M2 Mac Mini Teardown / Disassembly (4K - Up Close) 

Amazing how powerful computers have gotten with such a small footprint. Cool stuff!

Wow! That machine is incredible and very compact for its power! And great video, I love the 4K quality and step-by-step teardown!

Thank you for showing us the teardown video. 7:11 what you pointed to is LPDDR5 SDRAM memory.

Absolutely insane that such a powerful machine is that small.

thank you for doing the tear down of the mac mini.. Outstanding work

Awesome - thanks for sharing, Brandon. My m2 comes in on 5 Feb. Looking forward to it.

Amazing work by you. Thanks for satisfying my curiosity.

Give the man a beer. Great work. Thank you for showing us.

Great video! Now waiting for the m2 Pro variant.

Great teardown thanks 👌

Excellent channel every engineer must watch

Great teardown video, man!

little beast! My base model M1 MBA still serves me well. It's very nice to see things advance so quickly and pleasantly :)

awesome teardown.

This M2 Mac Mini spec just like my 15 inch MacBook Pro bought 11 years ago, 8G RAM and 256GB SSD, it's so nice..

Thank you for sharing. Basically, it’s not upgradable. Miss those 2012 design.

That's so good and useful. Thanks.

THANK YOU IT WORKED. I AM SO HAPPY.

Thanks for taking yours apart so my curiosity doesn't get the best of me and I try to take mine apart! I ordered a M2 with 24GB ram and 1TB storage. I wonder if it still all looks the same? Astounding how compact everything is - going from a 27" 2010 iMac!

Glad you did size comparison in the end, as I was curious on how much that board is bigger than RPi4 board

Thanks for sharing, shame about the ssd mistake but not a big deal

this base model is gonna be my first mac. Should be able to buy it in February. I'm already deep in the apple ecosystem with my iphone and apple tv 4k!

CORRECTION! To the right of the M2 chip are 2X SK hynix H58G56AK6HX052 4 GB LPDDR5 SDRAM memory. There is only one SINGLE NAND chip for storage.

If the antenna is on the bottom and the case it metal, do we need to lift up the Mac mini on the desk to get a better line of site to the antenna?

Non-expandable ram - fine. But non-replaceable drive is not acceptable at all.

Thanks for the video sir! Waiting for M2 Pro version - its heavier and I wonder whats changed comparing to base M2.

Thank you for sharing~

This is a very nice tear down video! Thanks a bunch. I did notice you identified two chips on the board as Solid State "Drives", The two chips on the side of the M2 chip are the Dynamic RAM modules, not the solid state drives you mentioned. I believe The storage chip(s) has/have also been soldered on the board. The two chips mounted to the board near the I/O panel look suspiciously like 128GB solid state chips. Alternatively, Apple could have used a single 256GB chip, which the square chip to the top right could be. Also, another technical detail to note is the Hard Drive does not exist on the inside of the South Bridge, The DRAM and PCI-E are the only communicants at that point. Since PCI-Express is on the North of the South Bridge and South of the North Bridge, it is called Express. Since the DRAM is shared by the CPU and the GPU, the Graphics RAM and the Compute RAM are the same chips, The GPU is on the north bridge and the Unified Memory is the only thing between the North and South bridges.

can't wait for an M2 iphone

Brandon Geekabit: if you get the 1TB drive, what is the NAND count? If you get 16gb does it have 4 4gb scram chips or 2 8gb? If you get 32 GB what is the chip configuration?

Amazing

Do we need to buy a UPS or maybe surge protector considering how small the psu is? For my desktop pc i just plug it straight to the wall without problems for years bc i trust the psu capability and features.

Thank you for the last image of comparison with the iPhone 13

Wonder if m2 pro model used beefier cooling solution.🤔

I think the two black chips beside the M2 are the RAM, and the SSD NAND chip is the silver outside heatsink enclosure

The 16gb version will be my first own mac ever, very nice to learn how it looks on the inside! Indeed there’s a lot of space inside, but I guess the current form factor isn’t an issue for most people

Wow. Thank you.

It looks like there is only 1 slot for the SSD?

fantastic 😍😍😍

I'm new, is the mac mini m2 with 16GB and 512 useful storage space for games? If you have any advice, listen.

good job！

thanks

7:11 Actually that is RAM, not SSD SSD is on the right top of it, something with like a glue around it

Is that BCM57762 chip a BT/WIFI combo?

Thank you for this great job about Mac mini M2. Just a comment about that you said at 7min21, I think it is not the SSD chip but the 2 LPDDR5 chip which provide the Unified Memory. these 2 chips have to be close to the SoC and the SSD chip not. You can see the SSD nand chip upper on the right, it is the large light grey chip with transparent and rectangle border. And upper there is a rectangle space for the second nand chip (used when you order 1TB of SSD). Sadly the marketing of Apple decided with M2 family to use only one SSD chip with 256 & 512 GB configurations. And the performances R&W are affected obviously (/2).

Nice.

the solid state drive is single silver chip up yonder. The black chips on the M2 are RAM modules... that is your 8GB RAM

Amazing 💐💕

What is the other Apple logo chip next to the M2?

