Earlier this week, we reported that the storage within the new Mac mini is definitely modular, which means that it isn’t soldered to the logic board of the Mac, and finally could be consumer accessible. Nevertheless, that didn’t essentially imply it’d be simple for customers to improve the storage on their very own – although that didn’t cease one particular person.
Common Mac restore technician dosdude1 has carried out the primary SSD storage improve on the brand new Mac mini, showcasing that it’s certainly potential. In a brand new YouTube video uploaded on the discharge day of the brand new Mac mini, he tore aside and upgraded his base mannequin Mac mini from 256GB to 1TB. Initially, he deliberate to improve to 2TB, however bumped into points whereas restoring.
Eradicating unique storage
After disassembling his Mac mini, dosdude1 eliminated his storage module from the system, and primarily swapped the 2 storage NANDs on the module. For context, Apple makes use of two 128GB NANDs for his or her more moderen 256GB Mac fashions. To improve to 1TB, dosdude used two 512GB NAND modules.
This complete course of includes eradicating the present NANDs, which is just a little troublesome, due to the residual underfill Apple makes use of to carry down the NAND. Afterwards, he removes the residual solder left over – leaving a clear floor for brand spanking new NANDs to be soldered. He has to finish this course of twice for every of the 2 NANDs on the module.
Putting in new storage
Afterwards, he has to reball the brand new NANDs, permitting them to be resoldered to the unique modules. This course of makes use of a stencil to evenly distribute solder paste into every gap on the underside of every NAND, then heats it with flux to make sure correct seating.
This course of is sort of tedious, however as soon as he solders the brand new NANDs to the storage module, he can reinstall it within the Mac mini, run a restore in Apple Configurator—and that’s it! The Mac mini boots up, with the bigger 1TB SSD, quadrupling the unique storage.
Making it simpler for customers
Clearly, it is a extremely tedious course of – and most of the people gained’t have the microsoldering abilities of dosdude. This restore requires a ton of precision to carry out appropriately.
Nevertheless, what if it was simpler? What if, hypothetically, somebody simply offered premade modules with greater storage? Nicely, you could be in luck.
Though it isn’t on the market but, an organization generally known as Polysoft Providers could quickly be promoting storage modules for the brand new Mac mini. They’ve already made prototype modules for the Mac Studio, which dosdude himself has examined. They’ll apparently be delivery them to clients beginning subsequent month.
If this all involves fruition, there might be a world the place it’s really very easy for customers to improve the storage on their new M4 Mac minis, which might be actually cool.
Wrap up
Total, we may quickly have a extremely cool future the place customers can improve storage on their new Macs, with out requiring customers to have technical restore abilities. I simply want Apple would promote the modules themselves, or no less than permit customers to improve storage by way of the Genius Bar – that means we wouldn’t should depend on third events.
I’d extremely suggest watching dosdude’s video, it’s a enjoyable watch:
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