A YouTuber had fun replacing the chassis of his Mac mini M1 with a Wii. An interesting challenge in many ways.
Luke Miani is an American tech videographer who likes to get his hands dirty and take products apart. At the beginning of November, he posted a video of a slightly crazy project: to make his Mac mini M1 less ” boring “. It must be said that the format has changed little since its presentation in 2005. Noting that the dimensions were quite close to those of a Wii, he therefore decided to fit his computer into the chassis of the Wii. Nintendo console.
Most of the components fit easily into the Queen of Gaming’s plastic body. casual » and the flap on the side designed for connecting GameCube controllers and memory cards is perfect for discreetly integrating part of the connectors, such as USB ports. But the creator faced some challenges while making it.
Food: a real challenge
The first point to modify was of course the aesthetics. Luke Miani had to cut some parts of the Wii’s shell so that the connector could go through without a hitch. It is also one of them that posed one of the biggest worries: food. By replacing the original connector to have USB-C, the Mac mini turned on, but had voltage problems, generating signal disturbances.
His second idea was therefore to use the power supply of the Wii itself, giving even more charm to his creation. Unfortunately, this is limited to 53 watts, which is enough to fire up the Mac mini M1, but not to sustain the biggest peaks in performance, creating athrottlingunpleasant during tasks that are a little too heavy.
In the end, a Microsoft Surface charger, whose connector was replaced by the original Wii one, was chosen. And it works!
The recooling
Of the components that didn’t fit into the Wii’s chassis, the bulkiest was the fan. MacBooks have proven it, the Apple M1 is able to run fine without cooling, but the performance is less pronounced. So Luke Miani found a fan the same size as the one on the Wii and managed to fit it perfectly into the heart of his creation with a bit of ingenuity and 3D printing.
Wii games in 4K
From now on, Luke Miani is therefore the owner of a Mac mini M1 in the body of a Wii, giving his office a side that is both retro and fun. More so, by installing the Dolphin emulator on his Mac, he is now able to play original Wii games on his 75-inch TV…upscaledin 4K. Certainly, he did not need to modify his computer for this, but he admits to having learned a lot of things during his operation.
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