Home Diagnostics Tutorial: Mac mini

And we finish our special diagnosis with a little boy who is capable of giving a lot of war but who is highly wasted. It’s the Mac mini, a quite nice device to work with and diagnose as it hardly includes any special or very unusual components of its own. Most of its “guts” are components of the 13-inch MacBook Pro, so the similarities are many.

Unlike iMac, where the popular wisdom has always been that the device includes laptop components, here the “myth” is strictly adhered to. So we have a really compact device thanks to the use of laptop components .

Again, as with MacBook Air, we can salvage most of the MacBook Pro entry to diagnose a Mac mini, always keeping in mind the components that differentiate a desktop from a notebook.

In any case, here are the most interesting points about the device, and to take into account when gutting or simply trying to solve a problem with it.

Airport card antennas. The wifi card of this Mac model has two peculiarities, the first is a mediocre power because it is located at the base of the equipment so do not be afraid if the signal from your Mac mini is not as good as it can be in other computers. Another thing to keep in mind if you open your computer or experience strange problems with this component is to check the card’s cables that run along the left side of the computer. The reason for this is that the metal area that holds the antenna runs very close to some of the antenna cables, so it is easy to pinch or even cut them by mistake.

Power supply. One of the devices that suffers most inside Mac mini is the built-in power supply. It’s a brilliant idea that saves us an extra gadget per house. In return, any problems we have with it will mean spending significantly more money repairing the computer. A faulty power supply can show up in many situations. The most common is that the computer won’t turn on (unlike iMac here, we don’t have status LEDs), but a power supply failure can also show up as intermittent power outages, problems with using applications that require maximum computer power, or even everyday situations with a computer that doesn’t respond properly or is slow to respond.

Cleaning of internal components. Another detail to take into account about this equipment is the relative ease it has to accumulate dust and garbage inside. Although, like all Macs, it only has an air inlet mechanism and no outlet, its special construction makes it quite easy for the retained dust to have no escape in the event that it enters the equipment in excess. If you want to get down to business you can opt for the simple option of simply removing the fan from the board and giving it a good clean with a brush or compressed air if you have one. In the case that you want to do it in a professional way, you will have to remove the plate, which includes all the integrated components so it is relatively easy to do.

Tutorial para diagnosticar tu Mac en casa: MacBook Pro
Second hard drive bay. More than a diagnostic process, this is a personal recommendation for anyone with a Mac mini without an optical drive slot. Because this computer was originally designed to have a SuperDrive. Once Apple removed it, the internal space remained the same, so the computer has plenty of extra space. Such space is used in some specific models to integrate a second hard disk, although it can actually be implemented in any of the computers since all of them have the secondary bay ready to install another hard disk. Remember that the disk must be 2.5 inches and a maximum of 9.5 mm high. The only complication is that it requires a special connector to attach the disk to the board of the computer, although it is not especially complicated to buy it.

Did you like these tickets? Don’t worry if you’ve been left wanting more, at Apple we’re preparing a special on each Apple computer, with manuals for disassembling and replacing each of the computer’s components. Just wait, we still have a lot more to offer.