, I think this is the result of Windows users who are emotionally insecure, and willing to clutch at any straws they can to reassure themselves their rig is "better" than a Mac.
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
Really the WHOLE point of having a real OS is that the interactive stuff is interactive and the batch stuff happens when you're not lookin'...
The MacMini will NOT make a good Doom3 machine. For interactive stuff (even, gasp, light video editing!) it's fine the way it is. For long term stuff (DVD encoding), background the app and do something else (even at the same time!) Who cares if it takes 25 minutes instead of 20 minutes?
Generally, 'make DVD' is the last thing I do befor e I go to bed...it's always done by morning.
If you wanted the last oomph of power, you shouldn't have bought apple's cheapest box!
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
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
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.
Just because they make a 1.42ghz model does not mean that a 1.25 can be overclocked to 1.42 safely from a heat perspective. One of the reasons a particular part is sold at a particular speed is power consumption. A 1.25Ghz processor is a "lower-bin" part and is sold for a cheaper price. IE the transistors in the part do not function as efficently or quickly as the higher-bin 1.42ghz model. There is a lot of different things that can make that be so, but suffice it to say that Apple is probably buying parts based on a Power Consumption spec. ie... The cheap Mac Mini's are probably being built with parts that run at 1.25Ghz @ say for arguments sake 7 watts of power consuption. They are also buying parts that run at 1.42ghz @ 7 watts of power consumption. That way their heat profile is about the same regardless of which part they use. This isn't to say that either part won't run faster, but that they will generate more heat to do so. [Higher leakage currents etc]. Therefore it is patently false that you can safely overclock a slower part just because they have a faster model. The parts used in the faster model don't run hotter, they run more efficently typically. You're results will vary because IBM/Motorolla may have labelled a part that was technically good enough to be 1.42Ghz as 1.25 just to make quota... It depends on their yeilds. Physically the chips are made the same, higher speed chips just come from the center of the wafer while slower typically come from the edges, but in practice it's probabilistic thing and you may get a faster chip just because they didn't fully test the chip for fastest speed or that they needed more 1.25ghz chips then 1.42ghz chips.. Anyway's there is no guarantee, you're just as likely to have the part melt at 1.42ghz then work beautifully... Can also depend on your usage pattern low cpu usage in a cool environment will make things work much better then a 95 degree house with heavy usage...
-- Matthew Schiller
Electrical Engineer
Previous Apple Intern [Flat Panel iMac]
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.
Let's see. Low end Dells and Mac Minis are both sold as high-performance computing devices, there is that. Also, ":)" at the end of the message means the author is flamin' serious. Nope! Still something missing! If your head just didn't hurt so much when you were trying to think...
To find out, get an $725 Dell, download a 2 hour movie from your digital camcoder, add some music, watermark captions and video transitions and burn it to DVD. Report your experience here.
Solder mask is basically a paint that isolates the various 'pads', or landing areas for component pins, physically in space, so that the solder has much less tendency to bridge gaps and cause shorts. Usually, it is green, but it can be made in any color. Myself, I've made boards with black, red or transparent solder mask. Green is the traditional color, and afaik, there is no performance difference electrically or physically between the colors.
Just for completeness' sake, the lettering you sometimes see on a PCB is called silkscreen, and is usually white, but again can come in a variety of colors like yellow or black. Again, tradition says it should be white.
PS: I'm not an electrical engineer, and I never will be.
Mostly random stuff.
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.)
For Dell's $499 home system:
90 Day Warranty3, 90 Day At-Home Service4, and 1Yr Technical Support, an extra $90 for two year service.
Gateway charges $60 to get the full year, their base warranty is buried in a PDF.
HPaq does provide a full year though.
Apples aren't the cheapest machines. You can always get a slighty higher spec machine for less $ in the PC realm.
But the 199$ pc you point to has some real difference to the mini. I think they have significant differences in there target markets.
The PC--
No Dvd player.
No CD burner.
only 128 megs of ram (what century is this?)
Linshpere which is fine, but if you wanted windows add $$ (I think about 200$ if bought retail).
With mac your also paying for the applications they through in and OS X os and support.
The Cube was originally convection cooled (no fan). Most of the CPU and GPU upgrades add a fan, so it's not really the same thing.
Sorry, but if someone is going to tell me how to open my brand new computer and mess around with its internal workings, I don't want to read things like this:
Here is the bottom of the board. Or whatever you call it.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
with everything you need
Assuming you can live with integrated video, no DVD, 128M RAM, Lindows OS, no FireWire, no DVI, no iLife, ugly box, etc.
Come on, you're not really suggesting that that computer would be a good purchase are you?
Pee Cee price comparison weenies
While you do have a point, and I happen to agree with your underlying point, you're never going to convince anyone like that. Because starting off by calling the people you're trying to convince "weenies" just attacks and aggravates them and puts them on the defensive. Once you've put someone on the defensive, any hope of having a rational, constructive argument is gone, as well as any hope of convincing them to see your viewpoint. The question is do you want to just insult people who are wrong about something, or do you actually want to help those people see that they are wrong and introduce positive change? (That's not easy.) If the latter, you'll have to change your strategy. Calling people "weenies" and telling them they're "living in the wrong world" is no way to convince anyone of anything, except for people who already agree with you (perhaps you just want the affirmation from that group?). Anyway, a better strategy is to open by "giving" something to the listener that they would like to hear, a concession that doesn't make them feel stupid, e.g. start out by pointing out the perceived merits of their argument are not baseless, e.g. you could say "it's true that a Dell PC with similar performance can be obtained slightly cheaper", but then (rationally) add valid (backed up) counter-arguments for why that little saving is not worth it, in a non-offensive way that doesn't make you sound like a zealot, which results in having the opposite of the desired effect, because most people instinctively do the opposite of what zealots do even if the zealot happens (by coincidence) to be doing the right thing.
Check out this hilarious Mac mini "review". It's tongue and cheek, written from the prospective of an MCSE. I couldn't stop laughing.
The video card in the mac mini is vastly inferior to the x-box card, since the x-box card is derived from a full power geforce 3.
The mini-card is a ATI Radeon 9200, which isn't better than a geforce 3.
You really have no clue, do you?
The X-Box is a 733 MHz Pentium system with 64 MB of system RAM, and the video "card" which you say is "derived from a full power geforce 3" is a 300 MHz GPU designed specifically for the X-Box by Microsoft and nVidia. It's an integrated chip which shares the system bus. It supports a maximum resolution of 1920x1080. Plenty good enough for hooking up to TV sets, even some HDTV sets, but pathetic by computer card standards.
I'll take the Radeon 9200 with it's own DDR video memory, thanks.
P.S. I've got both an X-Box and a mini, and have witnessed both of them perform. There's no question that the X-Box fails to even come close to the video performance of the mini. Sorry. It just isn't as good, no matter how much you might want it to be.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
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.
When you buy the 1.42 model you lose a little performance because of the "upgraded" hard drive. Every report on the 1.25GHz mini says it comes with a 5400rpm 8M cache 40GB drive. I have two 1.42 minis - one came with a 4200rpm 8M cache 80GB drive, the other came with a 4200rpm 2M cache drive.
Since then I've fitted a 7200rpm 8M cache drive - it makes a BIG difference!