New Mac Mini Has Two Storage Downsides, Including Unremovable SSD

As confirmed by the website "Expand Mac mini," NAND retention successful the caller Mac mini models with the M6 and M5 Pro chips is soldered to the logic board, whereas the erstwhile models with the M4 and M4 Pro chips person removable retention that tin beryllium upgraded.


In different words, the caller Mac mini does not enactment aftermarket retention upgrades.

"Expand Mac mini" offers plug-and-play SSD modules that are functionally equivalent to Apple's proprietary modules, yet hundreds of dollars cheaper. As a result, customers were capable to prevention a important magnitude of wealth by configuring their Mac mini with the minimum 256GB capableness that was disposable connected Apple's online store and aboriginal installing a higher-capacity aftermarket module. With the caller models, that is nary longer possible.

"We volition support looking for an opening, but enactment for the M6 and M5 Pro present looks unlikely," the "Expand Mac mini" website said, successful a blog post.

Mac mini models with the M1 spot and M2/M2 Pro chips besides had NAND soldered to the logic board, truthful the M4/M4 Pro configurations having removable retention has proven to beryllium a one-off objection for now. Apple has not commented connected the reversal.

In addition, each caller Mac mini configurations with 256GB of retention reportedly person a azygous NAND chip, alternatively than a brace of 128GB chips. As a result, 256GB configurations person slower SSD speeds compared to configurations with 512GB of retention oregon much that bash person dual NAND chips, according to AAPL Ch.'s testing with Blackmagic's Disk Speed Test benchmark tool.



Mac mini Configuration
Read Speed
Write Speed

M6, 512GB	6,371.5 MB/s	6,577.4 MB/s
M6, 256GB	3,216.8 MB/s	3,000.2 MB/s
M4, 256GB	2,792.5 MB/s	2,014.5 MB/s

The caller 256GB model's Disk Speed Test scores were astir fractional that of models with 512GB of retention oregon more. The mean lawsuit is improbable to announcement the difference, but powerfulness users volition admit knowing that they request to opt for astatine slightest 512GB of retention successful bid to execute the fastest SSD speeds possible.

Fortunately, adjacent with 256GB of storage, it appears that the caller Mac mini has meaningfully faster SSD speeds compared to the erstwhile 256GB model.

Mac mini models with M2/M2 Pro and 256GB of retention also had a azygous NAND chip, truthful the M4/M4 Pro configurations proved to beryllium a one-off objection for this too.
This article, "New Mac Mini Has Two Storage Downsides, Including Unremovable SSD" archetypal appeared connected MacRumors.com

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