Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
M1 Mac RAM and SSD Upgrades Found to Be Possible After Purchase
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Although those slot standards are a hot mess in fairness. I have a couple of PCs running Ubuntu playing the part of "the cloud (tm)" at my house, one of which use M.2 (it has 3 M.2 slots on the Mobo, but the drive only physically and logically fits into one of them - the other hosts a wifi adapter or some craziness). We know the the Mini at least can have dim slots in the current form factor (albeit getting to those was akin to doing open heart surgery in the back of a rally car running the Paris-dakar rally...) All of my 2019 Mac minis have 32gb+ that I upgraded- thanks to OWC's kit I have all the stupid torx drivers for that machine and the right spudgers...What if we invented DIMM slots and M.2 connectors 🤔
I would assume the M1 supports certain RAM and HD configurations. As long as you are within these specs, any sold variant (e.g. 8GB RAM or 16GB, 256GB/512GB/1TB HD) would be supported.
So my guess is, if you purchase the lowest specs, you may in fact be able to upgrade to the highest sold spec.
Yet it may be difficult to upgrade beyond, i.e. to 64GB of RAM or 2TB HDs.
That may in fact be blocked by the M1.
So my guess is, if you purchase the lowest specs, you may in fact be able to upgrade to the highest sold spec.
Yet it may be difficult to upgrade beyond, i.e. to 64GB of RAM or 2TB HDs.
That may in fact be blocked by the M1.
This is extremely misleading, as if people havent been upgrading soldered memory for decades...
This had been possible on just about every consumer device; if there are matching specc'd chips with increased capacity, it is most likely possible to swap the chip, albeit with degree of difficulty.
This had been possible on just about every consumer device; if there are matching specc'd chips with increased capacity, it is most likely possible to swap the chip, albeit with degree of difficulty.
I was looking at my 2017 MBP and wondering the same thing. Everything is soldered and nothing is upgradable.
I agree there should be a distinction among levels of difficulty, but the title is accurate.
It proves the chips are not firmware locked to the particular board. It also shows potential for repair shops (like Rossmann Repair Group!) to offer upgrades to the machines people bring in to fix.
Don't tell Apple. They will start serial coding their chips and then upgrades will no longer be possible.
Nothing is impossible, people just haven't tried hard enough yet
( eg: Time Travel)
I think that this M1 setup is how they are getting the speed that people are claiming to have. Less connector/contact resistance, Michael shorter electron path. If going from a 5NM CPU to a 4NM design makes enough performance difference to make the R&D worth it than getting rid copper circuit board traces that are inches is important.What if we invented DIMM slots and M.2 connectors 🤔
Me, after reading the title of the article: "Cool, maybe I'll try this"
Me, after looking at the images in the article: "Absolutely no way I'm going anywhere near this"
Me, after looking at the images in the article: "Absolutely no way I'm going anywhere near this"
I doubt Ifixit is gonna sell a kit for this one.
So this means unless Apple made official BTO available in all markets, there will be M1 Macs using fake parts. In my country, we don't have BTO option, so we can only buy the 8GB RAM M1 Macs with the base storage.
Apple, you cannot have your cake and eat it too without actually bake the cake. You cannot make it impossible for users to upgrade RAM and storage while make it impossible for people to buy higher options.
Apple, you cannot have your cake and eat it too without actually bake the cake. You cannot make it impossible for users to upgrade RAM and storage while make it impossible for people to buy higher options.
I wouldn't mess with it, especially with how affordable the M1 Macs are right now. However, can't wrap my head around why the mini wasn't offered with 10Gb Ethernet, and the Intel model can still be had with this option? Argh. All of my other gear is 10GBe, and yes you can realize speeds well above 1Gb when you're working with RAID arrays and PCIe storage! I'm sure it will come with the first hardware update, but still.
Well, of course.
Just like how Apple could have not soldered the memory or storage on prior generations of iMacs and notebooks, but they chose not to because it's more profitable for them to sell the memory and storage upgrades. It also shortens the useful life of the machine by preventing people from doing user upgrades and repairs.
Everything Apple does revolves around their bottom line.
Until now, I never searched how to DIY with soldered RAM but there are some YT videos where Chinese guys do such things with older MBAs!
I think some of this is missing the point, having those components directly mounted to the M1 like that is probably allowing Apple to sidestep some of the overhead associated with a memory bus that has to support a wide range of modules and also there are probably some benefits in terms of timings.
A poster pointed out folks have been replacing soldered on memory for a long time but this looks like a particularly high density ball grid array device and that's way beyond the skill factor and courage of many to have a go at.
A poster pointed out folks have been replacing soldered on memory for a long time but this looks like a particularly high density ball grid array device and that's way beyond the skill factor and courage of many to have a go at.
If I can solder a few jumpers to overclock a g3 in the original iBook, I am sure I can resolder a micro BGA. No problem!
People are obssesed with wanting to upgrade mobile computers. Just buy what you need and forget about it. Guess what I can't upgrade my £3000 hi-fi speakers, my £1400 HD 800 S headphones, my £800 headphone amp, my UAD Apollo DAC, my iPad Pro, my iPhone, my £4000 OLED TV, my PS5, my Xbox One X, the vacuum, the Apple TV, the satellite box, my wifes Dyson hair dryer, the gym equipment - basically I can't upgrade any other electrical item I own, many costs thousands more than an M1 MacBook and i'm not bothered about it.
Some ppl will just never be satisfied. I think they did this for bragging rights. I don’t see how you get warranty support from Apple after doing such a hack
That's exactly what these Chinese guys did. They replaced the Hynix NVM chips with ones from a different manufacturer (WD), so they must be pretty standardized.