Why would they make it smaller? You need some weight and size to stop it tipping and for the air grille and inputs/outputs? I don’t get why it needs to be smaller or what benefit being smaller would be? The Mac mini is essentially as small as it needs to be. What would be the pro of it being smaller especially as the pro edition uses the same case. Can you please qualify your statement ?

FINE. THANKS

hdmi 2.0? 4k 60hz, and 2k 120hz or more?

Apple should include an extra ssd slot, that'd be super useful.

Someone knows that new mini still share bandwidth on those 2 c-ports like before?

Hope the 512 SSD version will come with 2 NAND chips. Thanks for the video.

Thanks a lot for the review. What SSD size should one buy in order to have the best SSD R/W performance. If a 512gb has 2 NAND chips and reaches 3000, would 1tb give 6000? Is there anyone there who owns a MM M2 Pro with 1tb to test the speed ?

I am considering purchasing a MacBook." If I choose the "Apple M2 Pro MacBook Pro (Base Model) with 10 core CPU, 16 core GPU and 1TB SSD, will it be 2 chip NAND and will there be any performance degradation?

i give you thumbs up!

For M2 pro Mac mini ,Is it better to have a 1TB version for a “guaranteed” faster SSD compared to 512GB? Thanks!

I migrated from 2007 iMac to iPads and am just now upgrading my desktop to an M2 Mini Pro model to edit photos and video on a new mirrorless camera. Will my old iMac corded KB and Kensington Orbit trackball work or will I need to buy a new wireless KB / Trackball or Magic Mouse?

Always wondered, if I could make a "extension" for an Ipad pro, with reworking and rehousing an M2 MAC MINI with a Pro chip, and give it extra computing power when needed with the usage of Mac Apps and MacOS. oh well.

Very good - Do you think case can be swapped with a 2018 for a black mini m2?

Can u upgrade ram on mac mini m2, 8g to 16g

can you tell what is name of wi-fi Module in it?

what's storage size on this unit?

Woww. That’s amazing. I wonder can you put those parts back easily ? Does it void the warranty? Thank you.

Louder!

4k and normalized to something like -20 dB FS. Is it really that hard to normalize sound?

It is like one of those Chinese box puzzles

Apple is really going in right direction! Love the compact size

I cannot wait for linux to be fully usable with Apple "M" series chips

I like the build quality of Apple...

Are you sure what you identified as the Solid State Drives are correct? Max Tech identified the SSDs as being the chip right next to your middle finger at 7:18 and the place for a second SSD right above it suggesting the base model drive speed will be much slower with one 256GB SSD rather than two 128GB SSDs that were on the M1 Mac mini. If, however, you are correct then that is clearly 2 chips. Perhaps that is the 8GBs of ram, however.

7:10 it is RAM, SSD is the silver one, outside EMI shield

hello im wonderig what hepend to video from 3.20 to 3:31. :)

Where is the intake? I got one of these and I see no intake on the bottom.

the question is why is the m1 not in in the iphone

Only Apple can make a beautiful inside design.

At 3:25 you can see that he turned off the power only after he unscrewed the main board and then cut everything off at the installation as if he had done everything right

will I be able to upgrade the RAM ?

Very cool. As expected, only one Nand. Oh well. Saved $100 because of that. I would’ve liked to have seen a FULL tear down, meaning every part removed from the aluminum casing, as I was hoping to do a custom space gray anodizing. Now I’m wondering if the intel space gray casing could be swapped instead. 🤔

Such a small footprint but I can't fit it in my shoe just yet. Maybe someday!

@Brandon Geekabit Are you sure even in the 2023 Mac Mini the 256 GB SSD has only one Nand Chip where as the 512 GB SSD has two ?

Very impressive. I guess Pro version is not much bigger. So much power in so small footprint ...

there is USB type A (2)…..do i need an adapter if i have USB 3 thanks

Obviously we can see the empty slot for the nand chip. So only 1 chip is there....

I use ddr5 ram based on sk Hynix

Given just how much empty space there is, its frustrating that there STILL soldering the ssd to the board.

that's the ram to the right of the cip, i think.

on the right of the Apple CPU is the RAM, not "solid state drives" those are further away on the right edge of the PCB, ...

wait where is the ram stick

They modified the base model M2 Mac mini's SSD arrangement, just like what they did with MacBook Air M2 and 13" MacBook Pro M2 (I can't verify if that's the same case with the 14" and 16" MacBook Pro M2 Pro and Max.) All the base models use a single NAND SSD chip. DO NOT buy the base model if read/write speeds matter to your workflow. Otherwise if you're just a casual (non-technical) user go for it. The slower SSDs won't matter to you.

Things on the right it’s ram chips

Wonder how cheap these are to produce.

That's the memory on the soc. Not the ssd.

the good news from this video is. we cannot upgrade ssd and memory... for those who have already bought. Enjoy this extraordinary innovation

Can I add ram and ssd by myself?

It is comparable for 4k video editing

The pro version has dbl the mobo size.

MacMini have gone a very long way. This is one of the simplest architecture build from Apple.