Mac Inside: Literally. M2 Mac Mini inside Windows gaming PC

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Please note I'm in planning stage right now. Nothing has been purchased. Or designed.

Budget (including currency): n/a / $400ish

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: iMessage, Halo, gulper.com

Other details: https://valid.x86.fr/jgwh1z Corsair 4000D

Big question for TLDR: Take out mainboard/use 3D printed case or put in aluminum Mac mini box into PC.

I'm not really sure if this would go builds help, or the Mac forum or case mods. Thinking about it... case mods. The PC is already built, the new thing is adding the Mac.

When MAC address started being filmed, I started watching it. I had android phones, and I had Windows PC. I’ve been on android since the iPhone 3G. But watching Mac Address, it made me wonder if some of the Mac things could possibly maybe work for my style. Also, my mom uses an iPhone. And it’s much easier to help her out, if I use the same thing that she does. 

 

Now, here I am, I own the iPhone 14 Pro Max (why, yes, I DID buy it four months before the 15 came out,) An iPad Pro 11 inch, Apple Pencil, Apple Watch. However, each of those have been bought on some sort of sale. For example, with the phone, I mailed them a $150 refurbished pixel phone to get the $1000 dollars off. For the iPad it was purchased at the military Exchange. No tax! $200 off! The watch is an Apple Watch 8, purchased open box at Best Buy.

 

There are some features that I want to try out, having the whole ecosystem together. For example, how well does voice to text act on a desktop Apple device? Siri? What about iMessage? All of the things I’ve seen online about running any of those inside a Windows box, involves much complexity, or, I could dual boot. But I would end up spending so much time. Or, I would end up needing to spend over $1000 on PC hardware to get the same kind of performance that this will have, and I don’t even want anything really special , added to that, you have the pain of setting up hackentosh. (A note, I tried to spell that out, using the voice to text on my iPhone, this whole thing is being typed that way, and it kept on one to say Anything besides that word.) The M2 Mac Mini can be found for around $400 or a bit less used. It's set up as a desktop. I have three monitors. That made me wonder, why not put one on top of my PC? Or INSIDE my PC?

 

So, I’ve been looking at expanding this Apple Empire That has been growing. I have a triple monitor set up and I would like to use various smart KVM software to manage that. But the ultimate goal of all of this is to install the motherboard or the whole box of and M2 Mac mini into my Windows PC. 

 

I’m leaning towards simply putting the box into my computer and calling it there. However, I think it could be neat to do as many of these things internally and cleanly as I can. Maybe 3d print a case for the Mac mini board to go into? It’s small enough that it could be placed many spots. My day job is CAD work, and I have 3d printers. For monitor, I'm thinking that I will have a monitor that is devoted to the Mac. Another option, I’m wondering about virtual inputs... I really need to look into that. Or just remote into it.

 

Power: this is going to be one of the fun parts. I found that it seems to be simple 12V:

Fairy simple to add those Wires to the 12 V Rails on a power supply? Part of this would be upgrading my 750W to a 1000W PSU I think, to be safe. I would set The Mac to turn on it receives power. Also, I’ll try to figure out what button that ties to it, need the pinout of those. A failsafe would be simply A button at the back.

 

Networking might be a little bit difficult? But I think what I’ll actually do is put a LAN cable coupling at one of the PCI slots. Same with other cables. 

 

KVM. Hopefully going software. I’ll most likely also have a few USB extensions specifically for pcie slots? I wonder if they have PCIUSB hubs, but the part that plugs into the computer is a dummy And only uses power from the slot. But then, it accepts USB-C and splits that out.

The Mac mainboard

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https://www.printables.com/model/139893-shrink-the-m1-mac-mini
 

I FORGOT ABOUT THIS.

This is exactly what I need. Put inside PC. Done. I'd like to remix this and make the pass through things better.








Using something his size I could for sure fit it in there!