Apple has made it practically inconceivable for house owners of most of its units to hold out storage and RAM upgrades, opting to solder all the things on to the logic board. Nonetheless, a latest teardown of the brand new M4-powered Mac mini revealed that the storage chip is positioned on a separate and detachable NAND module PCB, very like the setup within the Mac Studio. This discovery has paved the best way for potential storage upgrades.
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Enter YouTuber dosdude1, who seized the chance to discover this newfound risk.
This course of will not be for the faint of coronary heart. Upgrading the Mac mini requires a fragile contact and a meticulous strategy, and any misstep might result in catastrophe.
First, the gadget have to be utterly disassembled to entry the storage PCB. As soon as uncovered, the storage chip have to be fastidiously eliminated utilizing a sizzling air gun. After that, all of the previous solder have to be eliminated with a soldering iron and desoldering wick. The brand new storage chip then requires reballing with solder earlier than being soldered again onto the PCB earlier than the Mac mini is reassembled, finishing the operation.
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Wreck that little PCB and it is recreation over.
As you may see within the video, dosdude1 needed to run the method twice due to an issue with the storage chips he’d used for the improve.
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However, perseverance received and, ultimately, he obtained the M4 Mac mini working with the upgraded storage.
Now, I am right here to let you know that is a complicated improve. I’ve performed one thing related and there is a talent to eradicating a chip with out burning the board or eradicating a bunch of parts you did not need to take away.
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Reballing chips, in the meantime, requires particular steel masks, that are skinny steel sheets with tiny holes in them, with out getting solder paste in every single place, and that talent solely comes from follow — and you do not need to be working towards on elements from inside your new Mac mini.
I ponder if some enterprising third occasion will create an improve answer that entails swapping out the storage board. That strategy could be loads simpler.