While upgrading my ram from 2 to 4 GB, I accidentally snapped of one of those flimsy little clips inside that hold the ram in place. It now only recognizes one of the ram cards. So I'm still stuck at 2 GB of memory. What can I do? Has this happened to anyone else. HOw much will this cost to have fixed and is it covered under warranty (my mini is 2 weeks old).
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Updated RAM on my new mini and broke the damn thing!
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Your best bet would be to make a genius bar appointment and have them take a look at it. It is considered a user replaceable part now so it's possible the warranty might not be void but that will be up to the genius.
Not to be an a$$ but I don't see how you could have broken the clips, I've replaced the ram in my new mini and also countless other machines and have never broken the clips and they have never felt flimsy or breakable.
Not to be an a$$ but I don't see how you could have broken the clips, I've replaced the ram in my new mini and also countless other machines and have never broken the clips and they have never felt flimsy or breakable.
Not covered under warranty. Apple will still warrant a machine that you've opened, but only as long as you don't break anything while you're in there.
That said, take it to the Genius Bar anyway. They may be nice and fix it for you. Even if not, it may only be a $50 repair, which IMHO would be worth it.
That said, take it to the Genius Bar anyway. They may be nice and fix it for you. Even if not, it may only be a $50 repair, which IMHO would be worth it.
That is my whole point, it must have been defective for it to break as I have heard of very few breaking. It was definitely flimsy, which isn't normal.
Start with polite, which works very well with Apple. You can fall back to argumentative if you have to. Most of people who have done this enough to know what "normal" is work for Apple. Good luck.
No, but Apple's warranty on these machines does not include damage during user servicing. They may fix it for you anyway, but that's not a sure thing.
The lateral SO-DIMM clips don't do much other than to keep the board from coming loose. If only one of both clips are broken, a very tiny drop of cyanoactetate (superglue) can fix the problem. Yes, the warranty will be lost.
Brought the mini in to the genius bar and it was fixed with a piece of tape and it now works fine. If the tape wouldn't have worked the cost to fix would been $600. WTF! Apparently they need to replace the entire mother board to fix the clip. Be very careful when updated RAM....
I just replaced my ram yesterday too and I can't believe how bad this mechanism is made, I almost broke it.
Since we all know that Apple doesn't actually design and manufacture the components inside their products...wouldn't the RAM slots (and clips) just be an industry standard component? I don't see how Jonny Ive had anything to do with this.
I didn't mean it that way. What I meant is that since Apple as well as pretty much every other computer manufacturer use industry standard components inside their computers the clip breaking is probably just an isolated incident. Jonny Ive may have been involved with how everything went together and how it looks, but I doubt he had anything to do with how the RAM slots and their clips were designed as it's an industry standard component.
I was going to say... Bet they don't have replacement clips! Lesson learned, I guess!
Depends if you get a cool genius.
Mine just replaced my iPhone 4 broken screen no questions asked
Mine just replaced my iPhone 4 broken screen no questions asked
I got the same problem, and looked around for fixes on the interwebs. In the end, I smashed a DVD into a third, and put it under the casing, so that the inner part of the DVD holds down the chip. Seems to work fine!
You are correct. While the whole mother board is custom in its shape and component arrangement; the components are all industry standard laptop parts.
With that said, I don't see a way that the clips would break unless extreme force was used or they were already defective which I believe they were. I think they are made from spring steel which is pretty flexible until their bent above threshold (imagine trying to unbend a ball pen's clip).
Not sure what the big deal is. The ram slots of the mini are very similar to those seen on really small laptops. Don't blame the hardware for technical ineptness. Nevery had any issues installing ram on my mac mini but I am a veteran PC builder.
I have had many cases where certian ram models in even full size PC even graphics cards and PCI expansions feel tight when inserting in the slots. The trick is not to force it and place even pressure. But for the mac mini you insert in an angle then slowy and gentally insert with the metal clips spread appart. If you put too mush pressure the plasic will snap. It just means you need more practice installing stuff.
I was able to bend the metal a little bit on the clip but otherwise, those clips were shockingly sturdy. In fact, the clips in older minis were also very sturdy. I'm more than a little shocked that people had trouble with this, particularly how gentle you can be to do the entire ram replacement process.
Same thing happened to me!
I've replaced memory modules hundreds of times (I work in IT). However, when I went to remove the existing memory in my MAC MINI, I noticed a sliver of black plastic that had broken off near one of the spring clips. When I installed a new memory module, a similar sliver of black plastic broke off from the spring clip on the other side of the memory module. The Mac Mini I have is not brand new, and I suspect that the plastic simply became brittle over time. I'll try some of the suggestions here. Thanks.
I've replaced memory modules hundreds of times (I work in IT). However, when I went to remove the existing memory in my MAC MINI, I noticed a sliver of black plastic that had broken off near one of the spring clips. When I installed a new memory module, a similar sliver of black plastic broke off from the spring clip on the other side of the memory module. The Mac Mini I have is not brand new, and I suspect that the plastic simply became brittle over time. I'll try some of the suggestions here. Thanks.
Yeah, somehow my dad's Mid 2010 Mac mini has this issue. Or rather one of the clips is very close to breaking off. Luckily the RAM is maxed out at 8GB and the RAM sticks are still securely inside and recognized, so odds are decent that there'll be no need to remove them and further exacerbate the problem while the machine is being used and in his ownership. Still odd and annoying. Oh well
I guess Apple "solves" this problem with the current Mac minis. :-\
Thanks for letting me know. Although my Mac Mini was sold as technically new, it was the last one in stock as it was the 2012 now discontinued model that was being used as a floor model, So I imagine the plastic had just gotten old. I just got ithe computer and haven't even turned it on yet. All i've done so far is upgrade the RAM and break the clips.
