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Overclocking the Mac Mini

hound said:
Well hey, I think that this is a cool idea. If you don't tinker with something, you'll never know what you can do with it. So rock on, dude, I look forward to your worklog.
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dude your sig is WAY too long. Ten lines max.
 
mwarps, this should be an interesting project to follow, though, you should have left it in the Case Gallery forum, you'd get less heat.
 
isnt the G4 already at its maximum speed the core was designed for?

youre not going to overclock very much
 
It's sad to see so many narrow-minded people in here, both apple AND pc users alike. The apple users are upset that someone would alter the perfection that is apple, and the pc users are ready to slam anyone who dares start with a mac and try to do anything non-stupid with one.

Get a grip guys.

It sounds like a fun project. Think out of the box, make something new, Apple isn't the only one authorized to be creative. I'm a pc user who is considering buying a mac mini just to learn on, and I'm intrigued by the idea of modding a mac mini.

Sure, my personal opinion is that half of the appeal of the mac mini is the case and small footprint, but why should my bias affect someone who dares fiddle with apple's creation? How about suggestions instead of blatant obstructionist slams. The one about putting a mac mini into a 5.25 drive bay was neat. I remember that Sun marketed a mini sun workstation that would fit into a double-height drive bay about 4 years ago, but the demand just wasn't there due to the price and no mass appeal in the hardware and software. A Mac modded to serve in this fashion would be awesome, even more if someone figured out how to hot-swap an external hard drive between the two, but that's likely beyond the scope of an overclock and case swap mod.

Anyhow, kudos for trying something different, and I hope there is some success and you get some real comments and suggestions. It sounds cool to me.
 
DthInd said:
I look forward to whatever you come up with. Cool idea.

I would really like to see someone put a PC in the mini mac case. tho. :D
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Its been done already. Kevin Rose of The Screensavers on that God awful G4 network did it last night. He put in an upcoming mini-mini-mini-itx type board. Wasnt pretty but het got it in there.
 
TimothyB said:
It's hard to explain. Imagine if someone bought a nice new Porche, but he wanted to improve the horsepower of the engine by adding a part, but there's no room. So he takes the engine out and put's it in a junker that has room for that part for a 10% gain. Now the Porche has lost it's meaning without it's original body. Sorta of like the Mac Mini, owning such a small machine is what the Mac Mini is all about. If you take it out and put it in something else to get that little gain, then it's just becomes an older G4 with a little overclocking, not much to be proud of there.

Think about it
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you obviously know nothing about sticking porche motor blocks into vw bugs then....
 
Thanks for all the positive response from those who kept their minds open and didn't jump down my throat, flenser especially for extrapolating the scope of the project and understanding the sheer cool-factor.

Brett13, thanks for information which I actually asked for!

My machead roomate is still trying to convince himself to "hit the button" to buy, and I'm waiting for him so we have some good solid data on space. Root him on, guys!
 
mwarps said:
.........
My machead roomate is still trying to convince himself to "hit the button" to buy, and I'm waiting for him so we have some good solid data on space. Root him on, guys!
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If your roommate doesn't want to buy, then he doesn't want to. Leave him alone and quit pressuring him to waste his money so you have a new toy to play with and break.
 
I dunno what the extact clearance is but if its at or around a half an inch maybe you could mill something with 1/4" barbs coming out the side of the waterblock to get clearance below the optical drive? And I'm talking the whole block is mayb 3/8" think, 1/4" being copper with some lexan on the top to seal it off maybe.

Its not like you're going to need 100gph to cool the G4. I'd think along the same lines of a 1U opteron at 1.8ghz. That's like, what, 35W-45W of heat generated there? Maybe?

Cool idea tho, I love it when people take something as sweet as a mac mini to the 'nex level.
 
Badger_sly said:
If your roommate doesn't want to buy, then he doesn't want to. Leave him alone and quit pressuring him to waste his money so you have a new toy to play with and break.
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He's not going to break his roomate's mini; he just wants to look at it to see if his idea is feasible.
 
