M4 Cube

Making the switch

My current computer is a 2021 14” MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro CPU, 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD. 90% of the time I’m using it at my desktop connected to a CalDigit TS3+ dock and a 27” 4K Dell monitor.

It’s been the best computer I’ve ever owned. The M1 Pro is a workhorse and is more than capable of any workload I’ve thrown at it.

So why switch to a desktop if using a laptop is working well for me?

Well, the idea of having a G4 Cube on my desk is just too much to resist. Plus, I can still take the MacBook Pro out and about whenever I need to, or dock it to the CalDigit if required.

Just thinking of having a Cube on my desk brings me back to 2001 when I was living in a basement in North Melbourne. My cousin and I would play Diablo II all night - him on his PC laptop and me on the G4 Cube.

Nostalgia is a hell of a thing!

There’s a few videos on YouTube of people upgrading their G4 Cube’s with M1 Mac Mini’s. These videos gave me the inspiration to start this project, but I’m not going to use the current M1 or M2 Mac Mini.

Why? The M4 chip was released recently for the iPad Pro, and is undoubtedly coming soon to the Mini. I will be using this computer as my daily driver which I use for graphic design, video editing and a bit of gaming.

My original plan was to replace my 14” MacBook Pro with a M4 version, but I got to thinking, it would be poetic to replace a G4 with an M4 in a cube!

So that’s where this idea was born. I’d have a few months before the M4 Mini is due to release to try and source a Cube. As luck would have it, I was able to do this quicker than anticipated and now I wait for the M4 Mini to be released

Hello and welcome to my new blog site documenting my G4 to M4 Cube journey.

I remember seeing my first G4 Cube back in 2001 and immediately fell in love with the beautiful design. How could a fully functioning computer fit inside such a small cube? It was amazing to me.

I ended up buying one and used it as my main desktop for a few years, but ended up selling it to a workmate.

In later years I wished I had kept it, especially once the M1 series of computers came out from Apple. These small, powerful chips with their origins in mobile computing would be a perfect fit for a small form factor such as the cube.

So I got it into my head to find a cube and replace the insides with a modern M series CPU. Well, step one of that idea was completed last weekend when I picked up this beautiful cube from a seller on Facebook Marketplace.