New Mac minis get first tear down and Geekbench scores

Apple’s refreshed Mac mini lineup already received some nice RAM upgrade options from OWC this morning, but now we get a look at the insides of the updated Macs courtesy of a tear down from Mac Mini Vault. The website also published Geekbench scores for the device, showing some impressive performance increases over the 2011 models.

First off, it found minimal changes to packaging and the positioning of the new Mac mini’s internals:

The overall packaging size was unchanged, however marketing specs have been updated and the inside organization has been optimized… Under the hood only minor differences are visible. Most notable are the fan design, Hitachi hard drive, and connections for the antennas. (2012 on left – 2011 on right)

As for Geekbench, the new stock Mac minis were able to record a score of 7433 running 10.8.1 out of the box. In comparison, Mac Mini Vault had a 2011 Mac mini running 10.8.2 clocked at 6583. Mac Mini Vault also noted it will begin testing alternative OS options for the new Mac mini server edition next week:

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iFixit tears down the new Apple TV- two antennas, single-core A5 chip, and Broadcom 4330 chip

Following the first teardown of the new Apple TV over the weekend at XBMC.org, we get some more details from yet another teardown. They already gave the new iPad the teardown treatment, and now our friends over at iFixit ripped apart the third-generation Apple TV giving it an 8 out of 10 reparability score. The report revealed the device now has two antennas instead of one, which iFixit noted: “Apple added the new antenna to address complaints about range and signal strength.” It also discovered a Broadcom 4330 chip (same as the new iPad) with support for dual-band 2.4 GHz and 5GHz 802.11 a/b/g/n, as well as a new single-core A5 processor. iFixit noticed the new design does not rely on a thermal cooling pad, which could mean the new single-core CPU does not run as hot as earlier generations.

The chips inside:

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