Transcription
These are not just another M4 Mac minis, because inside they have something Apple doesn't want you to have. This is a specially designed SSD storage; it's removable, ridiculously easy to upgrade, and best of all, no micro-soldering required. But wait, it gets even better, because it's faster, bigger, and cheaper than Apple's SSD. Well, for the M4 Pro, you can upgrade it up to 8 terabyte capacity, but this one is still in the prototype stage, so we're going to set it aside for now.
With this new upgrade kit, you can simply remove Apple's SSD from the port and easily upgrade it to a bigger capacity, like 2 terabytes, within seconds. And now you don't have to risk damaging or modifying the original Apple SSD just to upgrade to 1 TB or 2 TB SSD storage. But we still need to answer this one question: Can this custom SSD storage live up to standard, or even beat Apple's SSD?
Well, at the very beginning of this project, our initial approach was to create an exact one-to-one replica of the original design, mass-produce it through the PCB fabricator, and ultimately distribute them to the end customers. However, since we're not located in China, China, China, China, we had to do an extensive consideration and risk assessment of getting a legal action from the fruit company, and the probability of these clone products being easily confiscated by the authorities. So we finally made a pivotal decision and decided to redesign the entire SSD from the ground up instead, carefully and meticulously arranging each component into our own optimized layout.
By staying true to Apple's original design, we selected all the components to tightly follow Apple's design constraints, as we never ever skip even a single component simply just to reduce cost. Additionally, we deliberately chose a striking red color just to distinguish it further from Apple's counterpart without compromising performance in any way. They're basically the same components on a different layout and color. Then we named this PCB as X94, inspired by one of the subscribers, M. Lastly, we added a small ergonomic handle that looks like an airplane's rudder to enhance grip and facilitate easy installation. As a result, this specially designed SSD matches the performance of Apple's version, while it is entirely legal to manufacture, distribute, and sell in mass production. But we still love to hear what you think about this, so we created this poll on our YouTube profile here, so make sure to leave your comments and we'll read your suggestions there. [Music]
The installation method is pretty straightforward, so you're going to need an M4 Mac Mini to upgrade, and we're going to start to unbox it now. By turning it upside down, we recommend you to use a pair of nice, dry gloves if you're going beyond this point, because we want to make this teardown super clean and spotless, with no traces at all. Apple also released an official guide to open the bottom cover, so we highly recommend you to go through that guide first. Then we're going to go ahead and pull the bottom cover using the suction cup and insert the prying tool to release four clips at each corner of the Mac Mini. Release the power button cable and set the cover aside. Then we will unscrew all the five screws holding the antenna plate. Next, slowly lift the antenna plate and carefully place it on the right side of the chassis. Then unscrew the remaining four screws holding the cooling fan. Rotate the Mac Mini 180° for easy SSD installation. If you are right-handed, then slowly and carefully lift the fan from the left side, minding the fan's flex cable over here, and you have to be extra gentle to not rip this flex cable. Well, we're not removing this flex cable from its port because of adhesive and tape on the cable; you want to make it traceless, right? Now you can remove the T8 screw holding the SSD module in place. Then the module is finally free. Next, you can take our specially designed SSD module and hold the small handle that looks like the airplane's rudder. Then lay the SSD flat and carefully insert the gold pins into the port. Then simply tighten the T8 screw again, and you're ready to reassemble everything back again. But for the sake of this video, we will proceed to the next step just like this, so you can see this is not a fake video.
Next, we're going to need a secondary Mac to resuscitate this Mac Mini to life. Then take the USB-C cable to connect them and make sure they use the center DFU port on the Mac Mini and any port on the host Mac. Next, push and hold the power button, then turn on the power plug of the Mac Mini. This way your Mac Mini will enter DFU mode, and the host Mac will give you the options to restore macOS on the Mac Mini. Just follow the onscreen instructions and let it restore the software. In around 15 minutes, after the macOS successfully restored, you will get a window saying it has been restored to factory settings, so you can set everything else up on the Mac Mini, and you can do whatever you want with this Apple SSD; maybe sell it on eBay or keep it for future use.
