Mac Mini Teardown Reveals User-Upgradable RAM, But Soldered Down CPU and Storage (macrumors.com)

iFixit has released their teardown of the new Mac mini, providing a look inside the portable desktop computer. Some of the notable findings include user-upgradable RAM and soldered CPU and SSD. Mac Rumors reports: While the RAM in the previous-gen Mac mini from 2014 was soldered to the logic board, the new Mac mini has user-upgradeable RAM, as discovered earlier this week. As seen in older iMacs, the RAM is protected by a perforated shield that allows the memory modules to operate at a high frequency of 2666 MHz without interfering with other device functions, according to iFixit. To upgrade the RAM, the shield can be removed by unfastening four Torx screws.

Other silicon on the logic board of this particular Mac mini includes the Apple T2 security chip, a 3.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i3 processor, Intel UHD Graphics 630, 128GB of flash storage from Toshiba, an Intel JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 controller, and a Gigabit Ethernet controller from Broadcom. Despite the good news about the RAM, the CPU and SSD are soldered to the logic board, as are many ports, so this isn't a truly modular Mac mini. iFixit awarded the new Mac mini a repairability score of 6/10, with 10 being the easiest to repair, topping the latest MacBook Air, MacBook, MacBook Pro, iMac, and iMac Pro, and trailing only the 2013 Mac Pro.

Comments

Soldered CPU?

[TheFakeTimCook]

There might be a point to be made regarding the SSD; but aren't we getting a bit ridiculous, expecting a socketed CPU in a computer the size of a ham sandwich?

Re:Soldered CPU?

[Selur]

both cpu and ssd soldering have only one goal: to make money
simply look at what premium prices apple charges for ssds and ram,...

Re:Soldered CPU?

[DNS-and-BIND]

Depends on if you think the Right to Repair is important.

Re:Soldered CPU?

[Tough Love]

If you actually want to do something with it, Mini-ITX makes a lot more sense, lots of AM4/Ryzen motherboards available for cheap. Stick in a 2600 for a highly respectable compact PC.

Re:Soldered CPU?

[geekmux]

There might be a point to be made regarding the SSD; but aren't we getting a bit ridiculous, expecting a socketed CPU in a computer the size of a ham sandwich?

"Ridiculous" left conversations about Apple hardware long ago. Apple went right past Ludicrous (too "Tesla-y") and went straight to Asinine mode in the last few years, and dismissive attitudes are why we now have soldered CPUs. Soon, people will be dismissing soldered hard drives and memory as "expected", and this mentality will infect every other company selling hardware.

A top-of-the-line Mac Mini (that still had user-replaceable storage and memory) was barely over $1000 in 2012. A top-of-the-line Mac Mini is now over $4000, and Apple labels this as their "entry-level" model. Speaking of memory upgrades, that'll cost you $1400 for 64GB of Apple memory. You've got to be fucking kidding me. If the CPI was tied to this company's profit margins, millionaire would describe poverty.

Not sure what I despise more; Apple's greed, or the consumers who demand it.

Re:Soldered CPU?

[gtall]

Wow! And you say Apple is trying to make money? Those bastards!!

Re: Soldered CPU?

[blindseer]

And consumers don't give a shit about reliability. If they did, they would demand their most expensive electronic investment (smartphones) have user-replaceable batteries to make them last more than a fucking year or two.

I doubt people are buying new phones every year or two because the battery is losing capacity. I'm guessing it's because they simply wanted a phone with more features. You are probably right about people not being concerned about the phone being reliable as they buy a phone knowing in advance they'll just trade it in for a new one next year.

I suspect that phone makers stopped offering user replaceable batteries because few people demanded them. There was a time when phones with replaceable batteries were on the market at the same time as phones without replaceable batteries. I'm guessing the phones without user replaceable batteries simply sold better. It probably didn't help that phones rarely used any common battery type anyway. By the time a battery needed replacement the cost of a new battery wasn't worth keeping the phone when a new phone comes with a new battery.

