OWC SSDs Turn the 2011 Mac Mini Into a Powerhouse

Ideally I'd probably stick a small-ish SSD in there (120GB), and then add a 2TB Thunderbolt drive (when they come out).

What would really be cool is one of those Mini expansion drives from Newertech, but with a Thunderbolt connection transmitting everything in one cable.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that the mini could be a viable upgrade option for me and my 2006 Mac Pro.

raymondthimmes said:

I'm becoming more and more convinced that the mini could be a viable upgrade option for me and my 2006 Mac Pro.

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Go for the Quad Core Mac Mini server, with dual SSDs in RAID 0 and 8GB of RAM and you're in business.
Shame the video on the quad core is intel only though.

Squuiid said:

Shame the video on the quad core is intel only though.

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Hopefully in the near future that Thunderbolt port will go some way toward mitigating the GPU problem.

- "We tested two OWC Mercury EXTREME 6G SSD in a RAID 0 configuration (on the server model of Mac mini - again we're looking into how to get a second hard drive into the consumer model, but that will be another blog post down the road after we figure it all out)…

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This would make the graph a bit misleading, though. Since the Server version has a different proc and other components, that would skew the results a bit, I would think. Why not just use the server one for all the tests, thereby removing all the variables except for the actual hard drives?

Solution aren't far way

As soon as Village Instruments makes a Thunderbolt ViDock all these issues will be solved, access to a real graphics card plus additional ports ... I can't wait.

This is making me consider grabbing one of these (although upgrading would be expensive).
This little bugger is pretty powerful!

Navdakilla said:

This is making me consider grabbing one of these (although upgrading would be expensive).
This little bugger is pretty powerful!

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Or replace the 5400rpm drive with a 7200rpm 750GB drive for $99.

How often are you really accessing the hard drive after the app launches?

SSDs are great, if you have unlimited money to spend.

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"SSD drives"? Come on MacRumors, you guys are better than that.

OriginalMacRat said:

Or replace the 5400rpm drive with a 7200rpm 750GB drive for $99.

How often are you really accessing the hard drive after the app launches?

SSDs are great, if you have unlimited money to spend.

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You'd be amazed how often an app can access the drive while running. Loading from web browser cache for example. In theory though, web browsers could use a bit of foresight and have cache for commonly visited sites load in the background so when you visit the sites, the data is already in-RAM, but I don't believe they do this.

BeSweeet said:

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"SSD drives"? Come on MacRumors, you guys are better than that.

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I chuckled a bit at this too.

raymondthimmes said:

I'm becoming more and more convinced that the mini could be a viable upgrade option for me and my 2006 Mac Pro.

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I did this myself earlier this year.

I had the quad core 2006 Mac Pro with dual monitors.

I picked up the 2009 Mac mini from Apple's refurb list which runs 2 monitors out of the box.

For the 4 hard drives I had in the Mac Pro, I picked up a couple of Other World Computing's "OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual Drive" enclosures.

Works pretty well.

I think when the time comes, I'll replace the 2009 Mac mini with the recently released 2011 Mac mini server which comes with the quad core i7 processor and 2 internal 7200rpm drives pre-installed.

BeSweeet said:

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

"SSD drives"? Come on MacRumors, you guys are better than that.

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Well - excuse me while I run to the ATM machine and enter my PIN number.....

Diode said:

Well - excuse me while I run to the ATM machine and enter my PIN number.....

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Hope you keep that PIN secure - mine's under lock and key in a password protected Tar archive.


Really BeSweeet, I know technically you're correct, but I really suspect "SSD drive" will find its way into common usage as one of those redundant terms, and tbh I don't really have a problem with that.

raymondthimmes said:

I'm becoming more and more convinced that the mini could be a viable upgrade option for me and my 2006 Mac Pro.

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Quite a few benchmarks have the quad-core Mini outperforming a 2008 Mac Pro!

GeekBench shows the quad-core Mini within spitting distance of the low-end Mac Pro from 2010; not far behind the 2008 eight core Mac Pro.

