Chosen Solution
Just got the MACMINI/2.6GHZ/8GB/1TB - USA and was a bit surprised by the differences between the 2012 model which seemed to be very user-upgradable. I’ve ordered the new screwdrivers needed to open the unit, I just want to make sure that I’ll be able to replace the 2.5" 1TB platter drive with a 2.5" SSD. Yes/No? Any feedback would be great (first time posting a question on here). Off topic: The reason I bought the Mac Mini was because I got a 4k display and my Macbook Air wasn’t able to drive the display. The Mini seems to be working but the UI elements (like the top bar, finder windows, etc) are all very very very tiny (screenshot here). Is there a way to scale those up?
Final Advice I thought I would post an update. I ended up popping open my Mini and swapped out the 1TB platter drive with a 2.5" 240GB SSD that I had. I ran some tests using the app ‘blackmagic Disk Speed Test’. It was pitiful, it was not much of an improvement over the 1TB. So I put the original drive back in and closed it up and took it back to the Apple store, and they were pretty awesome, no restocking fee or anything. They put the refund onto a gift card (the only option for getting the refund immediately) and I ordered a new 256GB PCIe Blade SSD version in the store and had it shipped to my home. Turns out that no stores carry any equipment that isn’t the ‘standard’ generic version, apparently it’s cheaper to have it built on-the-fly and shipped from China. Anyway, I ran the blackmagic speed test on the new one and it was incredible, about 400 - 500 MB/s faster than the other SSD I installed. So, in the end, Dan’s advice of returning it was spot on, thanks Dan! I wish they kept other versions of products in stock at the Apple Stores but the refund experience was great.
Are you sure you want to do this? If you just bought it I would return it and get the SSD model that way you could add in a bigger HD so you have a fast system (SSD) and have deep storage (HD). Remember the supplied SSD in this model is a faster M.2 PCIe blade type SSD (2 lanes - 16 Gb/s*) If you still want to swap out the the 2.5" SATA III (6.0 Gb/s*) HD to a SSD, yes you can. *Remember this is the theoretical, the devices design will be the true limit. As to the display: Did you try altering the displays scaling?