If you don't like paying Apple prices then don't buy them.

Re: Soldered CPU?

[damnbunni]

Do you have a source for 32GB DDR-4 SO-DIMMs for less than $700 each?

Because I can't find any for sale at all, much less find them for less than Apple is charging.

Re:Soldered CPU?

[serviscope_minor]

The "top-of-the-line" Mac Mini is so expensive because it can be upgraded to 64 GB Ram / 2TB SSD.

No it's expensive because they can overcharge for the 64GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD.

It took a couple of minutes on google to find a pair of 32GB sodimms of the right frequenct for about $650. A really good 2TB ssd is similar.

and there are four thunderbolt parts where you can attach the fastest and biggest SSD drives you can find.

It's not so much mini at that point as mini-but-with-a-bunch-of-shite-plugged-in.

Re:Soldered CPU?

[UnknowingFool]

Yes but mini-ITX is larger than the ham sandwich size that the OP mentioned.

Re: Soldered CPU?

[Jeremi]

And consumers don't give a shit about reliability. If they did, they would demand their most expensive electronic investment (smartphones) have user-replaceable batteries to make them last more than a fucking year or two.

Users do care about reliability -- they just define "reliability" differently than you do.

What users want (and generally, these days, get) is a phone that reliably wakes up whenever they want it to, does the things they want to do quickly and without fuss, and doesn't run out of battery before they put it on its charger and go back to sleep.

If the phone's battery starts to wear after 3-5 years and has diminished capacity, that's fine -- they don't see that as "unreliability", because they knew in advance that would happen and therefore were able to plan for it. So when limited battery life starts to bug them, they simply either get the battery replaced, or upgrade to a newer model.

If you think users are using their phones wrong, or defining the word "reliability" wrong, you're free to say so; but by the same token they are free to ignore you, because their solutions are working fine for them.

Re:Soldered CPU?

[ElitistWhiner]

both cpu and ssd soldering have only one goal: to make money

Not so fast. ALL my failures have been portability, misuse and abuse related. Reliability is tantamount and no computer manufacturer exceeds Apple's reliability. That's right on target with soldered down. I concede that soldered CPU is throwaway motherboard should it should fail. BUT since 1975 I've never experienced a CPU failure over the span of mainframe, mini, desktop, laptop nor iDevice.

Re:Soldered CPU?

[barc0001]

There's a difference between a company making an honest amount of money, and a company gouging their customer base. Looking at Apple Canada's site today (because I'm in Canada) I see that going from 128GB of storage to 256GB on the new Mini Apple is charging $240 CDN. Like fuck right off - dozens of brand new 256GB m2 SSDs on newegg.ca are selling for between $100-$120. For the whole 256GB, not an "upgrade". Apple is making at least a $180 of pure profit off that $240. That's horseshit.

non-rotating rust

[epine]

It's not like SSDs naturally degrade during their service life by sticking their thumb into a high voltage socket every time you press the "erase" button.

And it's not like the mysterious T2 security chip couldn't prevent you from booting into a future macOS from external media if Apple decides the obsolescence message isn't penetrating your thick skull.

Trust, but keep replacement parts close to hand in a desk drawer.

Dear Moron Apple designer

[thogard]

Non-removable storage is a deal killer. I don't know what gets stored on local computers so it MUST to be wiped before it goes off site for repair.

This means I'm not going to be buying any of these. We have been waiting for years to replace some of the older minis and now I have to figure out what I'm going to do for a replacement. For now banning new Apple stuff from the company will be the policy.

Don't you have to comply with any sort of security polices at Apple?

Re:Dear Moron Apple designer

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't mean Apple can't decode the data anyway. Every government in the world is trying to make it a legal requirement to do so and building a new chip without that feature could be a billion dollar mistake. I suspect there is already a way to backdoor in the thing.

Until someone pulls the chips off and shows what is on them, I'm not convinced.

A simple M.2 port would have fixed this problem.

