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I bought the base Mac mini last week: the $599 unit running at 2.0 GHz, 1 GB memory, and 120 GB of hard drive. For the same $200 that Apple wants for the $799 upgrade (2GB, 320GB @ 5400), I purchased 4GB of RAM from Crucial and a Western Digital 320GB 7200RPM drive. Incidentally, this is the same upgrade recommended by MacWorld (see links at the end of the article). In the time since the upgrade, the Seagate Momentus 500GB 2.5″ SATA became widely available.

The good news: with a decent speed hard drive and 4GB memory (the maximum on early 2009 Mac minis), this little box is great! UI response is crisp, and the system boots as quick as could be asked.

The bad news: as various online reviews mentioned, this is one of the harder upgrades to perform. Actually installing the RAM and hard drive is straightforward as on other systems, but getting there is a beast! I also consider the base mini barely usable except for the basic tasks. The system’s paltry 1GB is taxed after loading two or three applications. Definitely upgrade the RAM to 4GB (a $64 upgrade direct from Crucial, see the links below).

There’s many sites documenting Mac mini disassembly so I won’t go into great detail here.

Cracking the case required modifying a putty knife, to give it a beveled edge to wedge between the aluminum case and the plastic fingers holding it to the bottom. Remove the three antennas from their stands. Next was finding four black screws hidden in black recesses at each corner. After disconnecting a ribbon cable, the black plastic top holding the DVD drive and hard drive can be separated from the motherboard.

With the drives out of the way, replacing the RAM was easy, it’s in the left-front corner on the motherboard. One poster on the Apple discussion site had difficulty installing the upper DIMM, but I found sliding it between the upper and lower retaining clips the easiest method.

Getting to the hard drive was straightforward but required removing the DVD. The screws on the drive’s right side are a little tricky to put back due to the recesses, unless you have a magnetic-tip screwdriver or are careful manipulating the screws.

Here are some things I noticed on other sites mentioned in passing:

• Before taking the black plastic top piece, be sure to remove the connector on the attached circuit board. It controls the speaker (I left it unplugged on my first reassembly) for sure, and possibly other stuff (does anyone know?).
• When replacing the hard drive, transfer the two cushions from the old drive. They act as shock absorbers to cushion drive from the motherboard components.
• The Mac mini will sound terrible when removing and installing the aluminum outer case. As others have said, it sounds worse than it really is.

One of my cats was thrilled for me to do this. Ok, she was more “meh” and took a nap instead.

Resources:

• Macworld Mac mini upgrade recommendations: http://www.macworld.com/article/140575/macmini2009upgrade.html
• iFixit  Mac mini teardown: http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Mac-mini-A1283/659/1
• Unboxing and teardown @ macminicolo: http://www.macminicolo.net/macmini2009.html
• iFixit 1TB Mac mini (2x 500GB drives): http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/Mac-mini-A1283-Terabyte-Drive/660/1
• Memory upgrades at Crucial: http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=Mac%20mini%20(Intel%20Core%202%20Duo%202.0GHz%20DDR3)%20MB463LL/A&pl=Apple&cat=RAM
• Memory upgrades at Crucial, main Mac page: http://www.crucial.com/mac/index.aspx