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Upgrading M4 Mac Mini SSD: Pre-Soldered 2TB Chip Options
- Thread starter ItsAShaunParty
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turbineseaplane
macrumors Penryn
So add a 30% tariff, will it still beat what Apple wants to charge you? that's your answer.
nobullone1964
macrumors 6502
vince22
macrumors 6502a
I was going to wait it out till the end of the year, but due to tariffs uncertainty i purchased it last week from Bresun store (aliexpress) 2TB sandisk, very fast shipping (6 days), just intalled today and its working well.
1TB vs 5TB blackmagic disk test.
nobullone1964
macrumors 6502
This is the 1TB disk I purchased to replace the base 256GB. I hate that these drives' write speeds outperform the read speeds. By the way...Black Magic's test is not the way to properly get a good overall reading. It measures for video performance only.
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More to the point Apple isn't escaping the tariffs, either. How long it will swallow that 30% hit to its markup is another question you have to consider. Unless you are ordering from its dwindling local stocks of stock configuration items, it's going to ship from abroad.
Apple won't pay a 30% markup on the SALE PRICE to the punters they mug. Apple pays a 30% markup on the COST PRICE so you'll see an increase in price of maybe 5-10%. Remember, Apple builds its widgets for about 20% to one third of the sale price to mugs.
Apple has a markup of up to 40%. Any reduction in that is a hit to profits. It will be more than 5-10% or shareholders will have to foot the bill.
I did an iboff pre-order for the end of April shipment. I wasn't sure if the new 8-layer boards will ship from Malaysia, or China, so not sure what the tariff would be yet. Things seem to be changing on a weekly basis, so we will see.
Mac mini pro version is now available, for pre-order. Quite a bit expensive for my taste.
SSD Drive for Mac Mini M4 Pro (10-layers)
m4-ssd.com all ssd have been upgraded to 10-layer pcb This site only ships to US/CA/JP/SG/DE/GB/FR/IT/GR/AU, if you cannot select your address, please visit: https://m4boosthub.com/ Every piece of our module is tested at the factory, but Apple's DFU process is very annoying and can run into all...
store.m4-ssd.com
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I purchased from the same store same capacity. It took 12 days to Germany and after installation (tools were included and fitted perfectly) I can confirm your speed readings.
Just one note for recovering the Mac Mini: I tried with a Mac Book Pro 2020 (w/ Intel & T2 Chip) but failed with the recovery via the Finder window. It needed the Apple Configurator and went through like a charm afterwards.
Thrilled to see the Pro upgrade becoming available.
The value is both tangible and iffy. This is a $1200 upgrade from Apple. Which, of course, is ridiculous. It's "only" $700 from m4-ssd.com - a significant savings but I have no idea if this is a reputable company using quality components with skilled assembly. That is, it's hard to calculate if a $500 savings is worth the potential sketchiness.
Sure would be nice if Apple just charged reasonable, but still very profitable, prices for storage upgrades instead of gimme-your-first-born rates.
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vince22
macrumors 6502a
i felt the same way towards reliability and longevity with this 4 layer board compared to 10 layer apple design but for $180 2TB version when i purchased actually cheaper than an external drive+thunderbolt4 adapter combo, definitely voided my warranty now, no apple care for me anyway, time will tell.
Unless you swapped out the chips on the original SSD board, broke something during the repair, why would you think that the warranty was voided? As has been mentioned multiple times in this thread, if something breaks on your mini (extremely rare, but not entirely impossible as mini’s tend to be much more reliable than MacBooks), just put in the original SSD, restore, and bring back to Apple for warranty work. Just don’t do something dumb like bringing it in for repair with the 3rd party SSD.
The same company (m4-ssd.com) now has the 2TB upgrade for the Mini M4 Pro. But, they want $475 for it. That pricing completely doesn't make sense. The 2 TB upgrade from Apple is $600. I'd sooner just pay Apple the extra $125. Perhaps they're pricing it at $475 to push people to the 4 TB for $700.
smithrh
macrumors 68030
The pricing makes sense in that - as far as I know - they are the sole supplier for non-Apple M4 Mini Pro SSD cards.
Add another competitor or 5 into the mix and watch the pricing change.
Add another competitor or 5 into the mix and watch the pricing change.
While I am also expecting price to drop, but with M4 Pro it may not be dropping as much as the M4, since there is relatively much less demand thus the momentum for competitors will be low. They also took too much time to push the M4 Pro card out, because by now the Mac Studio M4 Max exists, and it is compatible with the M2 Studio card so no new work is needed, which draws even more demand away from the M4 Pro scenario.
Populus
macrumors 604
Yeah, I saw it few hours ago. Seems super simple. However, some people in the comments suggested that this NAND might be less durable than the modules by Apple, because in Amazon (I know these aren’t from Amazon) is full of bad reviews from people complaining that they just stopped working and lost everything.
Yeah, these modules aren’t from Amazon but rather from a company that assures that they source their NAND from the same manufacturers than Apple’s SSD. However, I’m not sure if they ship to Europe, and their warranty is just for 1 year. I plan to keep the machine 8 or 9 years minimum so… I’m afraid I’ll be purchasing the 1TB model from Apple paying the Apple tax.
EugW
macrumors P6
I agree. Even if those NAND chips are sourced from the same manufacturers, that doesn't mean they have been through the same QA process, nor does it guarantee that the manufacturing of the daughter cards is as good either.
However, in my case, I don't have any desire to install one of those third party drives. I have excellent results with my USB 4 / Thunderbolt external SSD enclosures, housing a Kioxia XG8 4 TB and a Samsung 990 Pro 4 TB, both of which have onboard DRAM. With these enclosures, these NVMe drives are identified as NVMe by macOS. (In contrast, such NVMe drives in USB 3 enclosures are identified as USB drives, which occasionally can cause some issues.)
Anybody received their iboff pre-order? I am waiting on the latest 8-layer to ship. They seem to make quality products, so am interested in how well they will perform long term.
turbineseaplane
macrumors Penryn
A good reminder for everybody to have a local Time Machine drive, always
My drive has continued to be flawless for months, but I certainly recognize that anything is possible.
Anyone have the Amazon link? Be curious to read reviews.