The Tiny, Fanless, Mac mini KILLER!

It's sexy, it's small and it doesn't make a single noise. It runs Mac OS Mojave Oh, and it's fast, really fast. What is it? And how do we achieve it? Well, let's travel back to the year 1985 and find out, or I mean last week. So this cabinet model that is completely passively cooled. There are no fans at all, it's really cool. But we need to put a computer here and the computer we have. We are going to use the computer this case is designed for. It is, of course, the Intel core. Now we've already done a Hackintosh build with an 8th Gen Intel Bean Canyon core, but that was a really low-end i5 type. variant.

This is the top end. i7 variant It is a quad-core processor with eight threads and has a base clock of 2.7 gigahertz with a turbo frequency of 4.5 gigahertz. So it should be really very fast and it's not a hexa-core processor like the i5 Mac Mini, which means it probably won't beat it, but it should be relatively close to building the entire system. The total maximum price will be about $850 on the market and Apple charges $1100 for basically that same computer. So hopefully we can get through it, but we have I have a power supply here in the box.

It's a little big, but even with the power supply, the entire system is significantly smaller than a Mac Mini, which isn't that small anymore. And then we have the little core here. Now, if you get an i5 variant or an i3 variant one of the lower-end options, there are two model designations: BEK and BEH, this is a BEH. It is a little taller and allows you to fit a 2.5-inch SATA drive inside. So there you have it. We're going to open this up and basically take this computer out of the case so we can put it in the big one.

Now that we've removed this cute little motherboard from the original case, we get rid of the original case and the antennas that came with it. and we basically just saved the small set of dual microphone cables and of course the motherboard itself, now we have the CPU cooler on top and it's an interesting arrangement. We have one screw that comes out here and then two captive screws. Of course, our fan head, this is a blower style cooler. Then you have a fan. You have a fan on top here and on the ear there is an air intake.

The air is drawn in by the fan and then escapes through this radiator at the back of the core, so if we disconnect this little fan header right there, we can take this assembly out and you'll see that there are a couple of heat pipes from copper that touch the actual CPU. Heat is transferred to these copper tubes. They go into this radiator and the air blows it out, but we don't need any. of that, so we'll remove this entire assembly and then you'll see that there's thermal compound on this main die and not on these two additional ones.

When we put this into our new case, we're actually going to apply thermal compound on all of them. three sections. So let's clean it up and do it now. It's actually quite simple to work on this case: remove this bottom cover by removing these four screws and when we open it you will see that it is actually very simple. We have a heat sink, our little heat block, right there. I wouldn't expect it to not look like copper. It may be nickel-plated copper. But I guess it's just aluminum; In any case, it should be enough for the dissipation that the Nuc emits.

It is a fairly energy efficient corner. The TDP is quite low and that's why we can do it completely passively in such a small form factor. There are much bigger cases. I did a hackintosh build in the past with a

mini

ITX build with an Intel Core i7 which was a 90 watt CPU. The 90 watt TDP CPU generates a lot of heat and was able to handle it very well. But it had these huge huge walls and it was a pretty big case. This one is very small, which works for the Nuc's small size and heat output.

So first we're going to install the dual microphone assembly and you should have enough adhesive on these to stick them back together. If you don't want to put your microphones on, that's fine, but you know what? They say smoke them if you have them and now is the time to install our thermal paste at home. What is the company that manufactures this case? Include some thermal compound here. I can't imagine it being excellent. But the best and worst thermal compounds generally only vary by a couple of degrees and this is not an ultra-high performance machine. So I don't really care.

This is also the crudest application of thermal paste you'll ever see and people are going to freak out. Okay, I think with thermal paste you really have to go overboard to use too much and when you apply it directly. the die when there is no heat sink. It's actually better to have a little more than you think you might have on a standard desktop CPU, so once we've applied that, we'll turn it around and put it inside. the case. So we have to orient ourselves on the right path, which is this, and you will notice that you lose your microSD slot in the process.

Oh I'm sorry. Everyone loves the micro SD slot. No, that doesn't matter. So let's just insert it into place. It may take a bit of moving to get there, but we. I can feel the thermal paste slide off and there we go. We just screw this in and we're almost done. Good. Now it's time to install the remaining components, there really aren't many left. We have the microphone header that we're going to insert from time to time. We have our RAM and our SSD. Now these do not come with the Intel Nuc kit. You have to buy them separately and that is why the price of the machine is quite low.

You can buy pre-configured machines, but it's usually not a good deal and since it's so easy to install, you might as well do that. yourself. So we have 16 gigabytes of Kingston Memory here. This is just Kingston's value line of memory. It is not high-end. The clock speed is quite low. I think it's 2400 megahertz, but that's fine for what we're doing and shouldn't affect our benchmarks in any way. So let's insert it, push it down and we're done. The SSD is a little different. These SSDs can get very hot like nvme SSDs, especially when there is no airflow, so what we are going to do is add a heatsink on top of the SSD to absorb some of the heat so it doesn't get hot.

Not everything will stay within this small form factor. It will still get a little warm, but it shouldn't be hot enough to shorten the life of the SSD. So let's do it now. Subscribe and like! Alright, now we install the SSD into the slot, just remember our little M2 screw right there. We insert the SSD and then push it down and that's it and we're almost done, all we have to do is put back the back panel I/O and the top panel and that's it. Quite easy. Okay, now we have it assembled and we have to make a decision: do we want it vertical or do we want it horizontal?

The casing can work in both directions and there are these cool Art Deco looking end plates that can be separated. They look really great, any direction is compatible. I'm going to make it vertical just because I think there will be more heat dissipation that way as the hot air rises. So it should be a little better for cooling, but any orientation should work. Okay, so it's all done and looks great. The question is: will it stay fresh? Well, we'll find out once we install Mac OS and run some benchmarks compared to Mac Mini, speaking of Mac OS.

