Apple Core Solo to Core Duo upgrade.

[Charles Wirth]

To answer a few questions from around the net;

My chip, yonah on left.


Cold air is blowing out the back, no heat at all.

I did not use a putty knife, my case is pristinel. I know about wire and knife method and covered them both.

Merom will be tested soon as possible.

Thanks for checking out xtremesystems.org

[[XC] leviathan18]

104 checking this forum only 90ish the amd i think first time this happens

[[XC] moddolicous]

104 checking this forum only 90ish the amd i think first time this happens

Theres a pic in wamps where thers ~100 veiwing AMD and 100x veiwing MAC!! FUGGER, any xbench runs??

[Charles Wirth]

We had almost 2600 people in the mac section earlier.

#1 mac mini
http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc1=159752

[antipop]

I know this is dumb to bring up...

but, from looking at apples website, you can get the solo for $600 and the duo 1.66 for $800.

the 1.66 at newegg costs $250 + Shipping and time to mod.
that brings the final cost to about $60 more, then it would cost to just buy a $800 Duo from Apple.

so it's not always gonna be the best idea to go that route, if you want to be cheap about it.

from what I see, this seems to offer the option of using CPU's that Apple doesn't currently offer as a upgrade right?

I don't have the money today to sheel out the 200€ more for the core duo version but once the core duo price will have dropped enough i'll be able to upgrade the mini for cheap

I'm happy to hear that there is no heat issue. Do you think the merom will run on this machine without a problem? Won't there be a chipset issue?

[antipop]

BTW, this is the xbench for stock mini's
http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc...32&doc2=146457

[Charles Wirth]

The stock memory runs at 667Mhz and the Elpida stuff I put in was running at 533Mhz.

Switching over to another Centon build, this time D9 based.

There is a black wire near the battery that comes from the fan, if you disconnet that connector the fan will run at full speed.

With the connector connected I can heat it up a bit, I need to get a laser temp probe to see what the heat sink is getting to. With the fan on high it stays cold.

[tonyl]

I can't see the pics either. You rock man! I saw another post saying the cpu is socket in mini and you did it! Really tempting! But just got 1 G4 450 DP for fun. Will apple solder the cpu in later mini?

[tonyl]

We had almost 2600 people in the mac section earlier.

#1 mac mini
http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc1=159752

Xbench is useless in mac world. You can do some PS, encoding bench. for ps, you can use this: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthre...ight=photoshop

[down8]

Apple Mini Mac Core Solo:
1.5Ghz single core Intel mobile CPU
512MB DDR2 SODIMM, Micron D9 based 667Mhz 5-5-5-15<a href="http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/marketing/detail/0,1081,678,00.html">
<FONT COLOR="blue">60GB SATA hard drive Seagate Technologies</FONT></a>
Model Number:ST96812AS
Capacity:60 GB
Speed:5400 rpm
Seek time:12.5 ms avg
Interface:SATA 1.5Gb/s
Matsheeta CD-RW Model 8124
Intel ICH7-M ACHI 1.5G
Intel High Definition Audio
Bluetooth
Firewire 400MB/s
108G Airport Extreme
Intel GMA 950 onboard graphics 64MB shared
USB 4 ports built in, one high speed.



Parts to be Installed:
Intel Yonah 2.16 Core Duo
1GB Centon DDR2 Elpida based.

<img src="http://fugger.netfirms.com/box.jpg">

I picked up an Apple Mini Mac for $599 and Fry's Electronics today. It was the low end unit with plans to swap out some of the guts for a mega upgrade that would be an unavailable configuration from Apple.

For those with access to Yonah chips or prefer to purchase from an online retailer but did not have a platform to run it on, this is very cool interim machine to check out.

The motherboard is an Intel Napa. It uses SODIMM and supports up to 2GB of DDR2 ram. It also run in dual channel mode as long as you keep DIMM's matched.

You have no ability to manually adjust memory timing but it will uphold SPD information like a champ.

