As an easy and inexpensive way to complete three of my four intended base-model Mac mini upgrades, I purchased a Pioneer DVR-K06L optical drive (SuperDrive equivalent) from Other World Computing. This unit has the required Mac firmware, and they'll even buy my stock mini Combo drive back for $20. Once again I followed OWC's excellent installation instructions. The process took about ten minutes.
Thus far, the mini has been running fast, cool and almost completely silent. I've been monitoring the CPU temperature and load using CoreDuoTemp and I range between high-30s and low 40s (°C) under low load and between mid-40s and upper-50s under higher loads.
These three modifications were much easier than the final one will be - upgrading the CPU. Even that won't be too bad, though. The tricky part is applying the right amount of thermal paste between the CPU die and the heat sink. I've been down that road a few times before with Pentium III and IV boxes, so I don't anticipate any problems. I'm still quite pleased with the performance of the stock 1.66 GHz Core Duo. A 2.0 or 2.13 GHz Core 2 Duo should really smoke, although hopefully not in a literal sense. :-)
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