Mac mini 2.1 Ram upgrade

[Mabuse]

Hello everyone,

I just recently got a Mac mini 2.1 (this is my first ever Macintosh machine, so I'm new to this reality...). I want to upgrade the Ram to 4gbs (I already know that only 3Gbs will me made use of), so I did a little research in Google and it seems that for the previous model (Mac mini 1.1) this would require CPU upgrade and firmware upgrade (to turn it into a 2.1). Now, in this case CPU upgrade won't be needed, this one comes with a Intel Core 2 Duo 2ghz, but does it also need any firmware update to use the 3gb/4gb of Ram?

P.S.: Do you think is worth while upgrading this Intel Core 2 Duo 2ghz (T7200) to the 2.33ghz version (T7600) ?

Thank you so much!

 

[techwarrior]

That is a pretty old model, 2007. Don't go to great expense to try to speed it up. You should not need to do any FW updates on this model to use more memory.

The other thing you could do is replace the HDD with SSD. The SATA bus is SATA1 or 1.5Gbps. Most SSD are SATA3 (6Gbps) but are backwards compatible to SATA1. SSD will probably offer twice as much speed improvement than RAM. Both require opening the housing to do the upgrade, the HDD is a bit more involved but not too difficult if you are careful. Follow iFixit.com guides if you decide to try this.

Also, if replacing the HDD, connect the new SSD via USB before doing the replacement (many SSD offers include a USB "clone kit" such as on crucial.com). Install the OS on the "USB" drive, then shutdown and swap the drives.

If you install fresh on a new SSD, make sure you have a time machine backup to restore your apps and files. Or, once the new drive is in, connect the old drive via USB and run Migration Assistant to pull apps, settings and files from the old HDD.

 

[Mabuse]

That is a pretty old model, 2007. Don't go to great expense to try to speed it up. You should not need to do any FW updates on this model to use more memory.

The other thing you could do is replace the HDD with SSD. The SATA bus is SATA1 or 1.5Gbps. Most SSD are SATA3 (6Gbps) but are backwards compatible to SATA1. SSD will probably offer twice as much speed improvement than RAM. Both require opening the housing to do the upgrade, the HDD is a bit more involved but not too difficult if you are careful. Follow iFixit.com guides if you decide to try this.

Also, if replacing the HDD, connect the new SSD via USB before doing the replacement (many SSD offers include a USB "clone kit" such as on crucial.com). Install the OS on the "USB" drive, then shutdown and swap the drives.

If you install fresh on a new SSD, make sure you have a time machine backup to restore your apps and files. Or, once the new drive is in, connect the old drive via USB and run Migration Assistant to pull apps, settings and files from the old HDD.

Thank you so much for the quick reply and all the info provided. I will follow your advise. From what I've been reading, the upgrade to a SSD disk really makes a huge difference in speeding up the machine. I'll go that way then, plus the Ram upgrade of course