RAM upgrade Mac Mini 2018

[mVICm]

Hi,

I'm thinking about upgrading myself the memory of my Mic Mini 2018. As I could see in some videos it's not too difficult to do it by myself, but in the other hand, I read a lot of people about how they broke the tiny fan, wifi and led sockets that seems to be too weak.

My question for the people who already successfully upgraded their mac mini is if is that easy to break this sockets.

I thought also to go to a Apple Store after the isolation to ask how much it would cost. I know that If I were asked for the upgrade before I bought it, it would cost about $200 for 16GB of RAM, but I don't know if it's possible that they upgrade the RAM after I already bought it, and how much would it cost.

Someone got the mac mini upgraded by the Apple Store after the purchase?

Thanks!!

 

[Cookie18]

As far as I know Apple stores won’t upgrade it for you but Apple authorised retailers can. I got a quote from one in Europe to install an SSD in my iMac, they wanted €250. Obviously it’s a very different upgrade but that might give you a ballpark idea of what they could charge. Obviously I just did it myself haha.

The Mac Mini RAM upgrade sounds difficult because of what you have to do but it really isn’t. I did it the first time last week and it took about 30 minutes. Just make sure to read every direction twice before committing to anything. It’s really easy if you follow the ifixit guide.

 

[LogicalVue]

I upgraded mine to 64GB and I didn’t find it all that difficult. It took about 30 minutes start to finish. Just go slowly and have the correct tools (I have an iFixit kit).

 

[ejin222]

I upgraded from 8 gb to 32 gb this past week. I ordered the tool kit from iFixit and the ram from Crucial. Wasn’t hard at all to do. The only place I got stuck was putting the ram guards back on for fear of breaking the ram sticks. Other than that, I would say 20 mins top?

 

[Boyd01]

Aside from the difficulty with performing the installation yourself, there's also a concern that if you have some kind of problem in the future, Apple might say the cause is the third party memory. I think we've already seen some reports of this.

 

[D.T.]

Aside from the difficulty with performing the installation yourself, there's also a concern that if you have some kind of problem in the future, Apple might say the cause is the third party memory. I think we've already seen some reports of this.

Yeah, I'm a tinkerer, dabble with all sort of electronics and whatnot, I love DIY'ing to save some money (not even the money so much as just the satisfaction), and I'm reasonably sure I could've done a RAM upgrade without breaking anything. I did RAM updates and an HDD > SSD swap in a couple of previous Minis (that weren't as "business critical").

However, there's still that off chance something could have happened - but more to your point - I wanted AC (so cheap on a Mini) for 3 years of no worry, and I wasn't confident about buying it on a machine with 3rd party RAM. I also didn't want to think about having to swap it back out (every open/swap is a change to damage something).

So for me, for a business/work machine, where I wanted 3 years, low/no hassle, I chose to go 32GB OEM, plus AC+ (even bought the latter at like 55-ish days, so got another 2 months "free" ).

In the grand scheme of things, I will wind up spending ~$170/year over the 3 years (AC + OEM RAM vs. 3rd Party difference), which is trivial considering the revenue this machine generates. I realize that's very much a YMMV situation, but thought I'd just share my perspective on going OEM.

 

[mVICm]

I wasn't concerned about to lose the warranty, but then I started to see people complaining about bricks after software upgrades... so that point is something to take in mind. The problem is if there are no official retailers that accept to upgrade it. Let's see what's happen

Thanks!!

 

[ztw2002]

My 32gb RAM from iFixit coming this Wednesday, can't wait to do it myself ! Currently have 8gb RAM, wonder how much difference I would get from 32gb.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

My 32gb RAM from iFixit coming this Wednesday, can't wait to do it myself ! Currently have 8gb RAM, wonder how much difference I would get from 32gb.

It's easy, just take your time and you'll be fine. The one bit of advice is that the small motherboard connectors that you need to take off are reconnected by pushing down. It took me awhile to figure that out. I installed 32GB just because I did not want to do it all over again. Everything has been rock solid just buy quality memory sticks and you'll be good to go.

Big difference between macOS running 8GB vs 32GB. You'll be hitting the drive more frequently and you'll see a lot of compressed memory just from running a few Apps. That's where Windows 10 does things better than macOS.

macOS just sitting at the desktop from a cold boot takes around 6.5GB with a 4K display. If you are using a 1080p display around 4.5-5GB and that's without a single App running. Windows 10 Pro uses around 2.2GB of RAM and is more RAM efficient.