Mac mini 2024 gets a teardown, has no user upgradeable parts | Infinium-tech

Apple’s 2024 Mac Mini recently went on sale and has already gone through the teardown treatment. Today we’re taking a look at one such teardown made by a YouTube creator Brandon GikabitWhich is doing a teardown on the base 16/256GB M4 model.

Like previous Mac mini models, the entry point to the internals is through the plastic panel at the bottom. There are no exposed screws so you’ll have to pry the corners out with a spudger until it comes out.

Once opened, you will be greeted by a fancy-looking metal bracket with openings for the ventilation system. There is a small button cell in the centre, which maintains things like the clock when the device is disconnected from the mains. This is the most easily available component and will cause the least amount of trouble if it needs to be replaced later.

Removing the metal grate reveals that it’s not just a fancy vent, but is also connected to the motherboard and serves as an antenna for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Disconnecting the grate reveals the cooling system underneath, which consists primarily of a centrifugal fan and an arched heatsink with a 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 provides better access to the motherboard underneath. This is where we come to the SSD, with a fairly standard looking M.2 2230 SSD. However, looking closer, you can see that the drive Apple is using has a different pin count than the standard 2230 drive. It looks like Apple is also using a custom SSD controller, which won’t be found on off-the-shelf drives.

Thus, it seems that despite appearances, the storage drives on the new Mac Mini cannot be upgraded by the user after purchase with off-the-shelf parts. However, there are videos online of people separating the memory module from Apple’s SSD and soldering in a higher capacity version, which appears to run fine. So this might be a route one might choose to go down if needed, although an external SSD is still the easiest option to upgrade storage on this machine.

Continuing with the disassembly, we finally come to the power supply which is located at the bottom of the motherboard. As usual, the Mac Mini has an internal power supply unlike the external bricks that come with most other micro PCs. The power supply technically forms the topmost layer of the system when placed right side up and thus some of its heat may be dissipated through the aluminum shell as it does not get direct air circulation from the fan.

On one hand, we just want to appreciate how good the PSU and other elements of the Mac mini look. Remember, these components are never meant to be seen by the user and yet they look better designed than most PC components on the market.

The last part of the disassembly is to remove the heatsink covering the M4 chip. The heatsink is quite small but the M4 chip probably doesn’t even need it. This is just to allow the chip to boost and maintain higher clock speeds even in hot ambient conditions, unlike the fanless MacBook Air models, which can’t sustain peak speeds for very long.

That’s all for the destruction. It’s disappointing that once again there is nothing user upgradeable inside the machine. Older Mac minis will let you replace both the SSD and memory, later models will let you upgrade at least the storage. With current models, you should configure the machine as you wish when you purchase it because the best thing you can do afterward is plug in an external SSD.