Slashdot Mirror
Mac mini Maximized With 3.5" Drives
Demolition writes "You just knew that someone would get around to this, didn't you?
In this how-to article from AppleTalk Australia, a step-by-step guide describes how to transplant a Mac mini into a micro-ATX case and a method to connect standard 3.5" hard drives to it (using do-it-yourself 2.5"-to-3.5" IDE adapters). Only some minor case modifications and some added cooling are needed to complete the project."
Part of the mac's allure is it's stylish looks. This is just as dumb as putting a PC in a mac mini case.
Do Not Eat iPod Shuffle
...without ripping your Mac mini apart and sticking it in a PC enclosure, you could use any capacity 3.5" disk you wished in conjunction with Mac mini by using any 3.5" drive enclosure with FireWire (and/or USB 2.0), including some sure-to-be-released FireWire/USB 2.0 enclosures that will mimic Mac mini's appearance, and be designed to sit underneath or near a Mac mini and still be aesthetically pleasing. Perhaps some vendor like El Gato will even make a FireWire PVR/tuner solution WITH an integrated 3.5" drive bay, in the same type of case as Mac mini.
(Preemptive response: Yes, FireWire 400 is more than fast enough for this application. Yes, even for a media server. Yes, even for a PVR. Yes, I know USB 2.0 doesn't support booting. If you want booting, use FireWire. Yes, I know Apple says you shouldn't stack anything on top of Mac mini. That's why I said Mac mini would stack on top of it. Further, it's very likely NOT because of heat, but because the AirPort and Bluetooth antennas are directly in the top of the case, and instead of making a bunch of convoluted requirements about when and if it's ok to stack something on it, they just said no stacking. But, again, moot, because you could stack the mini itself on top of such a hypothetical enclosure or device. Or, set them side by side.)
The Mac mini really is almost a perfect media center box:
Acceptable processor and video card
DVI, VGA, S-video, and Composite video out
1/8" stereo audio out, or digital audio via FireWire with one of several adapters
FireWire and USB 2.0
10/100 ethernet and modem
Optional 802.11g and Bluetooth
CD-RW/DVD or optional CD-RW/DVD+/-RW
Remote control via Apple Remote Desktop or VNC (included in the free ARD Client 2.1)
Very small, very elegant, and very quiet operation
All that's missing is a tuner and a PVR application, and that's a nightmare to wade into, what with what's necessary to tune satellite services, and the infancy of CableCard.
Not true.
The other "whole point" of the Mac mini is that it's low cost. This adds a much faster hard drive which is probably the slowest component in the Mini, and Hard Drives are cheap.
I'm seriously thinking about updating the HD of my mini...
I've lost count of the number of "mod your Mac Mini like this" stories that have been posted here in the last month. Most of them deal with increasing the power or expandibility. I find this kind of ironic, considering that the Mac Mini's market seems to be mostly people to which power and expandibility are definitely not primary considerations in a computer buying decision.
Really. Some relatively talented industrial artist working for Dr Bott/LaCie/etc will design a fixed firewire drive bay that is exactly the same size as the mini, and may offer some other functionality like Compact Flash/SD/etc reader. Fixed 120GB, or a hotswap with cheap trays.
Good accessories come to those who wait.
Don't you dare tell me what the "whole point" of any computer is. I'll tell the computer what to do, thank you very much. I don't care what apple thinks it should do.
MacroHard - Boning you in a big way! (TM)
I imagine that with the low price, low power usage, and ppc architecture (not many binary sploits for Linux on ppc...) many people would want to use these things as small servers. The problem is that the Mac Mini hard drive sucks ass - it's slow, only 40G, and the small form factor means upgrades are expensive. Perhaps the most important part of a server is a good hard drive.
By putting the Mini into a PC case, you get the room to add a large fast hard drive, and the air flow needed to cool it.
re: It completely ruins the point of having a Mac mini.
No, that's what YOU think the "point" of a Mac Mini is. To many (if not most) of us, the point is that it's an extremely affordable Mac.
re: Part of the mac's allure is it's [sic] stylish looks. This is just as dumb as putting a PC in a mac mini case.
Dumb to you. Cool to someone who didn't buy it for its sylish looks.
Holy crap, people. This is Slashdot. Some of like to take apart things. Some of us like to take cheap computers and make them perform like expensive computers. We're hobbyists and tinkerers. Why take apart the Mac Mini? We don't need any reason better than "because we can."
Hell, if I were to build a 5-desk office that needed a simple mail server and file server, the Mac Mini is just a RAID away from perfection, at less than a quarter the price of an XServe.
