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Apple’s 2024 Mac mini recently went on sale and has already gone through the teardown treatment. Today, we are taking a look at once such teardown by YouTube creator Brandon Geekabit, who is performing the teardown on the base 16/256GB M4 model.
As with previous Mac mini models, the entry point for the internals is through the plastic panel at the bottom. There are no exposed screws so you will need to just pry the corners with a spudger until it pops out.
Once open, you will be greeted with a fancy-looking metal bracket that features openings for the ventilation system. In the center is a small button cell, which maintains things like clock when the device is disconnected from the mains. This is the most easily accessible component and will pose the least hassle if it needs to be replaced down the line.
Removing the metal grate reveals that it’s not just a fancy vent but also wired to the motherboard and acts as an antenna for the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Disconnecting the grate reveals the cooling system underneath, consisting primarily of a centrifugal fan and an arced heatsink 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 the speaker gives better access to the motherboard underneath. This is where we come to the SSD, which features a fairly standard-looking M.2 2230 SSD. However, upon closer look, you can see that the drive Apple is using has a different pin count compared to a standard 2230 drive. Apple also seems to be using a custom SSD controller, which won’t be found on an off-the-shelf drive.
As such, it seems that despite appearances, the storage drive on the new Mac mini likely cannot be user upgraded after purchase with off-the-shelf parts. However, there are videos online of people simply detaching the memory modules from Apple’s SSD and soldering in a higher capacity version, which seems to run just fine. So that may be a path one can choose to go down if required, although external SSDs are still the easiest option to upgrade the storage on this machine.
Moving on with the teardown, we finally come to the power supply that is sitting underneath 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 technically forms the top most layer of the system when placed right side up and can thus likely dissipate some of its heat through the aluminum shell since it doesn’t get direct air circulation from the fan.
As an aside, we just want to appreciate how good the PSU and even 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 final part of the teardown is the removal of the heatsink covering the M4 chip. The heatsink is fairly small but the M4 chip probably doesn’t even need one. It’s just there to allow the chip to boost to higher clock speeds and sustain them even in hot ambient conditions unlike the fanless MacBook Air models, which can’t sustain peak speeds for too long.
That’s pretty much it for the teardown. It’s disappointing that once again there is nothing user upgradeable inside the machine. Older Mac minis would let you replace both the SSD and the memory, with later models at least letting you upgrade the storage. With the current model, you pretty much should configure the machine as you want while purchasing as later the best you can do is plug an external SSD in.