As confirmed by the “Expand Mac mini” website, the NAND storage in new Mac mini models equipped with the M6 and M5 Pro chips is soldered to the motherboard, while previous models equipped with the M4 and M4 Pro chips have removable storage that can be upgraded.
In other words, the new Mac mini doesn’t support aftermarket storage upgrades.
“Expand Mac mini” offers plug-and-play SSD modules that are functionally equivalent to Apple’s proprietary modules, but hundreds of dollars cheaper. As a result, customers were able to save a lot of money by configuring their Mac mini with the minimum capacity of 256 GB available on Apple’s online store and then installing a larger capacity replacement module. With the new models, this is no longer possible.
“We will continue to look for an opening, but support for the M6 and M5 Pro now seems unlikely,” the “Expand Mac mini” website said in a blog post.
Mac mini models with the M1 chip and M2/M2 Pro chips also had NAND soldered to the motherboard, so the M4/M4 Pro configurations with removable storage proved to be a one-off exception for the time being. Apple has not commented on this reversal.
Additionally, all new Mac mini configurations with 256GB of storage would have a single NAND chip, rather than a pair of 128GB chips. As a result, 256GB configurations have slower SSD read and write speeds than configurations with 512GB of storage or more, according to AAPL Ch.with Blackmagic’s Disk Speed Test benchmark tool.
| Setting up the Mac mini | Reading speed | Write speed |
|---|---|---|
| M6, 512 GB | 6,371.5 MB/s | 6,577.4 MB/s |
| M6, 256 GB | 3,216.8 MB/s | 3000.2 MB/s |
| M4, 256 GB | 2,792.5 MB/s | 2014.5 MB/s |
The new 256GB model’s disk speed test results were about half those of models with 512GB of storage or more. The average customer is unlikely to notice the difference, but power users will appreciate knowing that they need to opt for at least 512GB of storage in order to achieve the fastest SSD speeds possible.
Fortunately, even with 256GB of storage, it appears the new Mac mini has significantly faster SSD speeds than the previous 256GB model.
Mac mini models with M2/M2 Pro and 256GB of storage also had a single NAND chip, so the M4/M4 Pro configurations also proved to be a one-time exception for this.
