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considering its tiny size and relatively
inexpensive price tag it makes sense
that lots of my friends are using Mac
minis for their home theater setup I
love that idea but personally I'd want
to use it for lots of other applications
too so maxing out the right arm is
probably a good idea and of course I'm
not gonna let the fact that there are no
visible screws keep me from doing that
prepare myself and my hope is that after
this video you won't either
hi I'm MJ with iFixit and today I'm
going to show you how to replace the RAM
in a core duo Mac Mini this video is a
great overview of the process but of
course when you're upgrading your RAM
you'll want to make sure to follow the
step by step instructions and the repair
guide on our site that all being said
I'm going to get my parts and tools
together so I can get started for this
repair you're going to need a set of
small tweezers a plastic spudger a
phillips double zero screwdriver
typically I would use a bit from one of
our bit driver kits but because some of
these screws are kind of difficult to
access I would recommend using a
dedicated driver instead and of course
you're gonna need something to pry open
your Mac Mini so if you've got a putty
knife laying around you can file down
the edge of that and it'll work fine I'm
going to use a tool called an ice s
ammo' which is designed specifically for
opening up electronics so it's a little
more forgiving than a putty knife and
that means it'll probably cause less
cosmetic damage when you're opening up
your machine so if you're concerned
about cosmetic damage I would go for the
ice s amount to get started I'm going to
flip the Mac Mini over so that the back
is facing me and then I'm going to use
my ice s mo to start prying away the
aluminum case from the bottom housing
I'm gonna start back near this corner
and it might require a little more force
than you're comfortable with as soon as
I get that part up I'm just going to
start going around the edge and lifting
the rest of the edges up once all the
edges are lifted up and you've got a
nice gap between the bottom housing and
the aluminum case you're gonna flip the
Mac Mini over again and the aluminum
case should just lift up and
at this point you can do a little dance
because with the topcase off we're
actually done with the hardest part the
next thing we're gonna do is remove the
internal frame which includes the
optical drive from the housing and to
start we're going to remove the airport
antenna by squeezing these two little
posts and lifting it off you don't want
to squeeze too hard because you might
break the post so be gentle now the
antenna is still attached to the
computer so don't go yanking it off but
we can't just kind of drape it over to
the side for now the next thing we're
going to work on is disconnecting the
audio board cable and the hard drive
thermal sensor cable the audio board
cable is a standard ZIFT style connector
so once the locking mechanism is lifted
up the cable just comes right out
the hard drive thermal sensor cable is a
little trickier because it's pretty
small connector and it's in a tight spot
so we're going to use our tweezers to
grasp the connector or not the wires and
then pull it straight up and out it
might be useful if you use your spudger
to kind of guide the connector out of
its socket
now that those cables are disconnected
we can get to work on the four screws
that are holding the frame in place
these screws are kind of difficult to
access so this is where having a
dedicated driver comes in handy
especially one that's magnetized
with those screws out the frame should
just lift up and out pretty easily slow
and steady is good though because you
don't want to snag any cables on the way
out with the frame out of the way we can
see the RAM and all we've got to do is
unlock and remove the existing chips and
replace them with our new ones
of course you can find all of the parts
and tools for this and many other
repairs at ifixit.com and if you run
into any problems during your repairs
there are lots of solutions and the Mac
Mini repair guide on our site if you're
watching this on youtube don't forget to
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