The Mac Mini is a beautiful piece of hardware. I'd love to have two -- one that never gets turned on or used, just left on the mantel in a glass box with the fine china, and another that's gutted, rebuilt, and folding 24/7.
// I will show you fear in a handful of jellybeans.
Mac Mini server = $500 + $200 for good 250G IDE hard drive + $50 for case = $750.
Xserve = $3000, and you still need to buy another drive (shipping 80G hard drives in a $3000 server? pathetic).
Now, you might have a spare two grand lying around. I don't. If I want a ppc server, Mac Mini is what I am getting.
If you want to use it as a server then why not simply leave it in the original case, plug in a firewire drive, and throw it in the basement (or under the fridge, or in a closet, or....)
Take the money that you would have spent on a case and spend it on a FW enclosure and a disk and come out ahead.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - BF
I'd mod this as underrated... but I'd rather comment.
My server is a Debian running iMac - 400mhz processor, 384mb ram, 20gb drive. More than powerful enough for hosting 3 email addresses, and serving a LAMP based site that gets a few hundred hits a week, my only complaint about both it and the Mac Mini is the lack of a second hard drive for redundancy/backup, but for my small scale purposes just rsyncing / to my ~/server-backup on my workstation is a perfect solution.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
"Why would someone deface a poor defenseless Mac Mini like this?"
"Because the hard drive is slow (4200 RPM), and this is cheap."
The guy stated that he wanted to build a server that was a) cheap, and b) quiet
In short, he is an idiot.
It is FAR cheaper to obtain an old Pentium based PC, which can easily be found for free as compared to the Mac Mini, which is $799 in Australia.
This project is not a "cheap" way to build a server, it is an expensive way to build a server.
Then there is the noise factor. Yes, the Mac Mini is quiet, much quieter than an old PC.
But this is not where the story ends. Firstly he is making his Mac Mini almost as noisy as a PC, just by putting in a 3.5 inch HDD and running a PC powersupply complete with a PSU + FAN in it! The only other source of noise in a PC is the CPU fan and I explain below how that can usually be removed completly anyway. In such a scenario, a PC would make exactly the same noise that this Mac Mini does.
When looking at typical, stock built PCs, there are four sources of operating noise to consider.
1) PSU Fan. Both the modified Mac Mini and the recycled Pentium PC use a mini tower case, ergo we can expect the same level of PSU fan noise to emanate from both solutions. In both cases an aftermarket "near silent" fan can be fitted to minimise any noise. In any event, we can rule out any PSU fan noise that is present because both solutions will theoretically produce identical levels of noise. PSU fan noise is not a differentiating factor.
2) CPU Fan. This is one area where the Mac Mini will beat the stock Pentium PC. But there is no reason you need to stick with the stock configuration. It is an easy matter on most old PCs to underclock the CPU. This in turn allows you in many cases to run your Pentium using a large, passive heatsink alone ie, it becomes just as noiseless as the Mac Mini.
3) HDD noise. The modified Mac would use the exact same 3.5inch HDD as the Pentium PC, so we can rule this noise out too.
4) GPU cooler. The mac mini doesn't use a seperate GPU cooler, and niether would the PC. It would most likely have some crappy old Trident or S3 based 2D card that has no fan but is perfectly acceptable in a server.
The short story is that we can make a recycled PC just as quiet as this modified Mac mini so the noise issue is moot.
Consider that the Mac Mini option would cost you something like;
1.25 Ghz Mac Mini - $799
Minitower PC case - $50
3,5 Inch HDD ~ $150 (depending on what capacity you want)
= $999 (Australian)
compared to a recycled PC;
2nd hand Pentium 233 - $50 (probably free but lets use a nominal figure anyway)
Large passive heatsink - $25
New PSU fan - $15 (the old one might be a bit worn)
Linux/FreeBSD OS - $0
= $90
Basically, this goose has wrecked an eight hundred dollar Mac to build a ninety dollar server.
What a moron.
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
I'm not even a Mac guy, and the first thing that I thought of was "Geez, get a couple of external firewire drives." That would have been about the same price, would have looked better, would use less electric (enclosure power supplies vs. the ATX power supply used for the 3.5" hard drives), and performance would probably be as good as or better than his master/slave IDE hard drive setup.
It's a sign of how far slashdot has gone downhill. You get a bunch of comments like, "The whole point of the mini is it's small size/stylish case/OS X/whatever."
Wrong. The whole point, if there ever is such a thing as a whole point, is that it's a computer, and can be adapted to the users needs. Sometimes these adaptations are clunky (like the techTV guy that was unable to stuff a PC into a mini case), sometimes they might appear clunky, but are functional (as in the mod under discussion), and sometimes they are elegant. Sometimes they're just fun.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.