The new 2012 Mac Mini was released only yesterday, but the folks at MacMiniVault have already gotten their hands on one, and taken a peek under the hood! The site has already posted the first benchmarks, unboxing, and a brief teardown of Apple’s new budget powerhouse!
First, benchmarks: The new Mac Mini has received a pretty significant performance boost over the 2011 model. The new unit scores a GeekBench score of 7433, compared to 6583 for the 2011 version (base models of each).
The guts of the 2012 Mac Mini remain similar to the 2011 models – although the 2012 Mac Mini does feature an all-new fan design, as well as new antenna connections. Apple has also apparently switched to Hitachi hard drives for the 2012 Mac Mini.
Last but not least, the site also provides some unboxing pictures – although the packaging remains largely the same, aside from a few small improvements to the overall organization inside the box.
Testing will soon begin on installing alternate operating systems on the 2012 Mac Mini, including an attempt to install OS X Snow Leopard on the machine, as well as Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2012, CentOS 6, Debian 6, Ubuntu 12.04LTS. We’ll keep you updated as we hear the results!
Check out MacMiniVault for all the details, as well as larger versions of the images!
