Meromac mini

admin · Site Admin Joined: 21 Jan 2005 Posts: 2048 Location: U.S.A

Meromac mini
Monday, June 12, 2006

Macaholic, a member of the 123Macmini forums, has upgraded the 1.66GHz Core Duo processor in his Mac mini with a Core 2 Duo Merom running at 2.16GHz. "I've got your 14 stage pipeline and 4MB of L2 cache shared between two cores featuring a direct L1 to L1 cache transfer system, right here! Right now!" writes Macaholic. He also posted scores from Xbench 1.2 in OS X and SiSoft Sandra 2007 in Windows XP Pro, and the numbers look impressive.

Macaholic also hooked his Mac mini up to a Kill-A-Watt meter to test power consumption and posted the following results:

Yonah T2300
- Off 01 watts
- Boot 29 watts
- MacOS X/Win XP only 20 watts
- MacOS X/Win XP with 2 Folding@home CLI clients 37 watts

Merom T7400
- Off 01 watts
- Boot 41 watts
- MacOS X/Win XP only 21 watts
- MacOS X/Win XP with 2 Folding@home CLI clients 51 watts

http://www.123macmini.com/news/story/487.html

ecking · Member Joined: 12 Nov 2005 Posts: 139

That is too sick, I swear I'd pick up a core solo mini off ebay in half a year just to do this for fun.

SOCOMRAIDER · Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 2:55 pm Post subject:

Nice....

One gripe, as with most of these things, there is a need for people to take photography classes. Just to get some of this blur from happening.
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Texark · Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 3:23 pm Post subject:

What do you guys think the street price for the T7400 will be? I think you need to get up to the T7400 before you get the 4MB of L2 cache.

MacScout67 · Member Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 154

I will do this down the road when prices come down on Merom chips or win the lottery, which ever comes first. I am still a little apprehensive about taking the heatsink off, but it shouldn't be that hard once you get down in there.

Macaholic · Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 4:35 pm Post subject:

curt · Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 8:15 pm Post subject:

Macaholic,

I noticed that someone in another thread asked where you got the chip, but you never answered. I'm not sure if you mentioned it somewhere else, but where did you get it? eBay? I didn't think the Merom chips were coming out until later this summer. Thanks for posting the power consumption numbers too. I was wondering how the 1.66Ghz Mac mini stacked up against the G4. From what I have read, it looks like they are pretty close
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1.42GHz Mac mini
1.66GHz Intel Mac mini
2.0GHz 2009 Mac mini
46" Sony LCD
50" Sony KDS-50A2000
EyeTV 250 Plus
My Setup

Macaholic · Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 8:43 pm Post subject:

Many folks have located them on eBay. I was fortunate enough to locate mine in the classified ad section of one of the premier overclocking sites. I'm a big fan of Apple Industrial Design and have quite an extensive collection of Macs (20" iMac Core Duo 2.0, two Mac mini G4 1.42, PowerMac G5 Dual 2.5, Cube G4 450, iMac G3 266, Twentieth Anniversary Mac, Color Classic) just to name a few. I've always enjoyed upgrading the processors in those Macs that could have such an operation performed. I like to tinker and am quite a hardware enthusiast. Call it a weakness. I also enjoy putting my personal Apple hardware museum, and other machines I have personally built, to work contributing to the Folding@home project run by the Pande Group at Stanford University. It is a distributed computing project that studies protein folding, misfolding, aggregation, and related diseases. You can learn more at www.teammacosx.net. When the Mac mini Core Solo and Core Duo were released it was discovered early on that the Solo could be upgraded to a Duo and that both models could readily accept Merom (later to be named Core 2 Duo). I had purchased a Core Duo T2300 1.66GHz (Yonah) model when they were first made available. Core Duo minis fold quite well, take up minimal space, and are quite miserly when it comes to using power. I wanted to find out just how great the "next generation" of mini would compare in folding output, power consumption, and heat production. I had seen preliminary benchmarks for Merom on several hardware enthusiast sites, but I wanted to know for myself just how well it would fold. I was able to procure a Core 2 Duo T7400 2.16GHz (Merom) CPU and proceeded to perform the upgrade and take my own step-by-step photo guide of what would be involved. The Meromac mini was born! Benchmarking was the next logical step to see the comparison of Meromac mini against other contemporary CPUs. Since I had previously installed Apple's Boot Camp (give me the bleeding edge any day) I thought it would be fun to run benchmarks under both OS X (Xbench) and Windows XP (SiSoft Sandra 2007). You can view the results for yourself. I'm certainly happy with the outcome! It's a power sipping, benchmark pushing, space saving, fast folding, multi-media powerhouse! Cutting edge! Big things DO come in mini packages! Say "hello" to the mini of the future! If I find the free time, and another Merom (which should hit the retail shelves at the end of July or early August) I plan on upgrading my 20" iMac Core Duo in the same fashion.
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Fold! It does a body good!

spoonman · Member Joined: 14 May 2005 Posts: 61

Macaholic,

Thanks for the power consumption numbers... that is very nice to see. I am curious about the heat though. How is the mini handling the extra heat from the fast CPU?? Is the fan/heatsink combo that ships with the mini able to handle it?? Is it a safe assumption that the fan runs more, therefore the machine isn't as quiet??

Just curious on your experience.

Thanks!
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Mac Mini 1.42GHz
1GB RAM
80GB HD
Combo optical drive
Airport Extreme/Bluetooth
External 16X DVD+R,-R (Sony DRU-810A) in an ADS FW enclosure
NewerTech MiniStack w/ Seagate 7200.8 250GB HD.

Macaholic · Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2006 10:46 am Post subject:

Well, to give you some idea of the heat, check the Tjunction temps from a Win XP program called Core Temp from my 20" iMac Core Duo (Yonah 2.0GHz) vs. Meromac mini (Merom 2.16GHz) located in the same room;

20" iMac
Tjunction 100C
Core 1 67C
Core 2 70C
VID 0.9500v
T2500 @ 2.0GHz

Meromac mini
Tjunction no reading given
Core 1 40C
Core 2 38C
VID 1.0000v
T7400 @ 2.16GHz

Granted the iMac has an LCD and video card in the mix, but you get a general idea of thermal comparisons. I will have to see if I can find the Tjunction readings I registered while the Core Duo T2300 was still in place. Subjectively, I would have to say, no problems handling the heat, and just as quiet as before.
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Fold! It does a body good!

spoonman · Member Joined: 14 May 2005 Posts: 61

Applegate · New Member Joined: 13 Jun 2006 Posts: 1

I love the fact that you can upgrade the Intel Mac minis. Now, if we could just do something about that integrated video card. In my book, the video cards in the Mac mini and MacBook are totally unacceptable.

blazer · Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2006 9:34 pm Post subject:

curt · Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 12:12 am Post subject:

dahl · New Member Joined: 19 May 2006 Posts: 15

this is no news...
=)

26 sec superpi Cool

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Macmini
Merom 2,0Ghz
2gb Ram
120gb Disc
WINDOWS XP! Smile


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