Apple's New Mac mini Comes with Removable Storage

[TheLostSwede]

Both pictures and videos of a partial teardown of Apple's recently launched Mac mini with the M4 SoC have appeared online courtesy of various Chinese sources. There are at least two interesting parts to these partial teardowns and they're related to storage and WiFi. On the storage front, Apple has moved away from having soldered NAND chips straight on the main PCB of the Mac mini, to instead having them on a custom PCB which is similar to M.2, but a custom Apple design. The PCB pictured contained a pair of 128 GB NAND chips and with the source of the teardown being from China, there's also a video showing a repair shop desoldering the two chips and replacing them with two 1 TB chips, or in other words, the SSD was upgraded from 256 GB to 2 TB.

The upgrade brought with it some extra performance as well, even if the write speed remained at a comparatively slow 2900 MB/s, the read speed went up from 2000 MB/s to 3300 MB/s which is a significant gain in performance. This is obviously not a consumer friendly upgrade path, but we'd expect to see third party upgrade options at some point in the future, assuming there's no black listing of third party storage modules. The NAND controller is still likely to be integrated into Apple's SoC, but the PCB that the NAND flash chips are mounted onto appears to have some kind of SPI flash on it as well, which might make third party upgrades a lot harder.




As for the WiFi module, Apple has designed a very quirky solution that connects via a ribbon cable to the main PCB of the Mac mini. The entire module sits at the bottom of the Mac mini and not only houses the WiFi and Bluetooth module, but it's also the antenna and it looks like it's either a 3x3 antenna or a 2x2 plus Bluetooth antenna, but Bluetooth shouldn't need nearly as complex of an antenna design as a tri-band WiFi antenna, as the Mac mini supports WiFi 6E. The WiFi module also has a gap for the air intake for the CPU fan, as well as two parts with mesh to allow the hot air to escape out of the Mac mini. This is by far one of the most elaborate WiFi solutions we've ever seen in a mini computer.

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[usiname]

As always crapple make everything possible to make their sheeps to pay $1000 for SSD that cost $100.

 

[LastDudeALive]

I firmly believe Apple could have at least doubled their sales of this Mac Mini by letting conventional NVME drives be installed. 95% of their current userbase will still pay for the OOTB storage, but there is a huge market of enthusiasts and professionals who would absolutely buy this if they could DIY a 2TB drive for $150 instead of $600. They wouldn't even have to advertise it anywhere, let teardown reviews like this spread the world and people will buy it themselves.

 

[Timbaloo]

Hahahahahaha, this is to freaking ridiculous, it's almost too funny to be true. If it was soldered to the main PCB for "compactness" reasons, but this is straight up showing the middle finger to the (happy because super productive and efficient, I know) customers

 

[Space Lynx]

I firmly believe Apple could have at least doubled their sales of this Mac Mini by letting conventional NVME drives be installed. 95% of their current userbase will still pay for the OOTB storage, but there is a huge market of enthusiasts and professionals who would absolutely buy this if they could DIY a 2TB drive for $150 instead of $600. They wouldn't even have to advertise it anywhere, let teardown reviews like this spread the world and people will buy it themselves.

100% true, i would have bought one in fact for work if i knew the nvme was easily swappable and i could do clean installs of the macOS whenever I wanted

 

[Octavean]

It's not the first time Apple has used proprietary NVM SSDs. In fact there are converter adapters to use standard retain SSDs on some Apple models. If there isn't one for the new Mac mini then perhaps there will in the future.

Edit:

I wouldn't mind buying an Apple Mac Mini at the Student price ($499).

 

[azrael]

Well, Apple's "unconventional thinking" also applies to the power button. Guess, where it is...

 

[Dristun]

Poverty tier SSDs for hundreds of bucks, classic Apple. Wouldn't be surprised if TBW ratings are uber-shit too on these. Even though, imho, Mac Mini is still the best device in their entire line-up. Nice little thing.

 

[Garrus]

We need legislation. We should have the right to upgrade storage on every device. Right to install any operating system on any device.

Imagine if IBM-compatible had never been a thing.

They are getting too much power imo.

One thing for Apple to not include things, another to actively use digital code to block others.

 

[Frick]

100% true, i would have bought one in fact for work if i knew the nvme was easily swappable and i could do clean installs of the macOS whenever I wanted

macOS is a different beast than Windows though, I don't think reinstalls is a thing really.

 

[evernessince]

Poverty tier SSDs for hundreds of bucks, classic Apple. Wouldn't be surprised if TBW ratings are uber-shit too on these. Event though, imho, Mac Mini is still the best device in their entire line-up. Nice little thing.

I'm not sure most Apple customers have to worry about TBW issues, Apple SSDs are notorious for failing at the controller or other parts on the PCB. Probably the least reliable SSDs on the market.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

I firmly believe Apple could have at least doubled their sales of this Mac Mini by letting conventional NVME drives be installed. 95% of their current userbase will still pay for the OOTB storage, but there is a huge market of enthusiasts and professionals who would absolutely buy this if they could DIY a 2TB drive for $150 instead of $600. They wouldn't even have to advertise it anywhere, let teardown reviews like this spread the world and people will buy it themselves.

I think you're vastly overestimating the intersection of buyers who:

1. Are considering a Mac Mini,
2. for whom upgradable internal storage is a deal-breaker, and
3. insist upon said storage being M.2 NVMe.

