This is awesome. Though having to know how to use a hot air station and source custom new NAND chips just to upgrade storage is a bit crazy (that's on Apple!)
Yep. Though, the eventual goal is to be able to sell these to others with NAND already installed, so the user can simply install the upgrade with relative ease.
@@dosdude1 Oh thats great, I'm planning on buying a studio on the next refresh. I do hope Apple won't change this when they update them. Do you know if this would work on the M2 versions of the Studio?
That's the intention eventually. I'll be buying the modules from Gilles, soldering NANDs on them, and selling them. Gilles himself will likely do the same for European customers.
im 15, and sometimes i wonder why i exist here on this planet on this universe, but i know now, soldering bga chips, one day i wanna just like you sir. you are my inspiration to keep going and one day ill have enough money to be able to afford to do these cool stuff i promise myself.
@@HappyBuddhaBoyd"Apple is a dying company" ,people have been saying that for 20+ years even before the first iphone was introduced, but it stands till this day and is one of the most valuable company in the world. I am not an apple fanboy , and do hate their greed , despite that you can't change the fact that they are very successful at grabbing cash which is what means successful for a company in the business world. Take a look at Nvidia, they also become greedy and hostile towards customers in recent years , but do you think they will fall any time soon?
@@HappyBuddhaBoyd Dying company? macOS represents 15% of the market, iOS is more than 50% of the market, iPad is almost 80% of the market. What are you smoking?
Now my hopes of upgrading my M2 storage has been slowly but surely, becoming a reality I look forward to seeing the progress of these SSDs becoming common place.
If someone like Rossmann Associates could do a mail service where I ship my Studio and get it returned with the 8TB upgrade for under a grand I would jump on it.
@@artiumnihamkin9206 Yes, but it's a lot more convenient for a whole business of Mac Studio users to send in their desktops at once for a storage upgrade, rather than the slow process of manually DFU-restoring each-one until they all have the upgrade. And this is probably not an option if the only Mac they have is this.
Yep. You just need another Mac for the restore, so you can just borrow one from somebody. It takes a while anyway, so just have a few beers or watch a game or something while the Macs are doing their thing in the background.
@@hishnash Oh they care... you can bet your @$$ they care! That's why Apple went completely proprietary once again... soldering everything to the motherboard. So if you want a Mac you are forced to purchase Apple's absolute ridiculously priced storage and memory. Not to mention, if your memory, storage, or pretty much anything else goes bad, you're screwed and must purchase a brand new or refurbished Mac from Apple again. You Mac becomes absolute garbage... unless you have the skills this brilliant and patient guy has. Apple has become so petty [and apparently greedy] you can surely bet THEY CARE!
@@4GuitarTrance I really don’t think they care if a couple random guys are doing this. Seriously, how many people have the skills to do this kind of stuff on their own? Not only do you have to have the skills you have to have somebody making custom boards for you. how many times is that going to happen? So yeah I don’t think they’re crapping their pants. 😂
M4 studio will have storage soldered :D, because of... speed, yes super mega speed, because soldered SSD are so faster than slotted one! ;-) No, not really, take a look at PCIE 5.0 speed or ver. 6.0 probably around the corner.
man, y'all in this community are legends. I was stoked when I found you through the 2021 Macbook Pro SSD Upgrade videos. Thanks for the quality content!
I've seen China make 315 to 110 adapters but custom boards for nand blanks are actually ingenious. Not sure who the guy behind the design is but major props to him for the idea. Not sure if commercial push for such a project is legally clean but such boards would also be a great DIY project if the designs were leaked and "open source" Great work as always Colin ❤
Would be completely legal so long as you do not claim it is first party. Building a compatible board is completely legal, but if you then put an apple logo on it then it is not. This is the issue that lots of third party iPhone screens have were they are stopped by customs as the screen makers feel they can sell for more money if they pretend to be first party screens.
@@bobweiram6321 Not if there were differences in the design, which this has, if you notice there are extra capacitors ( I think ) above the nand chip on the right compared to apples, so there must be a design change. Companies have been doing this for years, a slight change and it's a new design.
@@bobweiram6321 you can't copyright a circuit design nor a board design, especially if the design itself is not novel (which a couple of nands and some power management certantly is not). you CAN copyright the insides of a chip or complex component. there's a very weird legal history around why the two are considered differently in the eyes of the law that's worth reading about if you get the chance.
Man you make BGA stuff look easy. I de-soldered a 980 YFC SMC from a 820-3435 board/laptop I got for $20. Has corrosion damage, and it was under that SMC. I need to order a new SMC now and a stencil (just in case, it comes pre-ball with lead-free). Got a little spooked when my wick stuck to the BGA pads, but none ripped. First time doing BGA and had to get a new hot air station to be able to do it.
