The M4 Mac mini may have been praised for its pleasingly small redesign, but one owner decided to reverse that decision and fit the machine into a large transparent case in the style of a Power Mac G4 Cube.
Posted on Reddit (with disappointingly little explanation) by a friend of the DIYer, the project is simple but striking. The Mac mini has been placed in a thick plastic case that extends beneath the device like a hollow stand, raising it to more than twice its normal height. Less practical on the desk, perhaps, but cool in a retro atmosphere.
The case has a large cutout for the rear ports and smaller individual cutouts for the ports on the front, so it looks perfectly usable. But commenters in the thread are less convinced of the mod's thermal efficiency, due to the way the support section of the case has been designed: there's a nice big opening in the back, but no opening on the side or front panels. As Apple explains on its Mac mini page, the machine draws in cool air from the front (through the vents in its base), then expels hot air from the back. So the way the modified “M4 Cube” is configured seems to inhibit half of its cooling operation.
Apple
Again, increased visibility could counteract this problem. The stand means there's free air underneath the Mac mini, in a way that wouldn't normally be the case when placed on a desk; even if this air only flows from the rear, this arrangement could still be as thermally efficient as normal use. Regardless, this isn't a commercial product (at least not yet…maybe the Reddit post is guerrilla marketing for a product that will launch in due course), so the only risk taken is that of the handyman's Mac.
