It’s also the most affordable way to dip your toe into the brave new world of Apple Silicon, even though it’s powered by the exact same chip found in the much more expensive MacBook Pro. The Mac mini (M1, 2020) is the first Mac desktop to receive Apple’s new ARM-based M1 chip.

It is very easy to destroy the MacBook in this process, and that’s a financial coin flip most who enjoy MacBooks just won’t take.Lifewire purchased the Mac mini to evaluate its features and capabilities. In actuality, however, it is unlikely this method will become popular because of the level of skill it takes to successfully pull off mixed with the risk. In that case, the modification also would void the MacBook’s warranty and for non-experts, even making slight adjustments like that are beyond the comfort levels of the average MacBook owner.Īs Engadget says, it’s nice to see that an M1 MacBook is technically more upgradeable than Apple wants you to believe, but given how restrictive the company has been around repair, this seems like a situation it would consider an exploit and if it becomes popular enough, something it could patch out via software or make infeasible due to restricting part availability. Earlier this year, Linus Tech Tips showed that the M1 MacBook Air actually can match - or even beat - the M1 MacBook Pro’s performance with a thermal pad upgrade.

This isn’t the first example of experts tinkering with Apple’s very specific and un-upgradeable design. That said, if the parts are successfully sourced, the previous parts correctly removed, and the new ones properly added, the technicians showed that they successfully expanded the computer from 8GM of memory to 16GB, and the 256GB storage drive was expanded to 1TB.

Not only will you have to properly source parts that are compatible with the system, but you will also have to remove the RAM and SSD chips that are soldered-on - not something most people would recommend. As expected with something like this, the process is not straightforward and full of pitfalls.

2020 mac mini m1 ram upgrade