Next, we're going to do a simple speed test comparing 2 TB storage with the old 250 GB. So we will disconnect this LCD cable real quick just to show they're not fake and it's not connected to another source. The first test is running on the Blackmagic speed test app with a 1 GB file setting, and you can see the write speed for 2 TB is much faster than the 250 GB size, and the read speed for 2 TB storage is also slightly better than the 250 GB. The highest write speed we ever get is around 4,900 MB per second, and the highest read speed is around 2,900 MB per second. The next test we'll be using the Amorphous DiskMark, running at a 4 GB file setting, and you can see all the read and write metrics for the sequential and random test. So we can see that the 2 TB SSD performs better in any test. Throughout all these benchmarks, we never experienced a hiccup or a system crash even once, because macOS actually sees this custom 2 TB SSD as a native Apple disk. As you click About This Mac and try to navigate to the System Report, click the NVMe tab, then we can clearly see that it says Apple SSD AP248Z with a lot of additional details and secure volumes down there, so you wouldn't have a problem updating to the latest macOS in the future. Furthermore, inside the Macs Fan Control app, you can see the thermal sensor for the 2 TB SSD is working well and showing live temperature as intended, just like the native Apple SSD; it just simply works. So if you want to expand your Mac Mini storage with this 2 TB SSD at a fraction of Apple's price, hit the link below before they're all gone.
But how did we design it to make it work natively? Well, in order for you to build a better SSD and understand its technical design, we need to reverse engineer this Apple SSD first. This is the NAND, where you keep all of your apps and data inside. Then if you look at the NAND's orientation, you can clearly see that the first pin is pointing downward. So from here, you can actually see what the pinout looks like on the board view software. So the PCIe data pins or differential pairs are located at this side of the NAND. Then we can safely estimate that the routing must look like this from the NAND to the gold pins of the port. Now this kind of routing is not bad if you route it properly between the PCB layers, but we decided to optimize it further by flipping the orientation of the NAND. So right now the notch is pointing upward, resulting in shorter trace length for the PCIe data pins, because theoretically less distance means better signal integrity, and we can actually minimize crosstalk from other analog or digital signals. Then we also implemented the curve trace routing to meet the PCIe 4.0 constraints. So we actually designed these curve traces with controlled impedance to meet the 85-ohm requirement in the Apple schematics, as we visualize this design by leaving as the signal moving through the traces, so that your digital signals are not reflected or degraded somewhere inside this transmission lines. Just like the famous quote by Professor Eric Bogatin: "Be the signal, be at one with the signal; we're going to become the signal." We're going to, as my website says, we're going to be the signal.
Next, to stay true to Apple's original design, we identify each and every component on the Apple SSD, then carefully and meticulously arrange each of them to our optimized layout. And the way you want to do that is by deeply studying the requirement for these NAND circuits and carefully selected every component by following the specifications according to this Apple schematic here, whether you should have a set of decoupling capacitors like 20 microfarad and 2.2 microfarad for the NAND power rail, three-terminal capacitors, 4.3 microfarad LC filters, RC filters, strapping and termination resistors, or even desense capacitors with three different values: 1.8 picofarad, 3 picofarad, and 12 picofarad. All capacitors that we chose are either from Murata Electronics or Samsung Electro-Mechanics. Well, you can try to look them up if you don't trust me, but honestly, you don't have to worry about it because we didn't miss a single component, so your mind can be free. With all of that being said, all these support components that you see here must be placed as close as possible to the NAND pins to minimize voltage variation. So you can observe on the actual hardware for Apple SSD that all the support components are located closely around the NANDs, as both of the NANDs are positioned at the same spot on each side of the PCB. Well, I'm pretty sure that this design is within allowable tolerance and it won't cause any issues, but we decided to optimize it further by applying the fan-out design and separating them on their respective layers. This way we can place all the support components like decoupling capacitors, resistors, inductors, and all those LC filters as close as possible to the pins of the NAND. As a result, these support components that you can see on this side of our PCB are designed for the zero NAND on the other side, while the support components that you can see here complement the first NAND on the other side. So we did all these extra details to minimize parasitic inductance, allowing fast transition response as well as improving noise reduction that will ultimately improve stability and performance.
