I agree with you about building PC's. I enjoy it. The nice thing about building your own PC, is you can physically pick the components you want, and choose if you want to spend more on RAM and less on a video card... or whatever. I've never found building your own PC to a money saving experience though. Dell and Gateway sell their stuff so cheap, you usually can't build a comparable PC for what they charge, especially once you factor in the included software (and your time).

I really wish there was a bigger 'build your own Mac' communinity. I did it a few years ago. Some of my PC friends were talking about how you couldn't build your own Mac, so I decided to prove them wrong. ;) I found a Sawtooth board and PS on eBay, then I bought an ATX case and gathered up the rest of the comonenets (DVD-ROM, 60 GB HDD, GeForce2, 512 MB RAM, 1GHZ OWC processor upgrade) and slapped it all together. It was a FUN project and it really shut up my PC friends, but it wasn't cheap. I probably could have just bought a used Sawtooth off eBay for less money... but like many things, it's not the practicality it's the experience.

Exactly right. Most mac users are exclusive and are just now experiencing these new freeing options etc and I know they will love it too. That is what apple borrowed, open it up to other venders.

As hard as it is for some to acknowledge, this Mac/Windows tension is a necessary symbiotic relationship that has pushed both to the top of the pile. Now macs can be pieced together and it is all really evolutionary to get what you and I have been enjoying for years. A good idea will always be "borrowed". Expect windows to try and counter ipod soon. LOL.

By the way that Mac sounds like the cousin to my PC. Probably comes down to the processor as always. :cool:

Ya know, I was just looking through some of my old image files... and I found a picture of the old "Franken-Mac". I'm not sure what happened to the rest of them (I documented the entire building process), but I did find this one. This pic was taken right before I installed the processor. Everything else is installed, if you look closely you can the plastic backplate I fabricated to cover the ports. Man that was a fun project!!! I wish I never would've sold it. This thing was a piece of history. :D

PCs are like old Chevys, you can put a hemi engine if you want and trick it out with oversized tires and wot-not. However, the Mac is like a Lexus, best to leave it alone. For example, can you imagine trying to piece together a box like the G5 with its 9 fans? Or something like the Mac Mini? That is hi-tech engineering there.
I once had an idea for Apple to make all the components in slide drawers so that it looks like a small MIDI rack. Want a bigger drive, slide out the old and slide in the new. Same with the motherboard, RAM and even the power supply.

You see, that is what some of you mac fans do not realize, Windows OS is the only thing Micro$oft in the PC and I can change that to a different OS if I want to at anytime. Like I said 20 different company parts gathered from around the world hand picked because of the research I did and their quality. It is the best part of creating a PC (mac or windows) to fire it up. I really enjoy it all and I will build a mac the same way.

Hey that looks just like mine. ;)

Isn't that an Xserve?

A Dodge engine in a Chevy???

Ok Ok back to the question.

It sounds like we have a stripped down package and that we merely need to add a monitor, keyboard and mouse and viola. Not a problem when I get around to it, this is going to be fun. Those guts will be upgradable I assume? Memory, processor?

Memory to 1 Gig, processor: not likely.

I see. :eek:

G4 faster than G3? Not for me!
 

I beg to differ, CWTNoSpam. My Blueberry G3/350/512MB/MacOS8.6 's System and Finder are waaaay snappier than those on my G4/800/1GB/OSX.3.7 machines ! Significantly faster! I would say at least twice as fast!
Of course OSX is an entirely different – and great (imho) – concept. And I would never go back to CRT's from those gorgeous flat panels. But the G4/OSX speed penalty was a very UNpleasant surprise when I first installed it 2 years ago.

Yes it is one of the 5 flavors, original imac blueberry but I have to agree with Rokcet on this because this G3 has 400MHz cpu speed and its got a 100MHz bus.

I hardly put it through the ringer so it performs ok. What kind of graphics card does the mini come with? Are there options?

That's always been the "general" rule with Macs. As the Hardware gets newer, it gets faster, as the OS gets newer, it gets slower. I remember my old PowerMac 8500. It ran great with 7.5, when I upgraged to 8.0 it ran a little slower, 8.1 not much difference, 8.5 a little slower yet, and 8.6 even slower. I never went to 9.0 on it, cause 8.6 was slow enough. However, the benefits over 7.5 made it well worth the upgrade.

Now there are some exceptions to this rule (ie: Panther seems to run faster then Jaguar on the G3 - among others), but for the most part it holds true. That's why Apple always releases newer and faster hardware to compliment each new OS. I usually upgrade an OS 1 or 2 times before I upgrade hardware... but that's just me, there's plenty of people running OSX on 266mhz G3's. ;)

The mini has 32MB of VRAM, Radeon 9200 GPU I believe.

Xd, if you want to see some pics of the Mac mini's guts, click here. It appears to be really well built.

The G3/G4 comparison is based on running the same software. OS X has extensive premptive multi-tasking, so some things would be faster in OS 9, where a process didn't have to give up the processor if it didn't "want" to. If you were only running one or two apps, OS 9 probably would appear to be faster, but I wouldn't try to do something like play a song in iTunes, a movie or two in Quicktime, load a web page, download a file, and sync up my Palm all at once in OS 9 on any machine.


Apple's Specs for the Mini's Video:

DVI video output for digital resolutions up to 1920 x 1200 pixels; supports 20-inch Apple Cinema display and 23-inch Apple Cinema HD display; supports coherent digital displays up to 154MHz; supports non-coherent digital displays up to 135MHz

VGA video output (using included adapter) to support analog resolutions up to 1920 x 1080 pixels

S-video and composite video output to connect directly to a TV or projector (requires Apple DVI to Video Adapter, sold separately)

I'm glad I'm not the only one that caught that :p

That is some tight engineering there. Is that the actual raydeon 9200 graphic (card)? The processor and everything looks absolutely permanent. Maybe I will have to visit Apple and give a test run soon.

os9 was really snappy till something crashed and froze up the whole machine.

OSX- maybe your GUI doesn't look so fast but there is major work going on behind the curtain.

as for g3 vs g4 vs g5, again it is not really accurate to say each is faster at the same clock speed, it is getting more work done. Think of it as G3 is a two lane highway, with no passing allowed. A G4 with os9 is four lanes but still no passing allowed. A G5 with OS10.3 is 8 lanes, passing allowed, and an sattelite navigation, and big brother watching to make sure no one breaks the traffic rules.

Analogy copyright 2005 kansaigaijin.

It appears to be a 1 piece board. Mobo, CPU, GPU, Chipset all built-in. The HDD would be easily replacable, as would the RAM and Optical Drive. If the CPU or GPU go, it looks like you'll have to replace the whole board.

Exactly, that sucks. Why make the processor unreplacable? Stupid.