I hope someone mass-commercializes this process. (Polysoft should get OWC on the line!) Apple should not have a monopoly on storage. Great stuff, Collin.
They don't have Monopoly on storage...I get what you're trying to say but that's not what a monopoly is. They do charge a crazy amount and it's not user replaceable. But there's many other companies that specialize in storage that have a much bigger footprint. WD and Seagate just to name a few
Utterly ridiculous that anyone would have to these lengths to merely upgrade the storage in the Studio. While this upgrade is clearly out of the reach of the majority of Mac owners, I am hoping your experimentation (and the work of the gentleman who designed the board) can drive an affordable aftermarket solution.
I'm watching this on an M1 Ultra I CTO'd with 4TB storage. I'm now feeling a lot better about keeping this system long term, if in the future I can swap the NANDs out or upgrade outside of Apple's parts availability window, and cost. Thank you for all your effort :)
Hey Dosdude, I appreciate your efforts to enable Mac users to upgrade their memory. I've been working on the Mac for 20 years and it's very difficult for me to change my routines, I've been getting more and more frustrated with Apple over the past few years. I just don't feel free on the Mac anymore, which has led me to switch to Linux and run macOS as a virtual machine for a while until I can replace the programs I've purchased and used there.
Why has no one made custom NAND sockets for the apple silicon computers? Sure it'd probably be very expensive, but even a proof of concept. We know apple uses NAND sockets internally for testing (not meant for production obviously) so theoretically it's doable.
Every company uses sockets internaly for testing on prototype boards. Even laptop cpus etc are all first prototyped on LGA sockets. The issue with doing this on a production board is finding space for the through hole screens to the back, your not going to be able to have a presser attached socket (LGA) without a backbrace to hold it in place. Production boards tend to be rather dense I would be supplied if there are 4 nicely spaced voids within the PCB internals for each NAND.
And the fact that the Studio has these "SSD" slots says that Apple could make their devices upgradable - if they wanted to. I'd be glad to accept 2mm of more thickness in a laptop if it had swappable internals. (rather than having to decide a configuration for the life of the device at purchase time)
The problem is the memory controller is in the custom CPU. Which means you would need a storage chip WITHOUT a memory controller, which doesnt exist on the market. Otherwise there is nothing stopping you from switching it out.
Flash-Chips have a number of OTP (one time programmable) sectors that are usually used for logistics data and security information. I reckon that Apple‘s SW restore process „marries“ the NAND chips to a particular PCB and uses the Security and OTP regions on those NAND chips for that purpose. In short once that process is finished you cannot revert those chips back to factory state because you can’t reset/erase the OTP data (hence the name)
@@HappyBuddhaBoyd Apple has the largest phone market share, and in the computer world has 16.1% of the US PC market share. Obviously people are using Apple.
You never cease to amaze me. Excellent work on this. You're going to keep at least some of these machines out of the trash, and that's a lot more than Apple is doing these days.
Incredible!! My first pc (IBM 8086) had a 20 Meg hard drive and very little RAM. The kids today have no idea how good they have it. I just got a 1TB 4th gen NVMe & enclosure w/ a fan that gets 5000/6000 for $120 I might get a 4TB external 5th gen which gets 12,400MB/s and run macOS off it. That’s only $350!!
Great video, i have a technical question though, those NAND Flashs KICM223 1TB (8Tb), they're from Samsung correct? Do you know exactly which dies is it packed it? Like is it Samsung V-NAND V6, V7, V8? Do you have any clues? i cant find any ways to decode those part numbers.
Yes! YES! Finally sticking it to the man, I see… This is so cool, I may just move my boot volume back into the internal NAND module. I’ve used an NVMe drive in an external Thunderbolt 3 enclosure ever since I’ve bought my M1 Max Studio to preserve the former, but with this development, that’s no longer a problem.
Awesome! While I'm a huge fan of Apple equipment overall - their policies lately (and the fact that everything is soldered at the factory) is a real downer. Back in the day, you could do upgrades on various things - even in the laptops - but now they're just big throw-away phones. It's refreshing to see some bold moves on the aftermarket professionals doing such things - thanks!
Early tear downs of the M4 Mac Mini appear to use a similar m.2 board for storage. Hopefully you can confirm if it is indeed the same. That would bring a much bigger market for this type of upgrade.
This is pretty amazing. There needs to be 3rd-party options (Hello OWC, Crucial, Kingston?) to provide these modules. I would completely go this route on a future Mac Studio purchase.
