Youtubers upgrade soldered SSD from M1 Mac mini

With the help of colleague dosdude1, YouTuber Luke Miani was able to upgrade the soldered SSD of a Mac mini with M1 SoC to a 2TB SSD. Dosdude 1 had to disconnect the nand chips from the motherboard and install new chips without firmware.

In the video we see how YouTuber Luke Miani visits colleague dosdude1 to ask whether he can replace the 256GB SSD in the Mac mini with M1 chip. The man confirmed that this was possible and went to work. The Mac mini was first disassembled so that the gentlemen could gain access to the motherboard. It was important that all components such as the cooling element and the built-in speaker were removed. According to the YouTubers, it is best to remove all parts on the motherboard to avoid the risk of damage.

Dosdude1 then started the next step in the process: disconnecting the NAND chips that function as SSD in the M1 Mac mini. According to the gentlemen, this was a very difficult process because the chips are ‘glued’ to the motherboard with underfill; a type of padding used to fill the empty space between chips and the motherboard. The video shows how dosdude1 was able to soften this filling by using a heat gun. He had to take into account the temperature, which could occasionally exceed 370 degrees Celsius. The man was eventually able to loosen the chips via a special tool, then he cleaned the parts on the motherboard again and removed the remaining underfill.

The two gentlemen then first tried to install two nand chips that came with pre-installed firmware, but that gave an error during the macOS recovery process. A few weeks later they made another attempt, but this time they used nand chips without firmware. This allowed them to get the Mac mini working again. The nand chips were also recognized in macOS after the recovery process.