Logic Board For Mac Mini Mid-2011

For Mac mini A1347 MC816 Core i5 2.5GHz i5-2520M Logic Board Motherboard Repair Service Mid-2011.

Mac Mini Mid 2010 Logic Board Replacement - Mac Mini Mid 2010 Logic Board Replacement Mac Mini Mid 2010 Logic Board TOOLS: 2mm Hex Screwdriver (1) Arctic Silver ArctiClean (1) Arctic Silver Thermal Paste (1) Mac mini Logic Board Removal Tool (1) Spudger (1) T6 Torx Screwdriver (1) T8 Torx Screwdriver (1) SUMMARY Replacement Written By: Andrew Bookholt Completely replacing the logic board requires removal of the logic board itself as well as all components attached to it. © iFixit — CC BY-NC-SA www. IFixit.com Page 1 of 22.

The 2011s are solid machines. They're basically as fast for a similar config as the 2012. In general, the biggest minus is they only have usb2, so that limits you to about 30M/s for usb based external drives. Not fast at all, but fast enough to stream a single 1080p movie. (TB is faster, but $$$.) The standard HD3000 video is fine for a single monitor up to 1200p, but that's about it. The mid-2011 is a bit interesting, because the AMD GPU is around the speed of the HD4000 graphics in the 2012s.

That allows it to run 2 monitors well, up to 1600p + 1200p. That said, over time, heat is causing GPU failures in the mid-2011s.

Honestly, considering you're looking at a 6 year old computer with the 2011s, the 2010 is about the same as the 2011 but about 40% slower cpu wise. The 2009s are practically the same as the 2010s, but have the old case, max out at El Cap, and swap dvi hdmi. 2010s & 2009s can sometimes be gotten for 1/3rd the price on Ebay than the 2011s go for.

If you really just want a server, they'll probably be fine for you (although they might have issues with Plex transcoding). Go for the ones with the Intel HD3000, I have a few GPU failures over the years on 2011 Mac mini that I had to use windows on it and disable the ATI Radeon (so that it doesn't auto restart when it is trying to switch to the ATI). I don't have the know-how of how to do that in OS X/macOS. The gfxCardStatus is flaky at best for me, sometimes still trying to switch and ended up restarting. And using Windows on a mac defeats the purpose of buying a mac in the first place. Apple has a recall program for the MBP2011 for the same issue but no love for the MM2011.

Click to expand.Basically, if you want to avoid possible future issues, getting a unit without the AMD GPU removes one possible point of failure. Also, let me go ahead and put a vote in for the 2010 model. (I'm writing this post on one of those.) As mentioned above, the 2010 has an inferior CPU to the 2011; but then, you don't really need a whole lot of CPU for pure server tasks. (Other than Plex transcoding-on-the-fly; but then, I don't think the 2011 would do you much better, unless you manage to snag one of those quad-core i7 2011s.) One of the frequently forgotten features of the 2010 models was that they sported the Nvidia GeForce 320M GPU. Which means, they actually have superior graphics power to the 2011 models (other than, of course, the 2011s with the AMD GPUs). Moreover, the 320M runs cool, so it doesn't have the overheating problems that the AMD GPUs ended up with.

Anyway, just another point of info. (And yeah, if you can find a cheap 2012, that's probably the way to go. Very happy with my late 2011 base Mini, got it as a refurb in late 2011 and upgraded RAM to 8GB. The base HD3000 graphics is good, I run 2 monitors and sometimes a third which is a 1080P TV using AirPlay to Apple TV. Using AirPlay over a wired network or Wi-Fi seems to work well either way (I initially always used a wired network connection but switched to Wi-Fi about a year ago). The USB2 connection to an external drive is slow but I don't often need to copy big files over USB.

It works OK for Time Machine backup to external HD. Still have the spinner 500GB HD, programs are a bit slow to load but it doesn't bother me. I just leave the main apps in memory and don't Quit them so I don't need to reload them often. Also I just let the Mini sleep so I rarely need to wait for a reboot or restart. Word for mac increasing size of font in review panel. I initially had some overheating problems when doing heavy jobs like HandBrake because the cooling fan seemed to almost never get sped up to cool off a hot CPU. So I would run a utility like smcFanControl.

I think Apple may have tweaked the fan control software in the last year or two because now it seems to be more responsive in raising the fan speed when required to cool off a hot CPU. Running OSX El Capitan and it runs perfectly. I am cautious about updating to Sierra as it seems to add features of little use to me and there is the possibility it will bog down this 5 year old computer.

However others who have updated old Macs to Sierra seem to see no performance issues so I will probably give Sierra a try. I have a 2011 i5 model with the ATI graphics. It's a bit crashy and I actually retired it partly because of that about 18-24 months ago and replaced it with a late 2014 (current model) dual core i7 model. I'm not certain if it was due to a corrupted OS, a bad RAM stick or something else. One of these days I'll find a use for it and see if I can track down the error, but at the moment it sits unused. My current mini, which I use at work, is actually quite a solid machine with very reasonable performance for office-style tasks.