Apple’s 2024 Mac mini has a removable SSD, but it’s not easy to upgrade

Apple has unveiled the Mac mini 2024 with upgraded hardware to the M4 Pro. It’s also the smallest mini PC the company currently has in its lineup. While this all sounds great, you’ll have to pay a little more to get a decent amount of storage.

A recent teardown of the Mac mini M4 showed that the SSD was not soldered to the daughterboard. While this would mean that the mini PC’s memory could be upgraded by the user, it’s not that simple. The module is proprietary and similar to the one Apple previously used for Mac Studio and Mac Pro.

So you can’t install any third-party M.2 SSD and get a much more affordable storage upgrade on the Mac mini (Samsung 990 EVO 2TB is currently $129.99 on Amazon). Moreover, as MacRumors points out, it is highly likely that the NAND controller is integrated into the Apple SoC. However, the possibility of some upgrade still exists.

According to user X @ohgkg, repair shops in China were able to upgrade the Mac mini 2024 variant from 256 GB to 2 TB by replacing the NAND chips. This is not something that the average user can do as it requires soldering skills and equipment. So, although it is expensive, it is easier to resort to the SSD modules that Apple sells instead.

Another interesting detail that was revealed as a result of disassembly is that even the basic version of the Mac mini 2024 has an SSD module with two NAND chips. Compared to a 256GB single-chip module, this should result in higher data transfer rates.