Great video, i have a technical question though, those NAND Flashs KICM223 1TB (8Tb), they're from Samsung correct? Do you know exactly which dies is it packed it? Like is it Samsung V-NAND V6, V7, V8? Do you have any clues? i cant find any ways to decode those part numbers. By the Way, greetings from the Techpowerup Team, i'm the creator of the SSD Database there!
These particular NANDs are Kioxia/Toshiba. No idea about any of the real specs of it, as these are a custom commissioned Apple design, designed specifically for their systems.
@@gabrielferrazdetetivehardware The only clues I have is Apple schematics referring to this generation as "S5E", and the previous NAND generation as "S4E". So, maybe that corresponds?
Wow this is actually very impressive. I love when people does this kind of content. Apple can stop many things to happen, but never a human mind. Superb job new sub
Is there no way to recycle or upcycle existing NAND modules from used Mac Studios or the like? If you upgrade such a machine you essentially have to throw the old modules away?
Absolutely disgusting how much Apple charges for upgrades from the base model. Boards like this one are a real game-changer for sure. I am assuming that Apple will happily void your warranty for using "unauthorized parts"? I see locking these memory modules behind a serial number like they do for other parts in the future as this will cut into Apple's bottom line. Excellent work!
Every November Black Friday Prime day I buy a new nvme double the size of the old one and shift all others and place the oldest or most used into a 3.2usb case. This takes me less time then this video including copy time. 😂 Although SMD soldering sounds fun for Turkey Day break I like to save money and time.
@@johnpaullennon1199 That's great, but it still communicates over what is the equivalent of PCIe 3.0 x4, which is what Thunderbolt 3/4 uses. The internal SSDs use PCIE 4.0 x4, meaning that it runs at double the speed over what you get with an external drive. This looks to be an absolute game-changer for those wanting upgradeable storage at the same PCIe version, rather than having to downgrade it.
That is really cool! I don’t think I would try it even though it looked easy the way you did it. I’m sure you have a lot of knowledge in making sure that works properly. Thank you for a great video.
Gilles is pronounced a little like scheel or sheel as can be heard from the dapper Canadian presenter of 'Our Own Devices' here on TH-cam at the start of his videos. ps Thank you Dosdude1 for helping me upgrade my early 2009 iMac to Catalina.
@@FabienAurejac Yep! I listen to a lot of French French and as he tends to blurt his name out quickly with a hint of Québécois it still took me a while to work out his name.
This is fantastic - can’t wait to be able to acquire these in the UK. I can here Tim Crook telling the engineers to work harder to stop users undertaking these sorts of things on future hardware.
The Apple engineer who told management "we don't need to solder the SSDs, nobody could re-engineer this and make it work, just trust me!" was just fired. You can bet Apple won't make the same mistake with the next generation.
Awesome! Thanks for sharing! Your "the next thing we need to do is simply solder each of these chips onto these modules...." made me smile at 8 o clock in the morning, especially thanks for that! Btw.: of course you don´t have the screw to lock the module into the mac, you are a Solderer not a Screwer.
And Colin uses gigantic solder wick to remove a single solder ball from the center of a bga chip, like it’s a perfectly normal thing that people do thousands of times a day. 🤯🤯 Not *this* mere mortal. 😤
This is actually exactly what I was thinking you could do to get more storage on this thing! I didn’t really say much because I thought people would call me crazy, but looks like I’m not crazy.
Great work. Now that the ice has been broken, maybe we'll be able to see someone selling similar parts retail. I would like to think that companies like OWC, iFixit and even Crucial would like to start selling parts like these/ Hopefully one or more of them will pay Gilles handsomely for his hard work in designing the board.
Is there a reason why you removed the solder from the matching masked contact, rather than masking the corresponding hole on the screen? It seems like a lot of work to desolder 1 spot 8 times.
Curious to see how much the custom new modules would sell for even if I think I'll stick with my current set-up (1TB internal for system and apps, 4TB external SSD for data, 4TB external HDD for nightly data clone and 6TB external HDD for Time Machine).
Perhaps a dumb question, but... is it possible to partition that 8TB into say... 4, 2TB drives? On my M1 Mac Studio Ulta, I got it with the 1TB storage option. I bought two OWC Express 4M2 Thunderbolt enclosures ($249.99 each) and put four, 1TB M.2 drives in one, and four, 2TB M.2 drives in the other. Max storage per enclosure is 32TB.
The new drives are 25% faster than the old ones, I'd hardly call that "slightly!" Definitely looking forward to the prepopulated boards becoming easily-obtainable aftermarket parts. I'd totally be fine with doing the board install and DFU restore myself, but I think obtaining fresh NVRAM chips and correctly soldering them to the boards would be beyond my skills.
