Apple’s 2024 Mac mini recently went on sale and has already received the teardown treatment. Today we take a look at one such teardown by the YouTube creator Brandon Geekabitwhich performs the disassembly on the base model of 16/256 GB M4.
As with previous Mac mini models, the entrance for the internal components is via the plastic panel on the bottom. There are no visible screws, so you just have to pry the corners with a spudger until it pops out.
Once opened, you are greeted with a nice looking metal bracket with openings for the ventilation system. In the middle is a small button cell, which keeps track of things like the clock when the device is disconnected from the mains. This is the easiest part to access and will cause the least problems if it needs to be replaced later.
If you remove the metal grille, you’ll see that in addition to being a nice vent, it’s also connected to the motherboard and acts as an antenna for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Unplug the grille and you’ll see the underlying cooling system, which consists mainly of a centrifugal fan and a curved heat sink with a single heat pipe running through it. Also visible in the bottom corner is the single speaker that all Mac minis come with.
Removing the fan and speaker will give you better access to the underlying motherboard. This is where we get to the SSD, which features a fairly standard looking M.2 2230 SSD. However, if you look closer, you can see that the drive Apple uses has a different number of pins than a standard 2230 drive. Apple also appears to be using a custom SSD controller, which isn’t found on a standard drive.
So it seems that, despite appearances, the storage drive on the new Mac mini is unlikely to be user-upgradeable with off-the-shelf parts after purchase. However, there are videos online of people simply disconnecting the memory modules from Apple’s SSD and soldering them into a higher capacity version, which seems to work just fine. So that may be a path you can go down if necessary, although external SSDs are still the easiest option for upgrading the storage on this machine.
We continue with the disassembly and finally come to the power supply located under the motherboard. As usual, the Mac mini has an internal power supply, unlike the external bricks that most other micro PCs come with. The power supply is technically the top layer of the system when placed right side up, so it can likely dissipate some of its heat through the aluminum case since it doesn’t get direct airflow from the fan.
On a side note, we just want to appreciate how good the PSU and even other elements of the Mac mini look. Keep in mind that these components are never intended to be seen by the user and yet they look better designed than most PC components on the market.
The final part of the disassembly is to remove the heat sink covering the M4 chip. The heatsink is quite small, but the M4 chip probably doesn’t even need one. It’s just there to allow the chip to reach higher clock speeds and maintain them even in warm environmental conditions, unlike the fanless MacBook Air models, which can’t sustain peak speeds for too long.
That’s about it for the disassembly. It’s disappointing that once again nothing in the machine is upgradable. On older Mac minis you can replace both the SSD and memory, while on later models you can at least upgrade the storage. With the current model you should configure the machine almost to your liking during purchase, because later it is best to connect an external SSD.