How would you do that? Let's find out. Many people ask me why I haven't created a step-by-step tutorial on how to make a hackintosh. There are a few reasons, but one of the main reasons is that there is no one-size-fits-all Hackintosh installation. The reality is that it largely depends on your hardware and your motherboard's BIOS. There are several factors, so when I do a hackintosh build on my channel, I try to do some that someone else has already done and I have created a tutorial so that people who are less experienced know where to go to find exact instructions on how to do it.

But if you know how to make a hackintosh if you know how to make one They are generally pretty easy and all operate on the same principles first You need a Mac version less and you use a real Mac to get it. So you download the operating system from the Mac App Store and then you use create installation media, which is a command that you run on a Mac. We're here on Apple's website and it'll tell you how to do it and it basically puts the operating system on a USB drive. Boot. Bootable on a Mac now.

We need to modify that boot installation to make sure we can boot it on a PC, so we use this software called clover efi and clifford efi replaces the mac OS bootloader with a UEFI bootloader. UEFI is basically a firmware interface. It allows the motherboard BIOS to communicate with the operating system and the hardware that is mixed between them, which is why Clover is updated very frequently. It is open source. There are updates. There was one 18 minutes ago. So it's updated very frequently, it supports a lot of hardware, and it's open source, and it's great, and it's free.

So you download clover efi and then modify your installation drive making it bootable on Mac OS. Once you've done this, you'll need a couple of different drivers. Mac OS uses drivers, but unlike Windows, they are built into the operating system. Sometimes you need new audio drivers or Ethernet drivers or drivers that have been created by the community or sometimes by Apple but are no longer supported and that allow you to use all the hardware inside your Mac. If you don't have the drivers Some things won't work. You can start Mac OS, it will work, but your Ethernet, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi may not work.

So, you download the correct texts, put them on this drive and that's it. Are you ready to start. I usually do what is called basic installation. I download all these parts separately because I have more experience and this is how I do it. Tony Mac is a community that creates plug-and tools. -play They find all the drivers you need, all the text you need and install them on this USB drive that makes it for you. Hackintosh professionals don't like Tony Mac because it's not open source. They use closed code. software. They are a little creepy at times and that is why most people recommend a basic installation.

But Tony Mac is a great resource for finding step by step tutorials on how to build a hackintosh if you want to go a step further and this gets really spooky, you can turn to very popular hardware setups, like the Intel Nuc, which people build a lot, it's such a popular piece of hardware that there are people who will create itchy pre-made ISOs that are basically written to a USB drive. So okay, include the operating system. This is a great option. If you don't have a Mac, include the operating system. Includes all modified files including all qex and drivers.

It is completely ready to go. You just download it, put it on the USB drive and that's it. The problem is that you have to trust the sources. You get them from this one, which has been recommended several times on all the forums. over the place. It's from this website. It is completely in Chinese. It could be safe. Don't know. I generally wouldn't recommend downloading some random operating system that you don't know where it comes from. Stick with the open source tools that are tried and true and I'll link you to a couple of guides that will tell you how to do it step by step.

And it's a really logical and simple process. Now that we have the system up and running, we get to see how it works and I have to say I'm impressed. Now the goal is to do it. Compared to the i5 Mac Mini, which is a 6-core hexacore processor, our little Hackintosh nuc is only a quad-core processor, so as you might guess, it's not very snappy on the i5 Mac Mini, but it's close. quite a bit and it's absolutely brutal. the basic model. i3 Mac Mini, the best part is that while the fans on Mac

mini

s start screaming for air with CPU core temperatures reaching almost 100 degrees Celsius, our little core stays at a perfectly cool 60 degrees C The case is barely warm to the touch Unfortunately, this means that while theoretically we have the thermal overload to squeeze a lot more performance out of this little machine.

There are no overclocking options within the kernel BIOS. I assume this is a result of the small external power supply not being up to par. task of maintaining even very high turbo frequencies. Not to mention overclocking, too. The machine is sort of a specifically pre-built setup, and I don't think Intel ever imagined people cramming this small computer into a much larger case with exponentially greater thermal overhead. But while there are no overclocking capabilities, it's a bit of a pain. That's still fine because it works extremely similar to the i5 Mac Mini, which when SPECT isidentical is more than double the price, our little core only has one Thunderbolt 3 port unlike the four Mac minis.

But it works perfectly on Mac OS, as long as you don't connect devices, it can even run an E-GPU, which is pretty cool if you're looking for some extra graphics, although you might want to do this on a system that's not completely silent. Maybe the core in its original box is the plus side. The core has four USB ports and the Mac Mini only has two, now it's not all rainbows and butterflies. While most things like iMessage found my Mac and the App Store worked great. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Fi Don't transfer continuity. That's impossible unless you buy an Apple-compatible wireless card, which isn't that difficult, but it's an extra step, an expense, and even though Hackintosh is as easy to build and maintain as ever, it's not plug-and-play.

Tweaks are required, and when upgrading you should expect to perform more maintenance than with a regular Mac. Now that's a couple of hours a year worth $800 to you. I don't know, it's up to you to decide that most people would probably say yes. But anyway, I think it's a pretty good machine, and as a completely silent computer, I think it's an excellent candidate for a hi-fi home theater or office setup in an area that Apple doesn't even serve, speaking of first, this main ad space is occupied by Nobody, look, I know that ad units can be tiring, so I try not to do them all the time. , but I sure would appreciate it.

If you want this video, subscribe and share it with your friends. Thank you so much for watching and as always, stay stylish. Yeah, well, we're a pretty bad channel, so