I think that can be attributed to having two modules instead of one, which doubles how many NAND chips can be addressed, splitting the workloads and allowing all the NANDs to operate at the same level rather than having fewer NANDs work across more levels, slowing down the chips even more.
What about the “thermal pad” on the original module (the black thingy)? Is it some kind of proprietary cooling solution that needs to be solved on the new modules?
This is huge! Aftermarket Mac Studio/Mac Pro storage should exist!
Politicians should rule that it is a must!
But how else will Apple persuade you to just buy a newer model?
@@ShamblerDK They will at some point block updates for all M1 models.
why i wont buy apple product's
@@vanCaldenborgh It has enough power to emulate windows 10/11 if they were to do that it would incentiveize people to make it happen.
This is awesome. Though having to know how to use a hot air station and source custom new NAND chips just to upgrade storage is a bit crazy (that's on Apple!)
Yep. Though, the eventual goal is to be able to sell these to others with NAND already installed, so the user can simply install the upgrade with relative ease.
Don’t let Redshirt Jeff see this. I can see him trying to use a map gas touch to do SMD work
@@dosdude1just take my money dude! 🎉
@@dosdude1 You'll have a market for that, sure!
@@dosdude1 Oh thats great, I'm planning on buying a studio on the next refresh. I do hope Apple won't change this when they update them.
Do you know if this would work on the M2 versions of the Studio?
Protect this man at all cost
Yooo if someone starts selling pre soldered modules we’d almost be back to the old Mac Mini days!
That's the intention eventually. I'll be buying the modules from Gilles, soldering NANDs on them, and selling them. Gilles himself will likely do the same for European customers.
@@dosdude1French rules the world :D
@@dosdude1 Will this also work on M2 Mac Studios?
@@dosdude1 Yesssss thank you!
This will works on a m1 Mac mini too????
Great video and great work! I've always been a fan of yours since your first macOS patcher. Thanks mate.
Thanks!
im 15, and sometimes i wonder why i exist here on this planet on this universe, but i know now, soldering bga chips, one day i wanna just like you sir. you are my inspiration to keep going and one day ill have enough money to be able to afford to do these cool stuff i promise myself.
John 3:16-21
Romans 10:9
Since Apple is a dying company... I would suggest you start familiarizing yourself with AMD motherboards and circuit boards.
@@HappyBuddhaBoyd"Apple is a dying company" ,people have been saying that for 20+ years even before the first iphone was introduced, but it stands till this day and is one of the most valuable company in the world. I am not an apple fanboy , and do hate their greed , despite that you can't change the fact that they are very successful at grabbing cash which is what means successful for a company in the business world. Take a look at Nvidia, they also become greedy and hostile towards customers in recent years , but do you think they will fall any time soon?
@@HappyBuddhaBoyd Dying company? macOS represents 15% of the market, iOS is more than 50% of the market, iPad is almost 80% of the market. What are you smoking?
@@hajjdawoodUSA is dying. Does that blow your mind?
So you not only need a DOSdude in the cellar, you also need a Frenchman reverse engineering custom PCBs in your mansarde
Thanks Tim Crook !
In a country where the person is less likely to get sued to death by apple.
Now my hopes of upgrading my M2 storage has been slowly but surely, becoming a reality I look forward to seeing the progress of these SSDs becoming common place.
I love the "just like thats" and "simplys" Let's all go out and get our NANDS and modules!
If someone like Rossmann Associates could do a mail service where I ship my Studio and get it returned with the 8TB upgrade for under a grand I would jump on it.
Same. Absolutely a market for this.
He can just send you the modules and you do a simple restore, no need to send the whole studio.
@@artiumnihamkin9206 Yes, but it's a lot more convenient for a whole business of Mac Studio users to send in their desktops at once for a storage upgrade, rather than the slow process of manually DFU-restoring each-one until they all have the upgrade.
And this is probably not an option if the only Mac they have is this.
@@artiumnihamkin9206you need another computer I think
Yep. You just need another Mac for the restore, so you can just borrow one from somebody. It takes a while anyway, so just have a few beers or watch a game or something while the Macs are doing their thing in the background.
Apples worst nightmare
I do not think apple cares at all.
@@hishnash Oh they care... you can bet your @$$ they care! That's why Apple went completely proprietary once again... soldering everything to the motherboard. So if you want a Mac you are forced to purchase Apple's absolute ridiculously priced storage and memory. Not to mention, if your memory, storage, or pretty much anything else goes bad, you're screwed and must purchase a brand new or refurbished Mac from Apple again. You Mac becomes absolute garbage... unless you have the skills this brilliant and patient guy has.
