M4 Mac mini Teardown Reveals New Cooling & Wi-Fi Chip Board

Ingenious engineering allowed Apple to shrink the M4 Mac mini down significantly compared to previous iterations. It also gets various internal changes and a revised cooling system to keep everything cool, while keeping it compact.

The Latest M4 Mac mini Teardown Reveals New Cooling, Wi-Fi & Bluetooth Chip Board, and More

Max Tech, a YouTube reviewer, put that cramped design to the test — literally, by breaking the bottom black panel during a teardown. Still, that didn’t stop them from digging deeper. Among various items, they found a circular plate with many holes to allow both warm air and cool air to flow through the same path—a remarkable engineering feat. Teardown also discovered the antennas for better Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals.

The M4 Mac mini also incorporates a compact sub-motherboard with the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip, linked to a diverging heatsink. That heatsink, connected to a heat pipe and a sizable chunk of metal enables the Mac mini to beat the similarly equipped MacBook Pro during the Premiere Pro 4K Export test while also occasionally delivering good gaming performance in Death Stranding at ‘Very High’ settings.

Another highlight of the M4 Mac mini is its user-replaceable storage, which takes an unusual form factor. The 256GB storage component includes two 128GB NAND chips, enabling better read and write performance. Although the heatsink is removed by reaching around through the back of the machine, the two front-facing Thunderbolt 4 ports are dropped for user-friendliness.

The Mac mini also benefits from a more compact internal design with the use of a sandwiched PCB layout to save space, which helps facilitate the drastic decrease in size. The base model starts at only $599 with 16GB unified RAM and 256GB of storage, although you can pick one up from Amazon for just $549.99 right now, while the 512GB version is currently $50 off at $749.99. Supplies are limited, so act quickly if you’re interested.

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