Can You Upgrade the 2018 Apple Mac mini?! - RAM Upgrade Tutorial and Teardown

Can you upgrade the RAM, CPU, and SSD in the 2018 Mac mini?

After 4 years of waiting, Apple updated the Mac mini at long last. Is the new model better than the previous Mac mini? How is the internal design—and most importantly—is the cooling assembly good enough to handle the workload you're going to send it or are you going to need thermal paste? Liquid metal? Find all this and more in this Snazzy Labs exclusive Mac mini teardown and RAM replacement tutorial.

[snazzy]

Get stoked for this next week of videos! On Monday, I have an "Ultimate MacBook Showdown" in between the 13" MacBook Pro, 13" MacBook Air, and 12" MacBook. Which one is best for you? Find out soon. Then, get excited for Mac mini benchmarking (hackintosh comparison perhaps 😏) and my thoughts on iPad Pro! Thanks for your continued support. You are all hyper SNAZZY!

[jpotter]

We all forgetting that Snazzy predicted the Pro Display...

[zollotech]

Well done. I like the amount of detail you share in the video.

[mrwriter]

I figured Apple would make it extremely difficult to replace the RAM, given it would be less than half the price to upgrade to the max RAM by doing it yourself compared with upgrading at the Apple online checkout.

[Travel_ID]

1:52 Watching it after WWDC. It does look like an Apple XDR Pro Display 😜

[casperes]

The speaker is for saying "BONG!" on bootup

[Chilupiano]

This is what happens when you are a Mac and PC guy. You tinker with what isn’t supposed to be tinkered with. Love it!

[realroyale]

Me: I wish I had a snazzy labs video to watch

Five minutes later this video comes out

[Flandersned]

Can we take a moment on admiring how beautiful the internal components are? Those grill holes that forms a circle around the Wi-Fi antenna is art. Also that snail shell fan in the middle

[theretroman]

If I may ask the following questions:
- How much RAM can you add? 16, 32, 64 GB?
- What RAM exactly? Max frequency? Model?

Much appreciated.

[avocademy]

*Please build a hackmini that is cheaper and has better performance.*

[markusfuller]

A beautiful looking circuit board but when the SSD dies it cannot be replaced. could that be classed as planned obsolescence ?.

[PhonedarshanVideos]

It looked like a very professional tear down. Unplugging of components were shown very clearly. Thank you for your efforts. Could you please also run a read and write speed test of the new SSD in mac mini ?

[sethalton]

That metal cage that sits above the RAM acts as a Faraday cage to prevent interference.

[DEMENTO]

But can you upgrade the ram without fearing that the t2 chip would block your computer?

[abaracskai]

My disappointment is that the Mac Mini’s didn’t come with the Intel “Skull Canyon” CPU’s that had Vega GPU’s. The would have been better than the on board GPU and that speaker.

[DogsBAwesome]

I think the main problem as with this and MacBooks is the soldered storage, sure it makes it more secure but SSD chips have a lifespan and will eventually fail. As you can't change the chips even if you have mad soldering skills (due to the t2 chip) the mac mini like MacBooks is now a limited life disposable item. I'm not sure if Apple even uses overprovisioning.

[davyb]

they could have easily put an m.2 where that flash storage is... and 800 for 128gb on the base model is a complete joke.

[Heckerschee]

Started watching this channel couple of weeks ago but just realised this is the same channel I used to love to watch AGES ago and then he went to Bolivia and was gone for a while. Amazing that you're still at it Quinn. Keep up the amazing work dude!!

[LightTheUnicorn]

I think the speaker was originally there so they could chime and sound error beeps at boot. The old PowerMac towers even had one, they sounded equally as bad, but better than nothing I guess!

This is nice, shame about non-replaceable storage, but otherwise it's definitely better than the 2014 ones. Great teardown!