My guess: single-digit percentage at best.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

macOS is a different beast than Windows though, I don't think reinstalls is a thing really.

Eh?

You do know that macs can remotely reinstall macOS on new drives right? Or you can download the installer from the app store and make a bootable USB drive, no different from windows.

I think you're vastly overestimating the intersection of buyers who:

1. Are considering a Mac Mini,
2. for whom upgradable internal storage is a deal-breaker, and
3. insist upon said storage being M.2 NVMe.

My guess: single-digit percentage at best.

A single digit percentage that are some of the biggest enthusiast and act as an advertising arm for the company in question.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Hahahahahaha, this is to freaking ridiculous, it's almost too funny to be true. If it was soldered to the main PCB for "compactness" reasons, but this is straight up showing the middle finger to the (happy because super productive and efficient, I know) customers

The previous one had one or two NAND chips soldered to the main PCB. One NAND chip caused half the performance of the "SSD", so at least they fixed that this time around.

It's not the first time Apple has used proprietary NVM SSDs. In fact there are converter adapters to use standard retain SSDs on some Apple models. If there isn't one for the new Mac mini then perhaps there will in the future.

It's not an SSD though, at least not in any normal sense of the word. The controller for the NAND is still built into the SoC, so this is just a PCB with the NAND flash on it.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

A single digit percentage that are some of the biggest enthusiast and act as an advertising arm for the company in question.

And that's enough to double Mac Mini sales? Color me skeptical. I don't think it would even move the needle.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Looks like we have more teardown videos.
Apple is using a Broadcom BCM57762 Ethernet controller and a Genesys Logic GL3590 USB 3.2 Gen 2 hub in the Mac mini, based on what I could see in the videos.

Be warned, he's annoying.

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[Octavean]

Well, Apple's "unconventional thinking" also applies to the power button. Guess, where it is...

Arse end of nowhere,......!?!

 

[Garrus]

I mean, this is exciting. If I can buy a 2TB drive for $300 to add to my Mac Mini it will be a huge win. Will have to wait and see.

 

[Chaitanya]

Well, Apple's "unconventional thinking" also applies to the power button. Guess, where it is...

Atleast they did not stick their power connector alongside that button given the contempt this Fruit company has for its customers.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Atleast they did not stick their power connector alongside that button given the contempt this Fruit company has for its customers.

They should have made it battery powered with no way to run while charging.

 

[R0H1T]

If I can buy a 2TB drive for $300 to add to my Mac Mini it will be a huge win. Will have to wait and see.

Did you miss the part where they said it's proprietary, i.e. no way in hell Apple will sell it to you?

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

It's not the first time Apple has used proprietary NVM SSDs. In fact there are converter adapters to use standard retain SSDs on some Apple models. If there isn't one for the new Mac mini then perhaps there will in the future.

Edit:

I wouldn't mind buying an Apple Mac Mini at the Student price ($499).

There's many more form factors out there than gamers know about. There are plenty of proprietary form factors in the actual high end market and not the toy market. Even among the standard form factors you are not going to be able to put them into a gaming or "enthusiast" board. And even for the systems on the standard form factors that you can't put into ROG builds you are not going to source products from Newegg or Amazon you're going to get them directly from the vendor with the associated cost or directly from say Micron also with the associated cost. Proprietary stuff is extremely common once you get out of the toy computers.

So this device and it's SSD quirks aren't abnormal by any stretch.

As for remarks on reinstalls and the power connector it sounds like people here have never managed Macs or .nix here. You can remotely reinstall the OS at any point you want. You can also directly reinstalling it from the device. It's a non issue but you rarely have to reboot them and they handle power states much better and make Windows look like a pile of shit. Ditto for memory and storage management. In the case of the Mini they are often installed on the back of a display. Thus the button on the back makes sense. Another common use is clusters of them. In which case they are sort of shelf racked and remotely managed like blade servers. And just like blade servers or servers if you do need to truly shut them down you are pulling it out anyways. If this is going to sit on your desk due to the SOCs sipping power and apples superior power management you are not going to turn it off unless you need to take it to the store for repairs and restarts are rare.

Atleast they did not stick their power connector alongside that button given the contempt this Fruit company has for its customers.

This makes no sense considering apple has much higher customer statisfaction, service, resale value, and everything else compared to all the Windows stuff and ASUS type brands that make hardware for it.

You might as well say the contempt Rolex has for it's customers compared to Timex.

 

[Scrizz]

....

I'm wondering how much the company is paying you to come out in their defense.

 

[ypsylon]

It makes little difference (except repairability). Proprietary crap made by Apple subcontractor or same proprietary crap sold by OWC for example. You'll still pay through the nose for something which cost like 25% at most of what either of these companies charge.

I wonder if you buy 8TB model do they slap QLC flash on those, because that would be double hilarious if people spend 3k$ on 8TB QLC drive. I know that Apple was moving (or at least planning) to QLC on iPhones with 2TB to of course raise profits while shitting on ignorant customers.

Base MM is nice, decent machine, but that's it. All expansion options are totally F up with Apple greed.

 

[TheDeeGee]

So you can't use a regular m.2 which has been the standard for a while now.

Typical Apple iWaste design, which needs to be boycot.