Then one of the viewers asking, what will happen if the capacitors don't follow Apple's spec? Does it still work? Well, honestly, we don't know, but we can try to remove all these support components and try to see whether it's still working or not. So we're going to remove all these caps, LC and RC filters, and everything else inside, then just create a jumper to replace the missing inductors and resistors, then reinstall the module into the port and try to turn it on. Surprise, mother and father, it still works. So you can see all the capacitors are gone, but it still works. Works, but honestly, nobody knows what will happen in the long run. Well, would you still buy this SSD if we cheaped out by skipping all these components? Let us know and leave your comments down below.
And the last piece of the puzzle is the buck converter to supply 2.5 volts to the NAND here. For this one, we carefully picked an IC that has never exploded in our history of MacBook repair, and this IC is designed to power solid-state drives as described in the technical documents here, and this IC is made by Texas Instruments: the TPS62130, 30, not 80. Okay, the TPS62130 is widely used to supply the 2.5-volt power rail to the NAND circuits in older machines like the A2179 MacBook Air 2020 and the A1932 MacBook Air 2019, 2018. This IC powered as many as three NANDs in those MacBook Air models, which also came with 2 TB configurations. So we did the math, and it's very clear that this IC can easily handle just two NANDs on the M4 Mac Mini. Even today, this IC is still in use, powering the PP5V_S2 rail on the newer M1 Pro models as well as powering the 3V3 supply for the SD card IC on the latest Macs, so it's not a bad IC, unlike its stepbrother, the TPS6180, which has made a name for itself blowing up thousands of SSD circuits worldwide. We also didn't go with the initially planned LT8642 by Analog Devices because our PCB fabricator quoted us $20 per IC. So that price for the IC alone would prevent us from creating an affordable SSD for everyone. Plus, we recently received an M1 Pro MacBook Pro with a blown LT8642 for the NAND circuit, and that's definitely a story for another video. So you can have peace of mind knowing this TPS6130 will never fry your SSD. Let us know if you've ever seen a blown TPS6130 before, and we'll consider it for future revisions.
Now to wrap up the video, the only area we cannot outdo Apple is the PCB layer count. With our current budget and project scale, we're only able to produce a six-layer PCB at a thickness of 0.6 mm, compared to Apple's 10-layer PCB at the same thickness. While working on this design from scratch, we found that the whole circuit can technically be wired with just four layers. A four-layer PCB at 0.6 mm thickness is not that expensive, and most PCB fabricators can meet these specifications easily. But here's the problem: the routing gets too congested, forcing us to mix layers between signal, ground, and power planes. When you mix them this way, the return path, or commonly known as ground, cannot be properly designed. As a result, power and signal flowing through the PCB dielectric material will struggle to return directly to the gold pins, causing them to wander across the layers, leading to an issue that is commonly known as electromagnetic interference, or EMI. Surely this layout might actually work in real life, but you'll definitely face EMI issues due to the partly designed return path. That's why we chose to go with a six-layer PCB at 0.6 mm thickness. At this point, the price to create a thin PCB starts to get expensive because most PCB fabricators could not meet these specifications at only 0.6 mm thickness. But since we have additional layers to play with now, the signals are no longer mixed with the power planes, and they're all able to reference the ground plane as the return path, and thus keeping them tightly coupled, that significantly reduces EMI, but it is more expensive to produce. While a six-layer PCB works great for this application, things would have been more optimized if we could produce an 8-layer PCB at 0.6 mm thickness. This would give us an extra plane to further create a high-integrity layer stackup as shown here. However, fabricating an 8-layer PCB at 0.6 mm thickness is very expensive on a small scale, unless we can produce the PCB at a high volume of pre-orders to bring the price down per unit. Well, are you willing to support this project so we can make this 8-layer PCB a reality? Let us know in the comments below, and don't forget to grab this limited stock available on our website because everything after that will be based on pre-order. So make sure to stay subscribed, hit that 50k subs, then share this video, and see you again at IBU RCC Channel: Reverse Engineering at its Best. Have a nice day, and thanks for watching.