Apple has become so petty [and apparently greedy] you can surely bet THEY CARE!
@@4GuitarTrance I really don’t think they care if a couple random guys are doing this. Seriously, how many people have the skills to do this kind of stuff on their own? Not only do you have to have the skills you have to have somebody making custom boards for you. how many times is that going to happen? So yeah I don’t think they’re crapping their pants. 😂
M4 studio will have storage soldered :D, because of... speed, yes super mega speed, because soldered SSD are so faster than slotted one! ;-) No, not really, take a look at PCIE 5.0 speed or ver. 6.0 probably around the corner.
@@4GuitarTrance They don't care. They have enough suckers to buy from them lol. Stop being delusional.
man, y'all in this community are legends. I was stoked when I found you through the 2021 Macbook Pro SSD Upgrade videos. Thanks for the quality content!
Danke!
I've seen China make 315 to 110 adapters but custom boards for nand blanks are actually ingenious. Not sure who the guy behind the design is but major props to him for the idea.
Not sure if commercial push for such a project is legally clean but such boards would also be a great DIY project if the designs were leaked and "open source"
Great work as always Colin ❤
Would be completely legal so long as you do not claim it is first party.
Building a compatible board is completely legal, but if you then put an apple logo on it then it is not. This is the issue that lots of third party iPhone screens have were they are stopped by customs as the screen makers feel they can sell for more money if they pretend to be first party screens.
It's a replica of the original board. Ig it's patented, it would be illegal.
@@bobweiram6321 Not if there were differences in the design, which this has, if you notice there are extra capacitors ( I think ) above the nand chip on the right compared to apples, so there must be a design change. Companies have been doing this for years, a slight change and it's a new design.
@@bobweiram6321 you can't copyright a circuit design nor a board design, especially if the design itself is not novel (which a couple of nands and some power management certantly is not). you CAN copyright the insides of a chip or complex component. there's a very weird legal history around why the two are considered differently in the eyes of the law that's worth reading about if you get the chance.
@@bobweiram6321 Except it's not. He specifically stated that there were design differences between the boards, so they are not identical.
Once Gilles has these boards available for sale, I will add appropriate links here. Looking forward to it👍
THE MAC Brain surgeon. So talented. Love these videos. Thank you.
SWEET BABY JEZUS!!!!!!!!!!!! Congrats! I'm having a drink on your behalf!!!!
Man you make BGA stuff look easy. I de-soldered a 980 YFC SMC from a 820-3435 board/laptop I got for $20. Has corrosion damage, and it was under that SMC. I need to order a new SMC now and a stencil (just in case, it comes pre-ball with lead-free). Got a little spooked when my wick stuck to the BGA pads, but none ripped. First time doing BGA and had to get a new hot air station to be able to do it.
This is incredible! Amazing work Gilles and you made the installation look easy Colin! Amazing work.
I hope someone mass-commercializes this process. (Polysoft should get OWC on the line!) Apple should not have a monopoly on storage.
Great stuff, Collin.
OWC hell no. They are ripoff selling cheap parts exreamly overpriced
@@benNdaKen they are one of the few companies that sells a lot of obscure Mac hardware of this nature.
OWC charge just a bit less than Apple themselves
They don't have Monopoly on storage...I get what you're trying to say but that's not what a monopoly is. They do charge a crazy amount and it's not user replaceable. But there's many other companies that specialize in storage that have a much bigger footprint. WD and Seagate just to name a few
@@UONeal They have a monopoly on storage in their own machines. That is clearly what I meant.
Utterly ridiculous that anyone would have to these lengths to merely upgrade the storage in the Studio. While this upgrade is clearly out of the reach of the majority of Mac owners, I am hoping your experimentation (and the work of the gentleman who designed the board) can drive an affordable aftermarket solution.
Virtually no one needs 8TB internal storage. I say virtually, because of course some will. Hi-rez content creators, colorists come to mind.
I'm watching this on an M1 Ultra I CTO'd with 4TB storage. I'm now feeling a lot better about keeping this system long term, if in the future I can swap the NANDs out or upgrade outside of Apple's parts availability window, and cost. Thank you for all your effort :)
Vous êtes un champion dans le hardware et software, merci de montrer le chemin de la liberté du circuit fermé d'Apple.
Hey Dosdude, I appreciate your efforts to enable Mac users to upgrade their memory. I've been working on the Mac for 20 years and it's very difficult for me to change my routines, I've been getting more and more frustrated with Apple over the past few years. I just don't feel free on the Mac anymore, which has led me to switch to Linux and run macOS as a virtual machine for a while until I can replace the programs I've purchased and used there.
