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Upgrading Mac Studio storage
- Thread starter gilles_polysoft
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Hi Gilles, if you are still looking for testers please sign me up. I am thinking of writing a python script to simulate large disk usage and auto generate drive health data report that can be send out automatically. let me know if you think its a good idea, maybe we can discuss the parameters of the simulation and test conditions. cheers!Hello,
Sorry for my late reply, very busy with customers at my repair shop...
We have completed 2 of the 3 steps : reverse engineering of M1 Mac Studio boards has been finished, schematics have been done and are working on the final layout of the PCB.
Quantity and quality sourcing of the components (genuine new NANDs and power supply IC) has also been done.
The price of the 4TB cannot ben under €700 (unless you have a European VAT registered business) because the 512GB chips are not exactly half the price of the 1TB chips, and we can only built 4TB modules with 8x 512 chips, it's not possible with 4x 1TB chips at the time.
We may have our first 25 samples in late february, and while I will be testing 3 of them 24 hours a day with 3 Mac studios at my office, I'm okay to give some samples for free to various testers.
Anyone can apply for being part of tester.
I'm pretty confident with both my work and my suppliers because I've been doing NAND upgrades for 2 years now and I have dozens of macs (including the one I'm writing this on) that have been working without a hitch ever since, but I don't think it's reasonable to skip a 2-3 months test period.
Then I may launch either a sale on my website (that need to be refreshed) or a kickstarter.
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Hi,
Yes : based on manufacturing costs which are $60 by card (with only small components but without NANDs and voltage regulators), as of today with actual NANDs market prices I think I could sell cards for the following prices :
- $160 for 1 bare card tested and equipped with small components and voltage regulators
- $400 for 1 card equipped with 2TB of NANDs (4x KICM229)
- $800 for 2 cards equipped with 4TB of NANDs (8x KICM229)
- $960 for 2 cards equipped with 8 TB of NANDs (8x KICM223)
Unfortunately a 4TB config with 1x card and 4x KICM223 would be cheaper but wouldn't work.
Those prices are without shipping and taxes, but for US customers it may be better that I send cards to Collin (@dosdude1) who will be able to equip them with NANDs and sell directly from US.
I may also do a kickstarter although I'll only do that after tests have been successful.
Sounds great Gilles. I am really interested. Do I understand correctly that you need/want to do further testing?
Hello,
Of course, testing is always, always necessary, whatever the product you're working on
The boards were received on Monday, and the electrical/physical tests were carried out over 3 days.
We found a small error in our design with 1 BGA110 NAND test pad incorrectly connected to ground instead of being left NC.
Apart from this single, small issue, which we easily corrected on the prototypes (and will of course on the final boards), all the electrical tests carried out over the last 4 days show perfect behavior, with perfectly stable voltages and signals.
The board works and restores smoothly with Apple Configurator.
We plan to run ageing tests (24/24h write tests) on 2x macstudio of our own, and the beta-testers recruited here (whom I thank) will receive their boards next week and test them themselves in August (after which they can keep the boards).
After this month of testing, and if everything works perfectly, we'll put the cards up for sale, probably via a kickstarter as I have no idea how many people might be interested.
I just came across this wonderful thread. This is splendid, thanks a lot to the OP!
You can order whatever you need for the M2 Mac Studio in the Self Service Repair store ... although still at heavily inflated prices.
What's weird though is that, if I put the SN of my Mac Studio (which game with 512GB SSD), it only shows me the SSD Module of 512GB. How do I see others with higher sizes?
Hello,
at present I have only worked on M1 Mac Studio SSD cards, work on M2 Mac Studio is scheduled to start in september.
As for the Mac Studio M1 cards, after 3 weeks of tests they seem to work pretty well and I've send cards to all testers, who will receive them in a few days.
Result of tests shows :
- 7GB/s read
- 7GB/s write on 1/3 of the disk (SLC cache) and 3GB/s on the last 2/3
- garanteed lifetime of 2TB card is about ~4500TBW, lifetime of 8TB cards is ~16000TBW (real lifetime should be 5x times that).
I read somewhere else that if you have the base model you can only purchase 512GB replacements from repair store. I have a M2 Studio max 2TB SSD. When I put in my S/N it shows me all options 512GB-8TB.
Does anybody know how to determine if my 2TB SSD is (2) 1TB cards or a single 2TB card?
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That's amazing, thanks for the hard work @gilles_polysoft. Really excited and waiting to be able to order a 8TB pair.
I see @dosdude1 already installing them in systems now, nice.
Really great value, except for the 4TB configuration for obvious reasons. Still better than Apple pricing though 😅
Looking forward on the progress for M2 based Mac Studios.
Really great value, except for the 4TB configuration for obvious reasons. Still better than Apple pricing though 😅
Looking forward on the progress for M2 based Mac Studios.
Is it possible to add one card to supplement the original?
i.e. I have the M1 with 1Tb card, could I add another to make it 2Tb?
i.e. I have the M1 with 1Tb card, could I add another to make it 2Tb?
Nope.
Only configurations available from Apple are possible. 2TB is a single NAND board (as are 512GB and 1TB), unfortunately.
You would probably also have to desolder the NAND chips on the existing NAND board to reprogram them 😅
Yes, and then you will need another Mac running Apple Configurator 2 to restore it once the new NAND board is installed.
