The conveniently tiny logic board of the M1 Mac mini has lead to it giving the Mini ITX format a run for its money in case mods. The latest example of this is [Luke Miani]’s M1 Wii. (Youtube via 9to5Mac)
[Miani] chose the Wii as a new enclosure for this Mac mini given its similar form factor and the convenient set of doors in the top to maintain access to the computer’s I/O, something he wasn’t able to do with one of his previous M1 casemods. The completed build is a great stealth way to have a Mac mini in your entertainment center. [Miani] even spends the last several minutes of the video showing the M1 Wii running Wii, GameCube, and PS2 games to really bring it full circle.
A Microsoft Surface power brick was spliced into the original Wii power cable since the Wii PSU didn’t have enough wattage to supply the Mac mini without significant throttling. On the inside, the power runs through a buck converter before making its way to the logic board. While the Mini’s original fan was too big to fit inside the Wii enclosure, a small 12V fan was able to keep performance similar to OEM and much higher than running the M1 fanless without a heat spreader.
If you’d like to see some more M1 casemods, check out this Lampshade iMac or the Mac Mini Mini.
I was bored until I read about the “heat spreader”. Those words were like butter on the toast, a warm feeling of fully circle splicing into. Thank you for the soup.
Hmmm… A Wii or an proprietary desktop computer from Apple.
I think I would prefer to have the Wii!
Much as I don’t love Apple in this case I’d take the actually rather performant and energy efficient ‘PC’ over a Wii (though the Wii is good fun I suppose its largely superseded by VR games in the one niche it sort of exclusively held) – Oneday if not already by the time you read this M1 and M2 devices will be fully supported by FOSS software…
I still have to see a modern x86 mac fully supported by FOSS.
But why I would sacrifice a nice, high-end case like the mac mini for a plastic weird shape one like the mini?
Gosh! These YouTubers who drop the Apple wildcard to make views.
Waiting for the trashcan triple M1.
As a Mac user AND still-to-this-day Wii “gamer”, I am more inclined to ask the question of why sacrifice a Wii to put Mac hardware in it? (Unless of course said Wii is broken…)
VR? No one wants to strap stuff to their head.
What, no CD blue led? Why?!
I like a lot of Luke’s videos. He’s done a few where you take some cheap older iMacs that had horrible eternal components but they have an amazing screen (many are 5K) and convert it into a really good monitor using a drop in logic board. It’s a good project especially if you can get one cheaper because the “computer” part isn’t working anymore.