A few great overclocking ram guide photos I discovered:
2011 Mac Mini Server Disassembly / Raid- SSD Upgrade
Image by Schill
(This is a summary from my Mac Mini SSD RAID- Venture, see the set for more photographs and a video.)
[ Common disclaimer: These are my findings posted for the curious, you do all of this at your personal risk, don't blame me if stuff breaks etc. ]
Holy crap, I do not want to ever have to do that once again. Hopefully, it still performs when reassembled with eight GB of RAM and dual SSDs. In concept, it just may well operate. (Update: I now truly feel cozy with this following tearing down and rebuilding a few occasions – and two weeks’ of operating time later, no difficulties.)
Yes, this complete operation is somewhat frivolous. The stock dual 7200-RPM 500-GB two.5" drives will themselves be configured as SPAN and in an external enclosure, driven via Firewire 800.
Not in the frame: Mainboard.
Tools employed: Torx T6 and T8 screwdrivers (and, I believe, a Philips #00) and a Dogfish Head 90-minute IPA.
Assets
I referenced a teardown manual from ifixit for the "steps" and post-it notes, so I could bear in mind what went where when reassembling. (Note: not all steps apply, you don’t want to disconnect the bluetooth module etc.)
For the tough drive elimination / upgrade approach, this OWC video was handy and has instead hilarious background muzak. Note that there are different video clips for server vs. non-server models.
Basic guidelines
Never bother with the crappy screwdriver "kits" (eg. the blue and green ones by the RAM in this photo) – go to your regional hardware retailer (or on the web) and pay out the or what ever it may well expense per tool for quality Torx T6, T8, and (if necessary) Philips #00 screwdrivers. One of the inexpensive ones, in 1 situation, didn’t fit a single fan screw I was making an attempt to remove. Even so, the so-called plastic "spudger" tool did come in handy for pulling up cables and nudging other issues exactly where fingers wouldn’t reach, and where metal was not a good alternative to use.
Getting rid of the "mainboard"
The OWC video suggested you should put screwdrivers into holes on the mainboard, and pull back this would seem like a wonderful way to break or snap the PCB and/or accidentally ruin traces along the way. I tried pulling numerous occasions, but it seemed that no sum of careful force would budge the thing.
Instead, I turned the mini all around and very carefully pushed the heat sink / vent outward making use of my thumbs, and with a small pressure, was in a position to pop the board out. The heatsink is just behind in which the screw holes are proven in the video, toward the connector plate. It is pretty tight as the plate (where all the USB + energy connectors and so on. are) has snaps/clips on either finish holding it in, but it does eventually give.
As soon as you get the mainboard, the rest is effortless. Don’t pull the board fully out until finally any connected power cables and so on. have been disconnected – and once the board is out, you can take out the power supply and HD chassis.
I also recommend booting the computer upside-down and with the bottom cover off the moment immediately after reassembling, just to make certain the fan begins up I noticed that mine didn’t at first(!), due to the fact the tiny fan power connector was not fully-seated on the mainboard when I place it back in. No fan would’ve meant a toasted CPU at some point, so make positive you check that. Use a flat plastic tool or something to push the connector flush with the board, to make sure it really is seated nicely.
Also, there’s a bit of a trick with the wireless module / antenna / grill assembly when popping it out and in – I feel it slides underneath into place, so maintain that in thoughts. Similar moves apply to the black plastic cowling at the bottom left close to the fan. Occasionally factors want a tiny jiggling to get into spot.
Re-installing Lion: ⌘-R / Net Recovery FTW
On mid-2011(?) Mac hardware, push and hold Apple-R (⌘-R) in the course of boot to kickstart the Lion Recovery mode, with wifi or an ethernet cable connected. It’ll attempt to boot from a Lion recovery partition commonly put in, and when that fails, it will magically go out on the Internets, and get and install and boot the recovery partition. That will run and right after disk set-up and partitioning and so on., one more get of up to 7 GB (at least, according to my router’s targeted traffic for that day) will happen, Lion will set up, reboot, and voila.
Partitioning the SSDs, overprovisioning and stripe block size
From what I read on the internet, it was advised to leave up to 20% "unpartitioned" empty space for "overprovisioning" with an SSD to help with overall performance (garbage collection) and reliability. I got two OCZ Vertex III 60 GB SSDs, and utilizing the disk utility constructed into the Lion installer, set them up with two partitions: [ 48 GB ext3 / 12 GB empty space ]. As for stripe block dimension, I had heard 64 KB or 128 KB as general recommendations, so I employed 128.
Overall performance final results
With SATA 3. (up to six gbps) and SandForce 2xxx controllers on the OCZ SSDs pushing up to 550 MB/sec examine rates, I was ready to get 1000+ MB/sec on larger files in benchmarks.
RAID- pros/cons: Worth it, or is one SSD sufficient?
Upside:
– Wow, up to 1000 MB/sec. That is a shiny quantity.
Downsides:
– If a single drive goes south, you eliminate every little thing.
– In most circumstances, 1000 MB/sec is a theoretical maximum you will hit only in benchmarks. Small bursts may possibly be far more realistic, and in most situations with significantly less-compressible data, numbers will be significantly decrease (albeit, 250+ MB/sec or whatever is nevertheless absolutely nothing to sneeze at.)
If you happen to be a tinkerer / overclocking fan and do not concern the chance of information loss (i.e., you make time machine or image backups), RAID- is really worth attempting just for the fun of it. Otherwise, I assume a single SSD alone makes a huge distinction in responsiveness offered near-zero seek out instances and so forth., and with theoretical maximums of 500 MB/sec, that is loads of I/O for just about anybody.
