The new Mac mini has a removable SSD but DIY upgrades won’t be easy

Macworld

Apple gets a lot of flack for its non-friendly approach to user repairs and upgrades–you can’t really do them. But there’s a ray of hope with the new Mac mini that started shipping on Friday.

In a teardown posted on X, ohgkg shows that the Mac mini’s SSD is on a separate board instead of integrated with the M4 chip.

Partial teardown of M4 Mac Mini /w 16GB RAM & 256GB SSD. Interesting revealation [stet]: Wifi chip & antenna on the back of bottom air intake. SSD on a daughter board. And even the base 256GB version comes in two chips. No compromise in speed. Theoretically also end user upgradable.
ohgkg via X, November 8, 2024

On X, L0vertodream also posted on X a Mac mini teardown. L0vetodream states that “it is indeed a 1-slot dual-slot with a maximum particle size of 1TB. It uses a BGA315 hard disk and the maximum upgrade capacity can be up to 2T” (translated).

This SSD setup is similar to that of the Mac Studio, which also has separate SSD modules. Ars Technica points out that Apple’s implementation isn’t like that of Windows PCs where the SSD controller is contained with the SSD hardware. Apple’s SSD controller is built into the M-series chip. Because of that, you can’t simply swap out the Mac Studio’s or Mac mini’s SSD with a part bought from Amazon or some computer store. There are other reasons why off-the-shelf parts won’t work, like the possibility that the Mac’s SSD slots have restrictions on the types of modules that can be used.

But the simple fact that Apple separated the SSD leaves the possibility of someone figuring out how to perform a DIY SSD upgrade. It would involve figuring out what modules can be used and being able to modify the controller–not easy tasks to do. There’s a Kickstarter for a Mac Studio SSD upgrade but it still requires a bit of work. It’s unclear if these modules will work with the M4 Mac mini.

The other big revelation about the Mac mini SSD is that Apple uses two 128GB NAND chips in the 256GB SSD configuration. In the M2 Mac mini, Apple used one 256GB NAND chip, and that hinders performance because there’s no parallel processing as there is with two 128GB chips. With the M3, Apple switched to using two 128GB chips, but the company did not release an M3 Mac mini.

Read our in-depth review of the M3 Pro Mac mini.