Badger_sly said:
If your roommate doesn't want to buy, then he doesn't want to. Leave him alone and quit pressuring him to waste his money so you have a new toy to play with and break.
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I love trolls.
He and I made a deal; He gets one first, then I get one. Besides, He uses my hardware to do all his work. His machine is a 233MHz G3. I think that says enough.
 
mwarps said:
I love trolls.
He and I made a deal; He gets one first, then I get one. Besides, He uses my hardware to do all his work. His machine is a 233MHz G3. I think that says enough.
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He is a hardcore mac user with at 233MHz G3? Ahahahahaha. Personally, I'm an avid macintosh user myself and I'm mad by having a G4 tower still. It is waaaaay past time for him to upgrade.

---> To roommate: BUY IT NOW
 
mwarps said:
I love trolls.
He and I made a deal; He gets one first, then I get one. Besides, He uses my hardware to do all his work. His machine is a 233MHz G3. I think that says enough.
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Yes it does........... that he hasn't previously, or now, wanted to spend more money on the same type of hardware as you prefer. I feel sorry for him, seriously. Of course you won't show him what I posted, because I'm a "troll" :rolleyes: , but the one funny thing is that you know that I'm right.
 
Oh my lord the majority of people in this thread make me sad. mwarps you have a great idea that is definately outside the norm. Don't listen to any of these people who should be banned for thread crapping. To anyone who disapproves of this idea, keep it to yourself. And Badger_sly, wow "troll" just doesn't cut it. He is not going to cut up his roommate's mini if he chooses to order one, he simply would like to look at dimensions. He is not forcing his roommate to do a damn thing; he is only encouraging him to do something he would already like to do, and would benifit him, as evidenced in his displeasure at the speed & abilities of his current mac. mwarps hit the nail on the head about the lack of [H] around here.
 
Badger_sly said:
Yes it does........... that he hasn't previously, or now, wanted to spend more money on the same type of hardware as you prefer. I feel sorry for him, seriously. Of course you won't show him what I posted, because I'm a "troll" :rolleyes: , but the one funny thing is that you know that I'm right.
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Actually, he's sitting right here. He's read it already. He wants a Mac Mini so bad that it's hillarious. His financial situation says something otherwise(so does mine!), and he's waiting for an email to see how to go about doing it. You're so wrong it is actually funny. :D

Tech Update:

Thanks to Brett13's linkage, I have found the possibility of a multiplier change.
Phase one: Research begins
Phase two: Waiting for that guy in Japan to overclock one. :D (or not, he's a bit behind, it seems!)

Though seriously, the PLL_CFG settings in the PDF manual for the 7447A are quite lovely. I'm wondering if there is a way to set the SYSCLK, but that may bring a whole new can of worms - dividers and locks. In PC land, some chipsets are made sepcifically for overclocking and have high dividers, or have clock locks.

The nerding continues!
 
Dear Lord! What the hell is up with all of you naysayers? If the man wants to rip apart a mini, let him! The question is not "why try to overclock it?", the REAL question is "Why the hell not?" So what if hes not going to be gaming, or doing anything else with it. Its like the guide I once saw for water cooling an X-Box. Why would you do that? You wouldn't get any better FPS, better graphics, smoother gameplay, etc... So why would you? Cause its frikin sweet. So when people ask why there are green tubes coming out of your X-Box, you can tell them "Because its water cooled". Why'd you do that? "Because I can." What more reason does he need for tooling around with his mini? I thought the forum was [H]ard; a bunch of guys who will wrench and squeeze the hell out of their system just for a FPS. Is that really necessary? Hell no. Are you not going to be able to play the game on stock hardware? Of course not. So why do we do it? Cause we can! I say do whatever you want with the mini, pull it out of its case, OC it, whatever, it doesn't matter. Go for it!
 
the mini uses a 167mhz fsb, so 1.25ghz is a multiplier of 7.5, and 1.42 is 8.5

7.5 has this config - 00010
8.5 - 01100

so on a 1.25 you'd be searching on the motherboard for five SMD resistor pads lined up, with only the fourth populated, and the resistor, if marked, should say "0" (short circuit/jumper).

are there any high-high resolution pictures of the mini motherboard up on the net yet?
 
ive read that it may be possible to overclock the processor to 1.7ghz with additional voltage which wouldn't be a bad overclock. i have never owned a mac before and the mac mini is very appealing to me right now (the silence factor of it anyways). for all those naysayers just let him be, it's his mac mini and he can do whatever he sees fit with it.
 
