Rebuld A1181 Macbook into Mac mini lookalike

[Conv3rs]

Hi everyone,

My first post on MacRumors. Recently I pulled apart of my old white A1181 macbook. I'm turning the logic board into a tower or a DIY mac mini. I'm looking for an enclosure similiar the Macally G-S350SUA hard drive case below. This is an example of what inspired me. Specs are 19cm by 14cm. Would be great to hear from everyone and recommendations. As well an direction to where I can find more info.

 

[harrydebest]

All I can say is that it looks insane. Looks like you cut off the MagSafe port, I wonder how you are going to power it... Also you will need to find adequate cooling for the CPU. These old C2Ds run quite hot! As far as I know, nobody has done this before. I really don't see this working and I'm pretty sure you'll be able to buy a Mac Mini that has better specs at a price lower to all the parts you'll need to make this work.

 

[comda]

Conv3rs,

This idea looks quite interesting. However a shame about cutting up a nice little macbook. As a current user of the machine its still a nice little computer. Im using it for University right now as we speak running 10.6.8. Lion was terrible due to the video card, but runnion ML on MLPost factor was perfect aside from the WIFI not working with WPA2 Enterprise. But graphics were a lot better.

All I can say is that it looks insane. Looks like you cut off the MagSafe port, I wonder how you are going to power it... Also you will need to find adequate cooling for the CPU. These old C2Ds run quite hot! As far as I know, nobody has done this before. I really don't see this working and I'm pretty sure you'll be able to buy a Mac Mini that has better specs at a price lower to all the parts you'll need to make this work.

AS to the heat. it depends on what you're doing on the machine. As i mentioned im still using this as my main system. Before this term started, i cleaned the thermal paste off the GPU and CPU and re applied it. Now it does run a lot cooler. However going on Facebook the temp kicks to 85degrees Celsius and the fans full at 6200 RPM.

It personally hurts me a bit to see this machine teared down, but many where made. In my opinion you should do it without cutting up the case, somehow get it a bigger heatsink to cool it better. Right now im in class (totally paying attention lol) running this web page on word, preview, firefox, a few other tabs with the Learn interface the university provides and itunes running. My system is idling about 80%. Im running at 47 degrees Celsius with the min RPM of 1792. long live the macbook!

Good luck and keep us Posted!!