A teardown of Apple’s redesigned M4 Mac mini reveals a detachable SSD. Extra importantly, the storage is upgradeable, although there’s a giant catch.
The brand new Mac mini makes use of a non-standard SSD, although. So, you can not simply purchase an off-the-shelf disk drive for alternative.
New Mac mini ships with a user-upgradable SSD…form of
Quickly after the M4 Mac mini went on sale on November 8, teardowns detailing its internals popped up. They revealed that not like the earlier Mac minis, Apple did not solder the SSD on the logic board of the brand new mannequin. As a substitute, the SSD is detachable. Nonetheless, the machine makes use of Apple’s proprietary SSD format, so changing it may be difficult.
Now, the parents at iFixit have posted their teardown of the M4 Mac mini. In the course of the course of, they changed the Mac mini’s SSD with a higher-capacity one, and it labored simply high quality after utilizing Apple Configurator!
Apple is understood for pairing and locking elements of its units, so it’s shocking that there isn’t a software program block on the M4 Mac mini. This was not the case with the 2022 Mac Studio, the place swapping the modular SSD stopped the machine from booting.
Apple is unlikely to promote alternative SSDs for the Mac mini. Nonetheless, because the machine ages, spare parts from used M4 Mac minis ought to turn out to be out there, permitting you to improve the SSD.
M4 Professional Mac mini makes use of a beefier cooling resolution
iFixit’s teardown additionally reveals the variations within the cooling system of the M4 and M4 Professional Mac mini. The latter chip is considerably extra highly effective and generates extra warmth. To dissipate this warmth higher, the M4 Professional Mac mini sports activities a thicker warmth pipe and a beefier copper heatsink with extra fins.
Photograph: iFixit
One other notable change on the M4 Mac mini is the modular USB-C ports and headphone jack on the entrance. As they aren’t soldered to the logic board, you’ll be able to take away and exchange every port individually. Nonetheless, because the rear Thunderbolt 4/5 ports are soldered, you can not exchange them.
Nonetheless, due to all of the underlying modifications and a concentrate on repairability, the M4 Mac mini earned a provisional repairability rating of seven out of 10 from iFixit.