Methodical said:
the mini uses a 167mhz fsb, so 1.25ghz is a multiplier of 7.5, and 1.42 is 8.5

7.5 has this config - 00010
8.5 - 01100

so on a 1.25 you'd be searching on the motherboard for five SMD resistor pads lined up, with only the fourth populated, and the resistor, if marked, should say "0" (short circuit/jumper).

are there any high-high resolution pictures of the mini motherboard up on the net yet?
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So far this is the only thing I've seen that is high-res on the CPU itself:

http://www.macnews.de/gallery/displayimage.php?pid=518&fullsize=1

*no-hole fudders pwn3d by that image*

That looks like a 1.42 GHz model. The only group of five resistors looks like the top left, near the "HER" in thermal gasket.

The five may be on the reverse. I'm going to have to wait and see, unless a better photo comes out, or someone succeeds in OC'ing
 
I completely applaud the idea! Even if I disagreed with it, I would not post anything negative about it. The 'Mother of Invention' is based upon ideas - no matter how unusual or unfeasible they may seem. It did not stop earlier pioneers from performing the seemingly impossible and I do not see why he should either.
 
scottatwittenberg said:
would you overclock a laptop? no.. why?
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I would overclock a laptop, infact I have overclocked a laptop. I know quite a few people who use laptops as their gaming machines overclock atleast their video cards, if not their processors also.


Back on subject, I think a lot of people are forgetting that they are posting in a forum run by people who did this
 
This is by far the greatest idea I've heard all day. I was considering getting a Mac Mini myself, and if you can push any more power out of the thing I'll definately be getting one myself. One request I ask is, try doing the OCing in stages, so we can have some data on what you can get out of it with different amounts of modifications. IE, how much can we get out of it before we have to change up the cooling system, how much can we get out of it before we have to pull it from the case, what can we get on air, what does watercooling give us, what can we get if we submerge it in liquid nitrogen, etc etc. I understand if you aren't up for all the steps, but hey, you'd be the leading source on Mac Mini overclocking.

-zac
 
pr0zac said:
This is by far the greatest idea I've heard all day. I was considering getting a Mac Mini myself, and if you can push any more power out of the thing I'll definately be getting one myself. One request I ask is, try doing the OCing in stages, so we can have some data on what you can get out of it with different amounts of modifications. IE, how much can we get out of it before we have to change up the cooling system, how much can we get out of it before we have to pull it from the case, what can we get on air, what does watercooling give us, what can we get if we submerge it in liquid nitrogen, etc etc. I understand if you aren't up for all the steps, but hey, you'd be the leading source on Mac Mini overclocking.

-zac
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Now that's a plan! Heh. I'm not up for all that, but I'll give you all the scientific data I can on what I actually do.
 
brom42 said:
Back on subject, I think a lot of people are forgetting that they are posting in a forum run by people who did this
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Jawsome, thats exactly what I was talking about.
mwarps said:
Now that's a plan! Heh. I'm not up for all that, but I'll give you all the scientific data I can on what I actually do.
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Anything you do find will be appreciated, I'm sure! Good luck with your expirimenting.
 
mwarps said:
So far this is the only thing I've seen that is high-res on the CPU itself:

http://www.macnews.de/gallery/displayimage.php?pid=518&fullsize=1

*no-hole fudders pwn3d by that image*

That looks like a 1.42 GHz model. The only group of five resistors looks like the top left, near the "HER" in thermal gasket.

The five may be on the reverse. I'm going to have to wait and see, unless a better photo comes out, or someone succeeds in OC'ing
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I dont think thats it. Its 6 SMD pads, none of which are linked. 2 pads would need to be linked for it to be the multiplier circuitry. Its also pretty close to the CPU - unnecessarily so. The multiplier pins can be anywhere on the board.
 