Re:Dear Moron Apple designer

[blindseer]

The entire idea behind the PC or "personal computer" was that the user can exchange parts.

No, that's not the entire idea.

The idea behind a personal computer was a computer small and inexpensive enough for a person to own. Before the personal computer they were very large and very expensive. Early personal computers were not much more than a video game console with a keyboard. The only parts you could exchange, if you could call it that, was a ROM cartridge. Not only was the RAM soldered to the motherboard but the keyboard was integral to the unit. If you didn't like the keyboard then you simply had to deal with it. The CPU was soldered down, and if you wanted storage other than what came with it then you needed to buy some external accessory that plugged into it.

There were some very interesting "hacks" to add on to these early personal computers. I can recall upgrades that would clip on top of the existing chips on the board and somehow bypass the chip it clipped onto. People would take soldering irons to their PC to remove chips and replace them with something faster, stronger, and higher.

There was a subculture in this PC community of people that would exchange parts, which certainly grew after PC makers encouraged this with computers that had expansion slots and sockets. This meant people no longer had to solder to exchange parts. Outside of this subculture the average PC owner was not likely to open the case of their PC.

Here's what the average PC owner wants more than the ability to exchange parts, they want the computer to work. Parts stuck in sockets and slots are less reliable than soldered down parts.

I'm afraid we've been marching closer and closer to the death of the consumer PC and this is just another warning shot.

No, we've been marching closer to the personal computer as an appliance. Do you get yourself worked up that your dishwasher or clothes dryer does not have user serviceable parts? Way back in the day this might have been the norm but then in those days these appliances were far less reliable. I remember seeing someone highlight an appliance advert from the 1950s, in the advert they prided themselves on needing only 3 service calls in 5 years. Today this would be considered unacceptable junk. I remember computers needing this kind of service, where modem cards would need replacing from taking a voltage spike from the phone line, and people often expected to swap out dead hard drives. Computers are appliances again, which is really what many people want.

Means more $$$$ for them.

Of course it does! You think these computer makers are selling computers out of the goodness of their hearts? No, they do it to make money. It turns out that selling reliable computers at a low price makes them more money than unreliable computers with user replaceable parts.

Computers are for computing, not for swapping parts. If you want to take stuff apart and put it together again then I suggest buying some Lego Blocks.

Re:Dear Moron Apple designer

[tlhIngan]

I think the problem was discovered with the iMacs - they had removable storage. Except they were not really removable.

As in, you couldn't take the storage media (it's actually raw flash) and put it in another iMac - it just wouldn't work. You see, the T1/T2 chip is also the SSD controller with the secure enclave and thus, the encryption keys.

So offering a removable module doesn't really do you any good - you certainly can't stick it in any other machine to recover your data because the security key is stored in the T1/T2 chip.

And yes, the T1/T2 chip uses PCIe for the SSD interface.

Re:Dear Moron Apple designer

[SvnLyrBrto]

> So if you do buy a Mac Mini and it goes bad, just
> remove the SSD from the motherboard yourself
> (using a blowtorch and pruning shears), then re-
> insert the motherboard and send it out for repair --
> the result will be the same and your data won't leave
> your building.

Not that you should count on it if you have business data that falls under a compliance regime; or if you're just personally very paranoid. But Apple wipes the storage of any Mac or iDevice they depot for repairs. The do not, will not, and can not, do data recovery; not even if you go in begging and pleading that they pull those baby photos or whatever off the iPhone you dropped and smashed up. If you don't have backups, you're just SOL (and pretty stupid, as well).

Re:Dear Moron Apple designer

[Kjella]

Here's what the average PC owner wants more than the ability to exchange parts, they want the computer to work. Parts stuck in sockets and slots are less reliable than soldered down parts.

I'm 99.9% sure that's bullshit otherwise servers would be the first to have soldered parts, not laptops. It's all about cost. Lower production cost and not dealing with support costs because people meddled with it, no logistics for parts, no repair instructions or tools. A lot of devices like the Surface Laptop 2 that got a 0/10 score by iFixit is clearly not designed to be repaired by anyone, including Microsoft. Inside warranty if it breaks they replace it, outside warranty you're shit out of luck.

