Its certainly a worthwhile upgrade and I am glad I did. It definitely sound more coherent and very quiet meaning soft passage is clear and distinct. Its different from say changing a cable but more like changing a transport. The immediate is the stability of the sound stage and more fluid presentation. If you are still running a Mac mini Late 2012 or 2014 version, your system can still work pretty decently if you upgrade its HDD with an SSD. I clearly hear a difference and its huge in my opinion but I can't say it will be the same in all system so I will stick with what I hear. The final test is to plug it back into the system. In fact the software installation took longer then I anticipated partly because I backup into a USB drive time machine which is not a smart thing to do. Still I must caution to take necessary steps to prepare every necessary details, and backup and backup! I received my "Christmas Present" and did the installation yesterday - in less then half an hour I completed the hands on dirty part without a single scratch on my Mac Mini and was pleasantly surprised how easy it was.
Its easy and you will find plenty of DIY tutorials in youtube to show you how to do this physically. Following your claim that you have 1536MB available this might be the result of either OSX 10.9.3 or because of the 2nd 8GB. Keeping the RAM at 4GB but upgrading to OSX 10.9 would also resulted in 1024MB. Upgrading the RAM back in 2012 to 8GB would have given you 1024MB. After some reading up I decided to stick with my current trusty Mac Mini with SL OS and DIY RAM plus SSD. 2012 Mac Mini 4GB allocated 768MB to VRAM in it's original release state. I have also considered buying an entire new Mac Mini with fusion drive but the new ML OS is intensive computing on the processor however I am sure the current i7 will have no issue with this. Using the Torx T8 screwdriver bit, unscrew the screws for the wireless shroud. Twist the black base counter-clockwise to unlock the base, and gently lift the base clear of the device. I have consulted folks from Pure Music and they too suggested 8GC and SSD is the way to go. Flip over the Mac Mini so the open and closed dots are facing you.
Over the last two years I have upgraded FW and USB cables with Oyaide and I can hear a sonic improvement too.įinally after the Apple 2 years warranty have expired I decided to upgrade to 8GB RAM and 120GB SSD this week. I run all music files from a Lacie 1TB FW Rugged drive bus powered and it sounds better and way less noisy over WD My Book Studio. I have a Mac Mini 3,1 with Snow Leopard OS, 4GB RAM, and 500 GB HDD from Fujitsu.