I did some research into breaking the Apple spirit and getting windows operational and I know it will be possible based on depth of Apple protection.




The case is held together with about 30 plastic clips on the bottom. These clips are pretty tough to get worked apart without hurting the case appearance. The most common method for case removal is a putty knife but this will leave bad scars on the case. I would suggest researching the wire method for case opening. It is very clean and takes the same amount of time.



Once you get the case open it will take you a few minutes of spinning the thing around to figure out how to take it apart. Look for four black screws at the base of the black plastic CD/HD bracket. The four holes are show in this image at all four corners.





You will see a lot of little black connectors at the rear of the CDROM, leave these alone as they can stay on and the whole assembly comes out.



There is two antennas mounted to the top of the CDROM, carefully lift on the smaller one and it pops off, the larger has two clips from the underside that squeeze together and it will lift off very easily.

Once those two parts are clear there is the one more connector at the front of the CDROM you need to be careful with when you lift the drives out. Undo that clip and the drives are free.



You should be looking at the system board, the north bridge and CPU covered by separate heat sinks and the two ram slots. You will need to remove the motherboard to remove the CPU heat sink. The screw is located at the front corner with a taller spacer screw with hex top, it has a chrome finish and should be easy to spot.

Carefully clear the front edge and pull it out. Nothing on the back panel prevents the motherboard from being removed, just be careful of metal shielding.

The south bridge is located on the backside of the motherboard and has a thick piece of thermal interface material stuck to the bottom side of the case, remember this when pulling out or reinstalling the motherboard not to mess it up.



Once the motherboard is out, flip it over and locate the plastic tabs that hold down the CPU bracket. Squeeze them and it will pop off. I highly suggest using one hand to hold heat sink level as it can and will flop to one side with possible damage to core edges. The same goes for reassembly. You will also see a small connector for a thermal diode attached to the underside of the heat sink once you have it loose, remove the clip if you want to remove it completely.

With the CPU exposed, clean off the thermal interface material. It is black in color and feels like tar.

I picked the Core Solo Mac version to show that all models are the same, it would just need a CPU swap. Like all Intel motherboards, memory selection is not an issue as this will accept pretty much any speed or timing SODIMM you put in it. I will be testing with Samsung and 1GB modules as well.

I am very happy to see high definition audio onboard as well as all the other features available on this low end model.

Two more upgrades may be planned, the HD to 200+ GB and DVD-RW drives are a bit less than optimal but will surely get the job done at the current price point of $599

I have a new camera that will be here Monday with an uber macro lens. I will update with PLL and finer board shots.





<a href="http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=91459">
<FONT COLOR="blue">Discussion can be found an XtremeSystems Forums</FONT></a>

Fixed the picture tags....

-bZj

[Paul Stamatiou]

As usual, fantastic job Fugger. I posted it yesterday on 123MacMini, lots of people there are excited. http://www.123macmini.com/news/story/453.html
After reading this, I ordered a Core Solo mini last night, 2gigs of ram for $230 on OWC and am in the works of getting a 7200rpm SATA 80 or 100gig internal drive and going through my contacts to see if I can't get a T2600 as well, but likely a 1.83/2ghz duo will suit my needs.

I saw another post saying the cpu is socket in mini and you did it! Really tempting!

I think you are referring to this post of mine. It made digg and newsvine top seed a few days ago. http://www.paulstamatiou.com/2006/03...is-upgradable/

[Charles Wirth]

Welcome to XS,

Thanks for the linkage.

Dwon8, question,
What was wrong with the images??

[panaman]

Yeah.. this thread is awesome...
I have one of the G4 Mac Mini's, i wish i would have waited for the intel version to come out.....
I can't wait to see if you get windows xp working on it..

