Community Help: Connect Monitor to Mac Mini - Photos

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Here are some photos I took showing how to connect an old monitor to a new Mac Mini (keyboard and mouse just connects via USB, pretty simple). The Mac Mini is very small and takes up no desk space at all, and its up to you to connect your own monitor and keyboard and mouse to your new Mac Mini computer. It's very easy, here are some photos below showing all the connections and plugins and how I connected mine. Note that you do NOT have to have a Mac keyboard, Mac mouse, Mac monitor, etc. This is great because I have several old keyboards, an older flat panel monitor from my Windows computer, and several mouse from my windows computers that I had in the past. You can reuse all these with your Mac Mini. I used these to setup and use my Mac Mini, no problem. First, here is what comes in the box, nice and small and basically just the computer (yeah the small box is the entire computer and runs completely silent), the adapter they give you for a monitor connection, and the power chord.

Next, here is a photo of the connections and plugins on the back of the Mac Mini

Next, here is a closeup photo of the monitor connection adapter that comes with a new Mac Mini. Note that my monitor is a VGA monitor (15 pin), so my connection didn't actually fit this. Yours probably will regardless as most newer ones will, my monitor is quite old.

Next, I bought this VGA adapter off of Amazon. Again, you probably dont have to do this, but my flat screen was about 6 years old, so the adapter I bought was called a "Mini Display Port-to-VGA Adapter". It looks very similiar to the Apple adapter that they include for the monitor that I showed above, except the connection is slightly different for VGA (It has 15 pins in it so the adapter has 15 holes). The Apple adapter in the box is an HDMI plugin, the adapter I bought plugs into the lightning bolt shown in the picture above. You can use either, they both work fine for a monitor. Dont make the mistake of buying HDMI converters or anything like that, just use the adapter that Apple gives you or if your monitor is an old one like mine, then get the same adapter I got. You can buy them for under $15 and it will work fine, and doesn't have to be HDMI like the Apple adapter. Here is a photo showing it connected.

Finally, just use the USB connections on the back to plugin any keyboard you have and any mouse you have lying around, they will work fine. Plug the power chord into the Mac MIni, and you are ready to go. Note the Mac Mini already comes with a wireless network card in it, so nothing else is needed.