The first time I did one of these upgrades, the SSD wasn’t aligned properly which prevented the wifi from fitting, and the screw holes did not align. The parts inside the Mac mini fit just right. Finding a YouTube video to guide you through the steps of taking the Mac Mini apart is very helpful. It was built in the days when ‘upgrade-ability’ was built into the hardware design. Upgrading this Mac mini is straight-forward. Solid State Drive (SSD) : Crucial – BX500 2.5 SSD 120GB ~$22 USD.Memory : Crucial – 8GB Kit (2x4GB) DDR3L – 1333 SODIMM ~$60 USD.Using the model of the computer you’re working on, Crucial will show you the options for memory, hard drive, and SSD upgrades.
I use Crucial’s website to help determine the parts I can upgrade. In addition to changing the operating system from macOS to Linux, the RAM will be upgraded to 8MB and 550GB hard drive replaced with 128GB SSD. The goal is to use this machine as a general purpose computer in a classroom for high school students. The Mac Mini I’m rescuing is a mid-2011 with i5-2415M, 2GB RAM and 500GB HDD, running macOS High Sierra (version 10.13).
This post outlines the process of moving a Mac Mini (mid-2011) to Linux. While the hardware is still usable, macOS and Apple software cannot be updated to their current releases. When Apple released MacOS Majove in 2018, the minimum hardware requirements abandon lots of great hardware.