Methodical said:
I dont think thats it. Its 6 SMD pads, none of which are linked. 2 pads would need to be linked for it to be the multiplier circuitry. Its also pretty close to the CPU - unnecessarily so. The multiplier pins can be anywhere on the board.
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I didn't think they were either. I also missed the top one, as the label is on the top, not the side. I'll take a closer look at the rest of the pictures this weekend and post links when I find something promising.
 
I think the mac mini is a great idea.

First of all, everyone saying use a g5 to overclock are barking up the wrong tree, the g5's are having a hard time already getting up to 3ghz on watercooling. Also the g5 is about 2500 for a setup.

The mac mini might be the best mac made for overclocking. As we have found with mobile Bartons, sometimes processors made to run cool, can also run very very fast when properly cooled. The g4 mini is designed to run cool at 1.25ghz, who knows what happens when you remove the heat restiction and see how high that processor can fly.

I'd be doing something like this myself but seeing as I'm a poor college student, I'll watch you do it instead.
 
brom42 said:
I would overclock a laptop, infact I have overclocked a laptop. I know quite a few people who use laptops as their gaming machines overclock atleast their video cards, if not their processors also.


Back on subject, I think a lot of people are forgetting that they are posting in a forum run by people who did this
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Yeah that waterblock design, knew I'd seen it somewhere, lol!

That block would fit, wouldn't it?
 
Badger_sly said:
Yeah, why not mount dual turbos on a Rascal Scooter?
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Because the Rascal Scooter has an electric motor? (Is this a trick question?)

If you need more info, a good place for beginners would be here. :rolleyes:
 
brom42 said:
I know quite a few people who use laptops as their gaming machines overclock atleast their video cards, if not their processors also.
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*raises hand*

I've overclocked my notebook's ATI M10, I've had it up to 100MHz over stock, but it crashed badly the second I clicked the set clock button. I usually keep it at 30 over GPU, 20 over RAM. Haven't figured out how to get the CPU overclocked yet.

Back on topic, I think this is a great idea, and I will be watching this develop with great interest. If it turns out to be feasible, especially if it overclocks well, I will buy one in a heartbeat. My notebook roars, so I don't think I'd notice the extra sound from swapping a faster fan in to a Mini. I don't think I'd go as extreme as watercooling it, I like the case and the fact that it's pocketsized....

Hmm...battery pack + small touch-screen LCD + Mini = Mac PDA :D
 
As a huge Mac fan, I applaud you. My idea was to take the Mac Mini and put it in a PC case along with a PC. [H]ard dual booting bitches! :p :D
 
wolrahnaes said:
Hmm...battery pack + small touch-screen LCD + Mini = Mac PDA :D
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that would be one freakin big PDA.... :eek:

i think that someone should create a custom mini enclosure, remove the CD drive and make it external, and just cut down on the height as much as possible.
 
Past research says the resistor packs are usually in reverse (IE a resistor for 0 not 1). Also, based on FreeBSD dmesg output, it apepars that these units are based on current Powerbook G4 bits, so any info you find on those should translate.

http://www.cubeowner.com has good info on OC'ing an older G4, the G4 Cube, including FSB tweaks. On the modular CPU based G4s, the multiplier is set on the CPU module, so the resitors may be close to the CPU on the mini as well.

If the CPU is a 7447A, those are being sold up to 1.7ghz, so the potential for untapped headroom is there.
 
I don't know about what the rest of you think, but taking a guess from that processor picture to the upper left of the processor is where you change your multipliers.

If you can figure out how to overclock the mini though, damn, maybe I'll have to get one too
 
I'm interested in what you find out. I overclocked (resistor mods) my performa 6400 180 to 225MHz back in the day and I've been wanting to OC my powerbook Ti. I'm sure it will be another resistor mod method. To get started, you just need to find really good close up pics of both of the models and see where differences lie in their resistor placement.
 
Get somebody to take a picture of the whole motherboard on both versions of the mini. Throw the 2 pictures into photoshop and set one of the layers to difference. Might be a quicker way to find the resistors if the processor is actually the same... and if you can find somebody that has both versions and a good camera =D.
 
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