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upgrading a late 2009 mac mini
- Thread starter zoran
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1. SSD. If you don’t have an SSD in there, it’ll make a solid difference.
2. 8GB of RAM. Max the little sucker out; it’s cheap these days!
3. El Cap is the official max, though it will run up to High Sierra with no issues using the patcher and up to Catalina with very few compromises using the patcher. Go as far as you’re comfortable. I personally run High Sierra on my Core 2 + 9400M Macs.
2. 8GB of RAM. Max the little sucker out; it’s cheap these days!
3. El Cap is the official max, though it will run up to High Sierra with no issues using the patcher and up to Catalina with very few compromises using the patcher. Go as far as you’re comfortable. I personally run High Sierra on my Core 2 + 9400M Macs.
There's a thread about installation on unsupported Macs in each of the MacOS forums. For example, here is High Sierra
macOS High Sierra (10.13) Unsupported Macs Thread
macOS High Sierra on Unsupported Macs For the first time since OS X Mountain Lion (10.8) in 2012, macOS Sierra (10.12) changed the official minimum requirements needed for installation, leaving many older (but still perfectly capable) Macs behind. Now macOS High Sierra (10.13) brings a new...
forums.macrumors.com
Here's Catalina
macOS 10.15 Catalina on Unsupported Macs
How to update Catalina Machine Support Video Card Support Pre-Metal AMD video cards (Radeon HD 6xxx series and older without acceleration, Radeon HD 4xxx series and older with acceleration.) Pre-Metal Nvidia video cards (GeForce 5xx series and older without acceleration, GeForce 3xx...
forums.macrumors.com
But, regarding upgrades for a 2009 Mini, I would be very reluctant to spend anything on this. Not the answer you want to hear, but a Mac over 10 years old is worth almost nothing. Now, I understand that you might not be able to afford something newer, but I would avoid spending anything and try to make the best of things until you can afford to upgrade to something newer. A 2012 Mini would be a huge upgrade and it will run Catalina without patches.