8TB, it's a beautiful thing Collin. Thanks for all your work, you are a real trailblazer
any hope to push further ? 2x8TB, 2x16TB ? ;-)
‘As you can see’ is padding that’s not needed. :)
Awesome project. Love it.
I don’t even own a MAC and found this fascinating
That is great news! So that means we can buy the upgradable NAND module from the awesome gentleman like you and Gilles!
BROOOOOOOO THIS A BIG DEAL
Why has no one made custom NAND sockets for the apple silicon computers? Sure it'd probably be very expensive, but even a proof of concept. We know apple uses NAND sockets internally for testing (not meant for production obviously) so theoretically it's doable.
Every company uses sockets internaly for testing on prototype boards. Even laptop cpus etc are all first prototyped on LGA sockets.
The issue with doing this on a production board is finding space for the through hole screens to the back, your not going to be able to have a presser attached socket (LGA) without a backbrace to hold it in place. Production boards tend to be rather dense I would be supplied if there are 4 nicely spaced voids within the PCB internals for each NAND.
DUDE U ARE THE FREACKIN GOAT. I am a big fan of your work. Congrats to you and your fiend. No joke i would buy these from u. Again, amazing work!!!
Idkk what it is but there is something very calming / soothing / satisfying about your voice here lol
ikr
You and Gilles are such insane geniuses.
Excellent, this lack of upgradability is why I was reluctant to buy a Studio, if this solves it then I might change my mind
Absolutely Groundbreaking! Truly!
innovative and legendary at the same time
And the fact that the Studio has these "SSD" slots says that Apple could make their devices upgradable - if they wanted to. I'd be glad to accept 2mm of more thickness in a laptop if it had swappable internals. (rather than having to decide a configuration for the life of the device at purchase time)
Don't forget not being able to change the storage if it suddenly fails and apple says it's your fault.
The problem is the memory controller is in the custom CPU. Which means you would need a storage chip WITHOUT a memory controller, which doesnt exist on the market. Otherwise there is nothing stopping you from switching it out.
Is it possible to zero out NANDs from existing machines in order to reuse using a chip programmer?
Unfortunately not... Once these chips are programmed, they can never be restored back to a "blank" state ever again.
@@dosdude1 Ah, that sucks... hopefully someone finds a hack or workaround or tool, especially with new chips costing so much.
Flash-Chips have a number of OTP (one time programmable) sectors that are usually used for logistics data and security information. I reckon that Apple‘s SW restore process „marries“ the NAND chips to a particular PCB and uses the Security and OTP regions on those NAND chips for that purpose.
In short once that process is finished you cannot revert those chips back to factory state because you can’t reset/erase the OTP data (hence the name)
@@dosdude1 Sounds like a good challenge for you...
@@dosdude1I know that they can't be used on a Mac again, but can they still be reused in other devices?
I love how nerdy this video is. I watched over breakfast and enjoyed every second of it
It's easy. Thank you, Apple, for this convenient upgrade path.
How the fuck does Colin only have 100K watchers?? Hes a genius. Thanks for teaching me some dope shit bro.
I just realized, yeah thats insane there should be more people watching...
@@mizinoinovermyhead.7523 Dude is a bonifide master. All the stupid shit on youtube but Colin is the shit
@@mizinoinovermyhead.7523 I do somethings but fuck man I have huge hands and its so har grabbing things and holding tools
Easy answer... nobody uses Apple.
@@HappyBuddhaBoyd Apple has the largest phone market share, and in the computer world has 16.1% of the US PC market share. Obviously people are using Apple.
You never cease to amaze me. Excellent work on this. You're going to keep at least some of these machines out of the trash, and that's a lot more than Apple is doing these days.
Incredible!! My first pc (IBM 8086) had a 20 Meg hard drive and very little RAM. The kids today have no idea how good they have it.
I just got a 1TB 4th gen NVMe & enclosure w/ a fan that gets 5000/6000 for $120 I might get a 4TB external 5th gen which gets 12,400MB/s and run macOS off it. That’s only $350!!
The mac studio is huge, at first I thought it was something from the 2000s lmao
Love the videos!
It’s two Mac minis stacked on top of each other. He has small hands
Do you think these will work on the new M4 Mac Mini?
Great news. Time to get the market flooded with quality modules for people to upgrade or replace broken ones and keep those machines going
Very fine work, sir! Challenges and solutions such as this are truly the best of TH-cam.
Great video, i have a technical question though, those NAND Flashs KICM223 1TB (8Tb), they're from Samsung correct? Do you know exactly which dies is it packed it? Like is it Samsung V-NAND V6, V7, V8? Do you have any clues? i cant find any ways to decode those part numbers.
