M1 Mac mini teardown

[Kcetech1]

What makes you think that? The M1 has more PCIe lanes available- so it's more upgradable by far.

Because none of the lanes are accessible by any ports to users, or connectors on the board. Rpi at least has some lanes accessible on the ribbon port plus the GPIO pins.

 

[JoeInMilwaukee]

Perhaps the PRAM battery is replaceable.

 

[mikeboss]

[Teardown] Late 2020 Mac mini: Apple Silicon M1, Thunderbolt...

As soon as the M1 Mac mini arrived, I tore it down to confirm a few things Apple didn't make clear. All M1 Macs come with Thunderbolt 4 ports. I prepa...

egpu.io

 

[Kaida]

nice! thanks for the links! it seems the mini could have been designed smaller but they kept the same size... probably pressure from mac mini colo to use the same form factor for their racks haha

 

[blackcrayon]

Because none of the lanes are accessible by any ports to users, or connectors on the board. Rpi at least has some lanes accessible on the ribbon port plus the GPIO pins.

None of the lanes? Not the ones feeding the USB4/Thunderbolt ports?

 

[i486dx2-66]

That’s just seems to be what they would do. Smaller box, cheaper shipping, more impressive to consumers, etc. It’s not like Apple to leave empty space in a device.

Fewer resources and raw materials used in production too.

And while companies like Macminicolo appreciate a stable form factor.... a reduction in size/volume by half would be a welcomed step-change.

 

[lachev]

I am wondering whether upgrade-ability might come either from dead higher capacity models or third-party clones and resoldering chips. Sort of like how upgrading iPhones has been achieved and is pretty mainstream in China.

EDIT: RAM is integrated in the SOC :|

 

[yurc]

Fewer resources and raw materials used in production too.

And while companies like Macminicolo appreciate a stable form factor.... a reduction in size/volume by half would be a welcomed step-change.

Coming from tower workstations, Mac mini is already small, why urge to compress Mini to smaller one? Do you want to make it as small as Raspberry Pi?

Empty extra room gained because the M1 Mac Mini has less components than Intel one, but that's not bad news. Instead extra empty space can be used in good ways when Apple updates Mini with faster M2 or whatever it's called, and in case need beefier heatsink, that's no problem. Same with adding extra components.

I think only iMac, which need redesign, which should be imminent for next year, but I prefer to leave the mini untouched. Not all devices need to be thinned.

 

[LeeW]

We know this is just a 1st gen in a familiar package to get the ball rolling. Will they reduce the size of the device next or will a more powerful MM appear that fills up space currently available? Apple know, we will need to wait and find out.

But ultimately who cares, it's interesting to see what is in there compared to before but its the operation that matters for the majority.

Given all the user testing and subsequent results, they are a big leap forward in many ways. Appreciate there are some who need Bootcamp and whatever but I wouldn't want an older intel MM now. But my use case doesn't need one.

Roll on Monday when my new device arrives.