[xterm]

Can you run cinebench on it? here is my numbers from a stock 1.66 Core Duo Mac Mini:

CINEBENCH 9.5
************************************************** **

Tester : xterm

Processor : 1.66GHz Core Duo Mac Mini
MHz : 1666
Number of CPUs : 2
Operating System : Mac Os 10.4.5

Graphics Card : Intel GMA950
Resolution : 1600x1200
Color Depth : Millions
************************************************** **

Rendering (Single CPU): 255 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 473 CB-CPU

Multiprocessor Speedup: 1.85

Shading (CINEMA 4D) : 300 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Software Lighting) : 1075 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Hardware Lighting) : 545 CB-GFX

OpenGL Speedup: 3.58

************************************************** **

[AmpliFuzz]

Hey, awesome thread. Let's hope that a direct Merom drop-in will be possible, or that Apple (or some entrerprising hacker) will support it with a firmware update.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet anywhere: it should be useful to find out what kind of clock generator the mobo is using, to check if it supports FSB changes in realtime, using one of the clockgen-type programs under Windows. Porting it to OSX (or even better writing an ad-hoc utility from scratch) should be relatively trivial, and my guess is that the lower clocked parts, both solo and duo, have great overclocking potential, like centrinos do. Come to think of it, I haven't seen any material on core duo overclocking so far on the web. Got any cool links?

[geforce man]

that is sooooo cool, will make a damn fine browsing/general use PC, nothing to game with, but an awesome machine none the less.

[Charles Wirth]

Adjustable fan speed control mod figured out, I pulled the unit apart again for more pictures and round two.

The new camera,
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0504/05042201canons2is.asp

Lets hope that the old camera was the problem

[GoriLLakoS]

Congrats Fugger....

Links...

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/03...mini_duo_hack/

[Spanky Deluxe]

This is truly awesome stuff!! Congrats Fugger!! BTW to those who were saying that it wasn't really worth buying a 1.5Ghz Solo Mini and then upgrading to a 1.66Ghz Core Duo you forgot to factor in the superdrive (DVDRW-DL) that you get for the $800 package.

Getting Windows XP running is going to prove to be pretty tricky since these things use an EFI implementation that does not have the CSM bios compatibility module. There's been a contest that's reached over $10000 worth of price money to the first person to get Windows XP installed on an Apple Intel based Mac.

For those considering getting a mini out there I'd recommend you pony up for the Core Duo model now since the Core Solo chip will get you next to nothing when it comes to upgrading. Since the core solo 1.5Ghz part is the cheapest and slowest chip you can use on this platform its resale value will be very low. If you get a Core Duo 1.66Ghz model, however, there will be quite a bit of demand from people who want to upgrade from a core solo part. Do you see what I'm getting at?

[Paul Stamatiou]

Fugger, in this picture, how do you release the CPU, do you turn that black screw on the socket? I see it doesn't have the usual release lever thing.

[Frodin]

Fugger, in this picture, how do you release the CPU, do you turn that black screw on the socket?

Yepp, that's how it's done on the preceding 479-socket at least.

Good job Fugger! But reading the article was slow as hell as soon as it hit the front page (and all those other sites started linking to it, apparently). Seems like Xtremesystems got a few new members as well!

[Paul Stamatiou]

Ah, I've never played around with a mobile 479 mobo, so this is new to me.

In regards to the new members, I've actually been on these forums for a while but under a user name and password I couldn't remember, nor the email under which I signed up for it. =/

[kzzaaa]

Hey, one of those new members here. I'm considering getting a mini, but being able to upgrade a few parts of it is key to making that decision.

Well done Fugger. I have a question, though. Is there anything non-standard about the harddrive? 5400 rpm is not high on my list. Do you think there's any reason why a 150 gig Raptor drive wouldn't fit and run without overheating?

[Paul Stamatiou]

The Mac Mini uses a 2.5" SATA laptop hard drive. Raptor = 3.5", power hungry desktop hd

[kzzaaa]

Ah, so it is a laptop drive in there. Pity. I couldn't find the dimensions anywhere. Thanks for the info, Paul.