IMac to SSD SATA 3Gb/s data cable, iMac to SSD/HDD power 'Y' cable, 2 suction cups for the outer glass removal, thermal safe adhesive mounting set, OWC Microfiber Pro Cleaning Cloth, and tools Already have all the tools necessary to perform this upgrade? May 1st, 2012 by Kevin OBrien StorageReview Test Lab: Apple Mac Mini StorageReview has added a new Mac Mini to our test lab for enhanced compatibility testing for 2.5' consumer SSDs and benchmarking new Thunderbolt storage solutions. While most SSD buyers are Windows users, there is still a strong base of Mac owners who want to ensure an SSD is compatible with their system before going through the agony of upgrading and finding out the hard way that the drive either doesn't work, or performs at a level that is not expected. StorageReview will be including Mac-based benchmarks on all client SSDs going forward using this platform. On the Thunderbolt side, site editors felt it was important to have a stable and consistent platform for testing, with the same rigor we apply to other reviews. While an off the shelf Mac Mini has the potential to work as a test bed for StorageReview, it lacks certain capabilities without aftermarket support. We also require an environment with a stable main system drive, letting us benchmark SSDs and other 2.5' drives as secondary drives. This necessitated a way to bring a secondary SATA connection outside of the Mac Mini. ![]() While kits are available to connect additional drives, the sheer number of drive insertion cycles we go through, the pins on the motherboard SATA connector would have been destroyed in short order. To remedy this situation, we turned to OWC, who supplied us with the components to turn the Mac Mini into a viable testing platform. We used their DIY 2.5-inch drive installation kit to gain access to the system's secondary SATA connection, and brought it outside the case with an aftermarket SATA extension cable. We also put the Mac Mini into a vertical position, to have easy access to the SATA testing cable and take up less space on our test bench, using a NewerTech NuStand. Lastly, we upgraded the stock 5400RPM hard drive and 2GB of system memory to a and boosted the RAM to 16GB with an OWC DDR3 RAM kit to rule out system bottlenecks impacting benchmark scores.
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