Short review from a happy new Mini owner

[sebsongs]

I got my 2.3 GHz i7 Mini up and running with my own Samsung 830 256Gb SSD and 16Gb of Crucial ram.

Had no problems at all installing the hardware. The mini is a breeze to tinker with. Coming from an iMac, this machine is a blessing in that aspect.

Had some problems with internet recovery though. I'm on a bluetooth keyboard and the mini refused to go into recovery mode when i held down command+r.
The trick that did it was patience. I had to wait until the chime passed and the screen turned on. Then the mini registered my pressed keys and jumped into recovery mode so I could format the SSD and download Mountain Lion. The download process took about 2 hours, which I'm considering to be ok on a 10Mbit line.

I fired up the mini before my SSD upgrade and did a geek bench, although in 32 bit mode. it said 10799. After the HDD replacement to SSD and 4 times more RAM, it says a couple of hundred LESS. Why is that?

I'm not worried at all though. The SSD writes at 450mb/sec and reads at 470mb/sec. And everything I click on starts at an instant. The experience is very snappy and feels so much more "today" than my old imac from 2009. Well, duh!

I did purchase the minidisplayport to DVI adapter, avoiding the HDMI flickering screen problem. Hoping it will get fixed so I can add another screen. The screen i'm on, 20" Cinema Display (aluminum) looks great though. No problems yet.

Not experiencing any heat from the mini as of yet either. Will see when I run it through its paces the next couple of weeks. But I don't think it will be a problem.

Oh, and god damn it's silent! Especially after the SSD exchange. I cant hear it over ambient noise now. Awesome!

Well, I'm a so far extremely happy Mini owner!

[That-Guy]

Originally Posted by sebsongs

I did purchase the minidisplayport to DVI adapter, avoiding the HDMI flickering screen problem. Hoping it will get fixed so I can add another screen. The screen i'm on, 20" Cinema Display (aluminum) looks great though. No problems yet.

Have you tried it through the HDMI? Not all people are having problems, me included.

Worth a shot

[milkmandan]

Originally Posted by sebsongs

Had some problems with internet recovery though. I'm on a bluetooth keyboard and the mini refused to go into recovery mode when i held down command+r.
The trick that did it was patience. I had to wait until the chime passed and the screen turned on. Then the mini registered my pressed keys and jumped into recovery mode so I could format the SSD and download Mountain Lion. The download process took about 2 hours, which I'm considering to be ok on a 10Mbit line.

I was on wired keyboard using a Moshi Luna Backlit and it behaves similary. Gotta press Command+R AFTER the chime and keep it down.

In regards to the download process, even on a 85Mbit line with the Samsung 830 SSD, the whole process still took me about 1.5-2 hours as well. Duno why, either the download from Apple was huge or Apple limits IR downloads to a certain speed. Didn't check network traffic, too lazy.

[CausticPuppy]

Originally Posted by sebsongs

I fired up the mini before my SSD upgrade and did a geek bench, although in 32 bit mode. it said 10799. After the HDD replacement to SSD and 4 times more RAM, it says a couple of hundred LESS. Why is that?

Geekbench is more sensitive to the speed of memory, rather than the amount of memory. The 8GB chips will generally have a higher CAS latency than the original 2GB chips. However, in normal use, the increased amount of memory has a much better impact. A variance of just a couple hundred points is literally about 2% of your score. That could also be due to background processes, etc. Run the test a couple more times and take the highest score.

[Errz]

Originally Posted by sebsongs

I got my 2.3 GHz i7 Mini up and running with my own Samsung 830 256Gb SSD and 16Gb of Crucial ram.

I'm also thinking of getting mac mini and change the hard disk to SSD myself. do i need to get Samsung 830 or any brand will do? i remember reading somewhere that some brand is not 100% compatible. eg missing some feature like trim?

[sunandsurf]

congrats to the OP; happy to hear that all's well. i'm happy with mine too. am a bit chicken to try using the hdmi cables since so many people are experiencing problems; i know, not everyone but ...

[limesmoothie]

Good to hear I'm not the only one loving the new Mini. My Geekbench score went down after upgrade too, but the machine was noticeably faster!

I only paid £448, due to education discount and then put in 16GB, so the whole thing came in at about £500 - really good value. Should have bought one ages ago!