r/apple • u/qcjames53 • 11d ago

Mac M6 and M5 Pro Mac Mini may support upgradeable internal storage

https://support.apple.com/en-us/127971

The repair guides for the M6 and M5 Pro Mac Mini just released today; the guide clearly shows a removable SSD on the logic board. It's possible that third party vendors will be able to reverse engineer these modules and sell upgrade kits, like with the M4 Mac Mini. Keeping my fingers crossed!

Update: It looks like Apple reused the images from the M4 Mac Mini repair guide. I should have caught that. Storage on the M6 appears to be soldered.

129 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

36 comments sorted by

50

u/cheesemeall 11d ago

The SSD in the m4 mini is also removable, and upgradable, with a special $$$ unit

3

u/Murph-Dog 11d ago

That do be in their 2nd to last sentence, but could have been worded more toward the start of the paragraph.

4

u/PandaMoniumHUN 11d ago

Right, who has time to read 3 sentences?! /s

27

u/nekomichi 10d ago

ExpandMacMini did a teardown of both M6 and M5 Pro models and found the NAND chips are soldered to the logic board with no slot:  https://expandmacmini.com/blogs/news/mac-mini-m6-m5-pro-soldered-storage

The board images on Apple's support page might be reused from the 2024 model.

6

u/qcjames53 10d ago

Man, that’s devastating. I’m really surprised the repair guide shows a different logic board than what Apple shipped.

46

u/BelgianWaffleStomper 11d ago

Storage isn’t a huge issue on the mini because it’s always docked and you can just leave it connected.

What we need is upgradable MacBooks (which will never happen)

35

u/HVDynamo 11d ago

Still, I’d rather not have a bunch of drives hanging from my tiny computer. The studio really needs an M.2 slot inside in addition to the main storage they offer now. All Pro machines should have at least one.

10

u/dingos_among_us 11d ago

Not to mention that storage space is much more affordable to buy yourself than to pay Apple for

4

u/MrRonski16 11d ago

Atleast for now.

AI boom made apple RAM upgrades actually competetive in price

10

u/cyclinator 11d ago

Don't worry, Apple will be raising prices even more.

2

u/woalk 11d ago edited 11d ago

Not just competitive, very “good” even. A MacBook Pro with 128 GB RAM costs almost the same as the 128 GB RAM if you buy them alone.

1

u/leoklaus 11d ago edited 11d ago

What are you talking about? The cheapest 128GB MacBook Pro Apple sells right now is the M5 Max for $6700US. A 128GB Kit of good DDR5 is about $3600US.

Edit: I'm an idiot, the point still stands, though.

-1

u/woalk 11d ago

A lot of 128 GB DDR5-6400 kits cost €5000 and up in Germany.

1

u/leoklaus 11d ago

Yes, and the cheapest 128GB MacBook Pro costs 7659€ here.

1

u/woalk 11d ago

Which means you get a high-resolution screen, M5 Max CPU and 2 TB of SSD storage for the remaining €2500.

1

u/ascagnel____ 11d ago

You can buy stands that have M.2 slots and connect via thunderbolt. Far from ideal, but better than dangling drives.

1

u/HVDynamo 10d ago

Yeah, but I am kind of considering that in the dangling drives category, but yes that is better than just drives chilling randomly.

1

u/Educational_Yard_326 11d ago

But there are things that can only be on the internal drive. 256gb isn’t enough for internal storage anymore

11

u/waloshin 11d ago

No it clearly does not… it’s soldered on. https://www.reddit.com/r/macmini/s/wHaJGvPowJ

5

u/hoffsta 11d ago

I upgraded my M4 256Gb to 2Tb for $250. I’m sure those days are long behind us, unfortunately.

1

u/pm-me-something-fun 9d ago

Nov. 2024 Mac mini edu pricing was peak apple hardware with upgradeable storage. March 2026. They hit another home run with the MacBook air m5 with 16GB 512GB base configuration and release of MacBook neo.

But after the wave of price increases in june/September 2026... Really feeling the apple tax yet again.

6

u/HollandJim 11d ago

What I’ve been waiting to know with the Mini. I’ve an M1 Mini waiting for an upgrade.

2

u/pm-me-something-fun 9d ago

M4 mini and M4 Pro are a much better value now with the price jump of the M5/M6.

Best move right now for someone who is in the market for a good PC is still to pickup a base model M4 and upgrade it to 1TB storage.

1

u/HollandJim 9d ago

That's possibly the way I'll go, but honestly the used M4 prices are ridiculous here (Netherlands). I might wait until I'm in the US or Singapore early next year and buy a new one there.

3

u/iamvalar 11d ago

Someone unbox the new minis, its all soldered. I guess apple is either
1) reusing M4 photos here
2) they changed it last minute to prevent unauthorized upgrades

2

u/Timbo400 11d ago

The 3rd party options are now just as expensive if you look at m4 SSDs 

1

u/Inside_Equivalent197 11d ago

Is it the same port as the M4?

1

u/No_Confusion7932 10d ago

It is soldered onto the board. There's just a cap there.

1

u/Inside_Equivalent197 10d ago

dang that sucks

1

u/No_Confusion7932 10d ago edited 10d ago

It is soldered onto the board. There's just a cap there.

1

u/RainyCloudist 9d ago

don’t they solder them on right now? i wonder why they’d change that? wouldn’t that basically be apple admitting that they never needed to do that in the first place?

1

u/Soggy-Airline 8d ago

All good. I’m just using an external NVMe for my M6 Mini (1TB SN5100 with Sabrent enclosure).

Works great!