Yes! YES! Finally sticking it to the man, I see… This is so cool, I may just move my boot volume back into the internal NAND module. I’ve used an NVMe drive in an external Thunderbolt 3 enclosure ever since I’ve bought my M1 Max Studio to preserve the former, but with this development, that’s no longer a problem.
Awesome! While I'm a huge fan of Apple equipment overall - their policies lately (and the fact that everything is soldered at the factory) is a real downer. Back in the day, you could do upgrades on various things - even in the laptops - but now they're just big throw-away phones. It's refreshing to see some bold moves on the aftermarket professionals doing such things - thanks!
by lately you mean the last 25 years?
Thanks!
What happens to the old nands that were in the system? Is it possible to reuse them? Maybe take them back for some money/discount?
Early tear downs of the M4 Mac Mini appear to use a similar m.2 board for storage. Hopefully you can confirm if it is indeed the same. That would bring a much bigger market for this type of upgrade.
It's like watching a sorcerer work his magic!!!
rewatch this video multiple times, it deserves it
This is pretty amazing. There needs to be 3rd-party options (Hello OWC, Crucial, Kingston?) to provide these modules. I would completely go this route on a future Mac Studio purchase.
I love your videos. Not just content, but your voice is sooo soothing.
This inspired me to get a M4 base Mac mini.
I love your passive aggressive approach to fixing Apple's anti-consumer bullshit. Just keep calm and carry on.
Great video, i have a technical question though, those NAND Flashs KICM223 1TB (8Tb), they're from Samsung correct? Do you know exactly which dies is it packed it? Like is it Samsung V-NAND V6, V7, V8? Do you have any clues? i cant find any ways to decode those part numbers.
By the Way, greetings from the Techpowerup Team, i'm the creator of the SSD Database there!
These particular NANDs are Kioxia/Toshiba. No idea about any of the real specs of it, as these are a custom commissioned Apple design, designed specifically for their systems.
@@dosdude1 it's BiCS but do you have any clues fo what revision? BiCS4? BiCS5?
@@gabrielferrazdetetivehardware The only clues I have is Apple schematics referring to this generation as "S5E", and the previous NAND generation as "S4E". So, maybe that corresponds?
@@dosdude1 no but I don't think it's Kioxia. Do you have any pin out of that NAND?
Incredible. Please make a batch of these..!
Off Subject....What a great sounding voice! Colin, your voice is comfort food for my ears.
I then wonder, "Do you sing?"
W Dosdude1 as always
Wow this is actually very impressive. I love when people does this kind of content. Apple can stop many things to happen, but never a human mind. Superb job new sub
You know you can ask 1500$ for a set right?
That’s a huge market opening for you man!
Is there no way to recycle or upcycle existing NAND modules from used Mac Studios or the like? If you upgrade such a machine you essentially have to throw the old modules away?
Absolutely disgusting how much Apple charges for upgrades from the base model. Boards like this one are a real game-changer for sure. I am assuming that Apple will happily void your warranty for using "unauthorized parts"? I see locking these memory modules behind a serial number like they do for other parts in the future as this will cut into Apple's bottom line.
Excellent work!
Every November Black Friday Prime day I buy a new nvme double the size of the old one and shift all others and place the oldest or most used into a 3.2usb case. This takes me less time then this video including copy time. 😂 Although SMD soldering sounds fun for Turkey Day break I like to save money and time.
@@johnpaullennon1199 That's great, but it still communicates over what is the equivalent of PCIe 3.0 x4, which is what Thunderbolt 3/4 uses. The internal SSDs use PCIE 4.0 x4, meaning that it runs at double the speed over what you get with an external drive.
This looks to be an absolute game-changer for those wanting upgradeable storage at the same PCIe version, rather than having to downgrade it.
That is really cool! I don’t think I would try it even though it looked easy the way you did it. I’m sure you have a lot of knowledge in making sure that works properly. Thank you for a great video.
Gilles is pronounced a little like scheel or sheel as can be heard from the dapper Canadian presenter of 'Our Own Devices' here on TH-cam at the start of his videos. ps Thank you Dosdude1 for helping me upgrade my early 2009 iMac to Catalina.
more like jill, without the 'd' at start. I'm his brother.
@@FabienAurejac Yep! I listen to a lot of French French and as he tends to blurt his name out quickly with a hint of Québécois it still took me a while to work out his name.
@@SubTroppo Indeed we have a strange rule here for the letter g : when followed by a "e" or an "i", it's similar to j without the phonetic "d".
This is fantastic - can’t wait to be able to acquire these in the UK.
I can here Tim Crook telling the engineers to work harder to stop users undertaking these sorts of things on future hardware.
Next up, the RAM modules.
