Apple solders the RAM and storage on the M1 Macs, which means the procedure is extremely risky and there’s a high risk of failure. 2Fyf8AZfJRĪ number of M1 Mac owners in China have been able to upgrade the RAM and storage on their machines.

The 8GB memory has been expanded to 16GB, and the 256GB hard drive has been expanded to 1TB. The process is applicable for all M1 Macs, including the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and the Mac mini.Ĭhinese maintenance engineers can already expand the capacity of the Apple M1. The upgraded modules will also be identified by macOS without any issues. Technicians in Guangzhou, China have discovered that it is possible to remove the RAM and SSD from the M1 chip and replace them with a larger capacity module. However, it looks like technicians in China have managed to find a workaround for this limitation as well. It is very easy to destroy the MacBook in this process, and that’s a financial coin flip most who enjoy MacBooks just won’t take.One of the limitations of Apple’s M1 Macs is that they do not come with user-upgradeable RAM or storage.

In actuality, however, it is unlikely this method will become popular because of the level of skill it takes to successfully pull off mixed with the risk. In that case, the modification also would void the MacBook’s warranty and for non-experts, even making slight adjustments like that are beyond the comfort levels of the average MacBook owner.Īs Engadget says, it’s nice to see that an M1 MacBook is technically more upgradeable than Apple wants you to believe, but given how restrictive the company has been around repair, this seems like a situation it would consider an exploit and if it becomes popular enough, something it could patch out via software or make infeasible due to restricting part availability. Earlier this year, Linus Tech Tips showed that the M1 MacBook Air actually can match - or even beat - the M1 MacBook Pro’s performance with a thermal pad upgrade. This isn’t the first example of experts tinkering with Apple’s very specific and un-upgradeable design. That said, if the parts are successfully sourced, the previous parts correctly removed, and the new ones properly added, the technicians showed that they successfully expanded the computer from 8GM of memory to 16GB, and the 256GB storage drive was expanded to 1TB. Not only will you have to properly source parts that are compatible with the system, but you will also have to remove the RAM and SSD chips that are soldered-on - not something most people would recommend. As expected with something like this, the process is not straightforward and full of pitfalls.

Upgrade mac mini m1