Anyone tried an SSD in their Mac mini? It's FANTASTIC.

[Akula971]

Intel X25

I put an Intel X25 80GB in my 2010 Mac Mini, together with 8GB ram. In geekbench, not much change. But as many have said the machine is very snappy, no beachballs, fast load times, and completely silent, very, very low power consumption. Now all I can hear is my monitor power supply buzzing. I'd recommend them in heartbeat, if you can afford it of course.

 

[And]

A clean SL installation + updates, MS Office, Lightroom 3, iLife and iWork take around 14GB. Therefore a 64GB should be more than adequate.

Storing media on an external drive is the way to go.

Good luck fitting the RAM/HDD and let us know how you get on.

As per request... got on fine. The process was helped courtesy of the OWC guide movie on youtube (easy to find...). It was a little hairy opening the case, but having done it I would be happy to do so again. Perhaps one thing I would add to anyone trying to open the older mini is the importance of a decent magnetic screwdriver. Some of the screws you have to undo (and put back) are quite awkward and you need a magnetic screwdriver to make sure the screw is going in the right place and not getting lost somewhere in the motherboard.

So, I now have 4gb of ram and a 64GB SSD drive. Like others I can report that things are quite snappy. It takes 16 seconds from mac chime to getting a useable desktop which is rather astounding. Applications open faster, some almost instantly. I would recommend a purchase to anyone brave enough to open the case, who can afford the drive and can afford the consequences if you brick the said mini. Caveat emptor!

Cheers.