Heck, the 11" MacBook Air (with upgraded CPU,) comes pretty darned close to the 2008 8-core Mac Pro! (The SSD as default probably helps a lot, though.)

No TRIM support though, right? I am still not sure I understand if/when this is even a big deal...

Is this a joke?

OriginalMacRat said:

Or replace the 5400rpm drive with a 7200rpm 750GB drive for $99.

How often are you really accessing the hard drive after the app launches?

SSDs are great, if you have unlimited money to spend.

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That's got to be one of the most factually incorrect statements I've ever read on here. Usually you guys leave pretty intelligent comments, but this isn't one of them. And just to top it off, it has a +2 ranking as I'm writing this.

Hard drive bottlenecks have been the single tightest in computers for years. A Core 2 and 2 gigs of RAM is way more than the vast majority of people will ever use, yet most new computers are shipping with quad core processors and 4+ gigs of RAM, even though 99% of users will never see any benefit in speed while they continue using platter based hard drives. What good is a V12 when all you have is an intake the size of a straw feeding it air and only a trickle of gas making it's way into the cylinders? Even a hexacore processor is worthless if you're depending on the ~50 MB/sec read rate a 7200 RPM platter based hard drive provides.

SSD's are way more than worth their cost. Unless you're only using your computer for video editing, compiling, or any other extremely processor intensive task, virtually everyone using a computer would be far better off with a system running a Core 2 and a SSD than a system running a Core i7 and a platter based drive, even 2 10,000+ RPM Raptors in RAID0.

Nicky G said:

No TRIM support though, right? I am still not sure I understand if/when this is even a big deal...

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OWC's SSDs have built-in wear levelling through the Sandforce controller - no need for TRIM.

Does OWC pay to advertise in Mac-Rumors or something? Cause you've had quite a articles about OWC products in the past.

And I can't think of any other articles here about other companies RAM/SSD's etc put up here.

the8thark said:

Does OWC pay to advertise in Mac-Rumors or something? Cause you've had quite a articles about OWC products in the past.

And I can't think of any other articles here about other companies RAM/SSD's etc put up here.

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yeah...it's not like OWC is the only SSD manufacturer, or only OWC SSDs make a 2011 Mini a "powerhouse."

the8thark said:

Does OWC pay to advertise in Mac-Rumors or something? Cause you've had quite a articles about OWC products in the past.

And I can't think of any other articles here about other companies RAM/SSD's etc put up here.

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Unlike other SSD manufacturers, OWC is very Mac centric. They carry mostly Mac products and most of their marketing is targeted towards Mac users. Many of their other products are even custom tailored for the Mac. But this aside, the OWC Mercury Extreme 6G is the fastest non-PCI SSD on the market currently.

toxic said:

yeah...it's not like OWC is the only SSD manufacturer, or only OWC SSDs make a 2011 Mini a "powerhouse."

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Well, the SSDs OWC sells are fast as hell..

but seriously, SSD drive? Solid State Drive Drive?

holmesf said:

But this aside, the OWC Mercury Extreme 6G is the fastest non-PCI SSD on the market currently.

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ZbHRP said:

Well, the SSDs OWC sells are fast as hell..

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so what about all the other SandForce-driven SSDs? they're not exactly uncommon.

Clearly those making the big deal about SSD's have never had one in there system. They make a huge difference in almost everything you do. However, because MacRumors highlights them doesn't mean they are forcing anyone to go out and buy one. They provide information and for those that want the difference and can afford it then they can go buy one.

OWC is a great company and so what is the big deal if MacRumors features their products. Again they aren't forcing you to buy just OWC products. However, they don't need any ones permission to decide who they want to plug.

Also these OWC drives kick the crap out of the competition right now in terms of speed. YES, several of these SSD have been tested against them and so that was the point of this information. If you want blazing fast get the OWC SSD.

I have SSD in my Mac Mini 2011 and my 2009 MacBook Pro, I won't ever go back to a spindle drive. EVER!