Apple's New Mac Mini Features Replaceable SSD Modules but with a Serial Number Bind—Expansion Possible Through Chip Swap

Since yesterday, several professional repair shops have released teardown videos of the new Mac Mini (M4), revealing that Apple has used a separate solid-state drive module, similar to an M.2 SSD, which can be plugged in and out.

The bad news is that Apple's hardware uses serial numbers for binding authentication, making it useless to directly replace the solid-state drive. The good news is that previous expansion methods are still viable.

That is, continuing to use the solid-state drive module but replacing the storage chip on it. After testing by repair shops using Apple's original chips, the read and write speeds were around 2200MB/s for the 16GB+256GB model. By replacing the storage chip, it was successfully expanded to 2TB, and the read and write speeds were also increased to 2900MB/s.

This read and write speed is still far behind the current PCIe 5.0 SSDs, but Apple's hardware does not use traditional SSD cache chip control. Instead, it is directly controlled by the core M4 chip, making it difficult to significantly improve the hard drive's read and write speeds.

Considering Apple's high prices for storage chips, expanding storage by replacing the storage chip can indeed save a lot of expenses. Therefore, buying the lowest configuration model and then paying extra to replace the storage chip might be a good choice.

However, a word of caution is advised when purchasing from certain online marketplaces, especially for deals that seem too good to be true for the 16GB+2TB model.

These incredibly low-priced models might very well be machines that have been manually expanded, posing as brand new and unmodified. While this can be a very profitable business for traders, it could result in consumers being taken advantage of.

Lastly, a question that surely many users will ask: since the SSD can be expanded, is it possible to expand the memory as well? Unfortunately, that's not possible. Apple uses unified memory encapsulated within the chip, so replacing the memory is out of the question.

Fortunately, this year's new Mac Mini models have been upgraded to 16GB of memory, which should be more than enough for those looking to use it as a soft router, right?