Computers are appliances again, which is really what many people want.

Actually they're going one step past that, the computer is just the terminal to access your data. Your iPhone syncs everything to iCloud, if your phone breaks just grab another and sync it back up. Steam is the same, by default you sync your save games online so just log into another computer and pick up where you left off. Your local HDD is just a cache to the cloud...

I'm counting 28 mainboard versions

[The Optimizer]

Based on the teardown, and fiddling with Apple's online purchase configuration, it looks like they must have 28 different versions of the 201 Mac Mini mainboard.

Options for components soldered onto the mainboard:

3 different CPUs (i3, i5 and i7)

5, 4 and 5 SSD options (128, 256, 512, 1TB and 2TB) depending on the CPU. i5 can't be equipped with 128GB, but i7 can as CPU upgrade from i3

2 different Ethernet NICs ( Gigabit and 10GB )

So ( 5 + 4 + 5 ) * 2 = 28 different sets of components soldered to the mainboard.

Even for Apple, that's a lot of variations. I'm somewhat surprised they didn't go with docketed storage, which would reduced the Mac Mini to 6 different mainboard configurations.

Re:Limited Space

[geekmux]

Compared to the previous model it seems Apple decided to ditch the 2.5" spinner in an effort to give us removable RAM in the same form factor. Let's face it, Apple was never going to increase the thickness of the Mac Mini to allow for both swappable RAM and storage. They only want to make things smaller and thinner.

Uh, hate to point out the obvious, but the dimensions of the 2018 Mac Mini are exactly the same as the 2012 Mac Mini that held two 2.5" hard drives, and had user-replaceable memory (2 slots).

Quite frankly, I'm shocked to find that the memory can be upgraded, but since they're charging consumers $1400 to max out the memory on this model, that's hardly a concession. 95% of consumers can't even spell RAM let alone know how to replace it, so Apple will continue ripping off consumers for memory upgrades.

Storage fumble

[fyngyrz]

The CPU isn't much of an issue for me, as the failure rate of these parts has historically been low. Also, you can configure in a pretty performant CPU considering the size of the mini. It'll cost you, but still.

However, soldering in flash storage — I consider that a form of planned obsolescence. Especially as it is such a small bit of storage.

To make this machine last dependably, an external drive will have to be added, and (at least) all OS and application write targets (like logs, your files, etc.) need to be moved there so that the write rate to the flash is reduced as much as possible. Why? Because when that flash storage dies — and it will if you constantly write to it — the storage is useless, and you're right back to adding an external drive anyway. Better yet, outright make the external drive the boot drive and forget the internal drive exists.

Quite aside from the desk wart problem (so much for a nice, compact computer, one of the mini's real claims to fame), this means both extra cost and inconvenience.

Or IOW, Apple borks the mini again.

Unintentional? I don't think so.

I'm still waiting to see if they produce a Mac Pro worth my money. The trashcan certainly wasn't. That thing is just pitiful, design-wise.

On the plus side, EBay's a veritable gold mine of good Mac Pros from the pre-trashcan era, and I have picked up several of those. A 2010-era 12/24-core Mac Pro has a great case, can run 10.12.6 without problems, and can handle very large workloads. A 64 GB, 12-24-core, graphics-card-having, multiple REMOVABLE drive machine tends to land in the $1000-$2000 range, depending on your patience with auction hunting. For most tasks, that'll do ya. Cost you less up front than one of these minis tricked out to be reasonably powerful, too. You want SSD? Just throw one in a drive tray with an adapter, and Robert's your mother's brother. You want a better graphics card, more monitors? Just add (a) graphic(s) cards. You want to change / resize memory? Go ahead. So easy. You want connectivity? The machine has plenty, and there are card slots, too, and nice cards to go in 'em.

No matter how you slice it

[fyngyrz]

There are more ham sandwich sizes in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.