Very looking forward video to upgrading SSD for Mac Studio M2
Anyone else refreshing daily in anticipation of the links? 🙏
@@jacobcooper373 It’ll be late this month or next month before they are ready for sale.
@@dosdude1 😍Thanks for the update!
Love how casually you just perform a huge upgrade like this like it's no big deal, well done!
0:55 “Despite this machine not having soldered storage, you still have to treat this storage as if it were soldered storage.”
Classic apple lmfao
Same solution for Mac Mini M4?
The Apple engineer who told management "we don't need to solder the SSDs, nobody could re-engineer this and make it work, just trust me!" was just fired. You can bet Apple won't make the same mistake with the next generation.
Awesome! Thanks for sharing! Your "the next thing we need to do is simply solder each of these chips onto these modules...." made me smile at 8 o clock in the morning, especially thanks for that! Btw.: of course you don´t have the screw to lock the module into the mac, you are a Solderer not a Screwer.
And Colin uses gigantic solder wick to remove a single solder ball from the center of a bga chip, like it’s a perfectly normal thing that people do thousands of times a day. 🤯🤯
Not *this* mere mortal. 😤
It’s a massive pain. Done it a couple of times…
13:12 if he did something to stop the connection on pcb then removing that one pin didn't need to be removed then
I will never understand why Apple are so hellbent on making their machines not reparable. Obviously it's money, but still
Not repairable? Or you meant to say not upgradable?
@@wisdomyaw03 its both
@@baconofburger8784 No, it's not. The fact that Apple gatekeeps the repairs doesn't make it "not repairable".
@@wisdomyaw03 how do you repair devices when the parts are not available because of exclusivity contracts with suppliers for chips?
Or get around part serialization?
This is actually exactly what I was thinking you could do to get more storage on this thing! I didn’t really say much because I thought people would call me crazy, but looks like I’m not crazy.
Great work. Now that the ice has been broken, maybe we'll be able to see someone selling similar parts retail. I would like to think that companies like OWC, iFixit and even Crucial would like to start selling parts like these/
Hopefully one or more of them will pay Gilles handsomely for his hard work in designing the board.
This is incredible! You should seriously consider to start selling these as a set.
😎
Is there a reason why you removed the solder from the matching masked contact, rather than masking the corresponding hole on the screen? It seems like a lot of work to desolder 1 spot 8 times.
Try increasing the test file size from 1gig to 16gig in Aja system test to get a more stable reading
This is so awesome! The future is looking bright
Please let me know when you start selling pre-soldered boards!
A maassive storage increase and read and write speeds are 130% of the 512GB chips, awesome work!
What is the display panel you are using? Is that one of the original Apple panels from more than a decade ago?
Curious to see how much the custom new modules would sell for even if I think I'll stick with my current set-up (1TB internal for system and apps, 4TB external SSD for data, 4TB external HDD for nightly data clone and 6TB external HDD for Time Machine).
Will you have another kickstarter campaign soon? I would love to upgrade the storage on my M1 mac studio.
Mind blown! Great work dude!
Perhaps a dumb question, but... is it possible to partition that 8TB into say... 4, 2TB drives? On my M1 Mac Studio Ulta, I got it with the 1TB storage option. I bought two OWC Express 4M2 Thunderbolt enclosures ($249.99 each) and put four, 1TB M.2 drives in one, and four, 2TB M.2 drives in the other. Max storage per enclosure is 32TB.
The new drives are 25% faster than the old ones, I'd hardly call that "slightly!"
Definitely looking forward to the prepopulated boards becoming easily-obtainable aftermarket parts. I'd totally be fine with doing the board install and DFU restore myself, but I think obtaining fresh NVRAM chips and correctly soldering them to the boards would be beyond my skills.
I think that can be attributed to having two modules instead of one, which doubles how many NAND chips can be addressed, splitting the workloads and allowing all the NANDs to operate at the same level rather than having fewer NANDs work across more levels, slowing down the chips even more.
Have you seen the bloke who mounted the nands on sockets on MacBooks?
Where do we buy these 8tb for $500? I'm only seeing $150 per 1TB online.
Do you test SSDs after solder, before installing into MAC ?
Excellent video! And thanks for not having any background music :)
there is something wrong here you have GUID partition instead of APFS, can you change it? how much do you charge to send those modules to USA?
The Partition Map Type is also GPT (GUID) on the original SSD of the Mac Studio. Nothing wrong with that.
What about the “thermal pad” on the original module (the black thingy)? Is it some kind of proprietary cooling solution that needs to be solved on the new modules?
Very impressed ! A highly specialized task I myself would never attempt . That being said , I'll leave well enough alone