The new Mac Mini takes a small step towards upgradeable storage

Apple’s redesigned Mac Mini M4 has ditched the erstwhile M2 machine’s SSD that was soldered to the logic board, arsenic confirmed by teardowns like this 1 posted connected X showing it has a azygous removable SSD module. It’s not Apple’s archetypal desktop machine to spell successful this direction, arsenic we saw akin modules successful the Mac Studio and Mac Pro.

However, arsenic noted by MacRumors, it’s astir apt akin to their retention with lone the NAND chips connected committee and the controller is inactive embedded successful the SoC, tightly restricting immoderate imaginable DIY upgrade oregon repair options.

In a 2nd video clip, besides sourced from Douyin, the Chinese mentation of TikTok, the idiosyncratic replaces the NAND chips connected the committee with larger ones that instrumentality it up to 2TB. According to the idiosyncratic who reposted them, they were capable to get it working, akin to what we’ve seen from Mac hackers similar Dosdude upgrading the retention connected the Mac Studio. It besides shows however the Mac Mini’s WiFi spot and antenna are mounted straight connected the backmost of its aerial intake connected the bottommost of the machine.

The different happening we’ve learned is that the basal Mac Mini’s module has 2 128GB NAND chips alternatively of a azygous 256GB one, which means we don’t expect to spot a show bottleneck compared to the previously released basal exemplary M-Series Macs. Apple returned to 2 128GB chips connected the M3 MacBook Air released past April.