I was really looking for a 2006-7 Mac mini for an eGPU project when I had stumbled upon an eBay listing for a 2009 mini. Needed some RAM, an SSD, and I already had a power supply laying around along with a spare DVD drive. I opted to get an Optical bay SATA to 2.5″ SATA optical bay adapter, which I had populated with a 1 TB WD Black 7200 RPM Sata HDD, and 8 GB of DDR3 RAM. Officially it’s supported all the way up to OS X El Capitan, although OCLP allows the Nvidia Tesla 9400m GPU to be patched with a non-metal driver up to the current macOS.

For the time being I’ll keep it on El Capitan, as it’s going to be a networked file server. Getting the OS loaded up here wasn’t all too challenging, made a 10.11 USB and it took a little under an hour to install. The 2x 4 GB sticks were $13, 256GB Sandisk SSD for $13, and the Optical bay SATA to 2.5″ SATA adapter only $6-7 – prices in Early 2025 USD. All in all everything was roughly $40. While this may be a core 2 duo, it can still pull off running on newer versions of macOS with patches. It’s not nearly fast enough to take advantage as a daily driver unless you keep the OS stock, and then you’re dealing with more out of date software.

The case for this machine in Early 2025?

It really depends on what you’re going to use it for, really. I see it as a bridge between the PowerPC Macs needing a networked file server and the Apple Silicon Macs. It doesn’t consume much energy although it can function on its own as a computer. Running Sequoia on here as a modern machine has its own caveats but it works.

Legacy Non-Metal GPU bugs on macOS Big Sur – Sequoia

Due to ongoing developments, GPUs that predate Metal hardware acceleration such as the 9400m GT (Nvidia Tesla) have dramatically improved in functionality and performance over time. (Source: GitHub.com, URL). All issues listed in this section below: credits go to the GitHub URL linked in this paragraph. This list of issues is reflected for January 29th 2025.

• Caution: Due to lack of USB 1.1 support (Affects internal KB/trackpad), installing Ventura and beyond requires an external keyboard/mouse until patching is done post-install.

macOS Sequoia only:

• Frozen gallery and no thumbnails on Photos app. Fix: Downgrade to Sonoma.
• Tiled windows feature doesn’t work. Fix: Use Cinch Pro. (Newer App on website, older app on our site)
• New Metal rendered wallpapers doesn’t work. There are no fixes for this yet.
• Inverted colors on selected window screenshots. Fix: Downgrade to Sonoma.
• Broken background on Weather app. Fix: Downgrade to Sonoma.

macOS Sonoma and newer:

• Show desktop shortcuts not working – Downgrade to Ventura
• Cycle through windows shortcut not working – Downgrade to Ventura

General Issues:

• DRM content won’t play in Safari, TV and Music. Use a third party browser (Hardware decoding unavailable on non-Metal GPU drivers), it isn’t fixable at the time.
• Stage Manager non-functional. Unsupported on non-Metal (incompatible with 10.14.6 SkyLight).
• AirPlay display unstable. No known fix.
• Broken Maps in Monterey and newer. Downgrade to Big Sur (Monterey VectorKit requires Metal)
• Strange Window corners on HiDPI, unknown fix.

Upgrading the wifi and bluetooth

You may use a USB bluetooth adapter to update to Bluetooth 4.0. I tried connecting a wifi/bluetooth combo card from a 2011 Mac mini and while it did connect, the mini wouldn’t show a display output for some odd reason so this did not work.

NVMe or mSata SSD upgrades

While bandwidth is limited to Sata II (3 Gb/s), it is possible to install a Sata to mSata/M.2 adapter. While it seemingly hasn’t been tested thus far in regards to an M.2 SSD in this model, it may potentially work within OpenCore. Typically, AHCI mSata SSDs work in the 2009 Mac mini. (Click to enlarge image on left of adapter)

Getting it Setup

It can run Chrome 103 for now, Photoshop CS6, many mid-2010s apps, and the GPU is decent enough to not be sluggish with an SSD and 8 GB of DDR3. It’s snappy enough.

In conclusion

It’s surprisingly cheap to pick one of these up this late into their life cycle, thankfully everything was working on this one even if it needed to be upgraded. While the usability and CPU/GPU power may seem underwhelming in 2025, it can still pull it off nonetheless with OCLP. Maxing it out is very cheap anymore as well, between the RAM and SSD.