Apple’s 2024 Mac mini just lately went on sale and has already gone by the teardown therapy. At this time, we’re looking without delay such teardown by YouTube creator Brandon Geekabit, who’s performing the teardown on the bottom 16/256GB M4 mannequin.
As with earlier Mac mini fashions, the entry level for the internals is thru the plastic panel on the backside. There are not any uncovered screws so you have to to only pry the corners with a spudger till it pops out.
As soon as open, you can be greeted with a fancy-looking steel bracket that options openings for the air flow system. Within the middle is a small button cell, which maintains issues like clock when the gadget is disconnected from the mains. That is essentially the most simply accessible part and can pose the least trouble if it must be changed down the road.
Eradicating the steel grate reveals that it is not only a fancy vent but additionally wired to the motherboard and acts as an antenna for the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Disconnecting the grate reveals the cooling system beneath, consisting primarily of a centrifugal fan and an arced heatsink with a single warmth pipe working by it. Additionally seen within the backside nook is the one speaker that every one Mac minis include.
Eradicating the fan and the speaker provides higher entry to the motherboard beneath. That is the place we come to the SSD, which encompasses a pretty standard-looking M.2 2230 SSD. Nevertheless, upon nearer look, you may see that the drive Apple is utilizing has a distinct pin depend in comparison with a regular 2230 drive. Apple additionally appears to be utilizing a customized SSD controller, which will not be discovered on an off-the-shelf drive.
As such, it appears that evidently regardless of appearances, the storage drive on the brand new Mac mini seemingly can’t be consumer upgraded after buy with off-the-shelf components. Nevertheless, there are movies on-line of individuals merely detaching the reminiscence modules from Apple’s SSD and soldering in a better capability model, which appears to run simply fantastic. So which may be a path one can select to go down if required, though exterior SSDs are nonetheless the simplest choice to improve the storage on this machine.
Shifting on with the teardown, we lastly come to the ability provide that’s sitting beneath the motherboard. As standard, the Mac mini has an inner energy provide not like the exterior bricks that almost all different micro PCs include. The facility provide technically types the highest most layer of the system when positioned proper aspect up and may thus seemingly dissipate a few of its warmth by the aluminum shell because it does not get direct air circulation from the fan.
As an apart, we simply wish to recognize how good the PSU and even different components of the Mac mini look. Bear in mind, these parts are by no means meant to be seen by the consumer and but they appear higher designed than most PC parts in the marketplace.
The ultimate a part of the teardown is the removing of the heatsink protecting the M4 chip. The heatsink is pretty small however the M4 chip most likely does not even want one. It is simply there to permit the chip to spice up to larger clock speeds and maintain them even in scorching ambient situations not like the fanless MacBook Air fashions, which might’t maintain peak speeds for too lengthy.
That is just about it for the teardown. It is disappointing that after once more there’s nothing consumer upgradeable contained in the machine. Older Mac minis would allow you to substitute each the SSD and the reminiscence, with later fashions no less than letting you improve the storage. With the present mannequin, you just about ought to configure the machine as you need whereas buying as later the perfect you are able to do is plug an exterior SSD in.