New 2014 Mac Mini Has Soldered RAM

Apple‘s Mac mini, which had gone for so long without any update, was finally refreshed yesterday and the upgrade now offers Haswell processors, Intel HD 5000/Iris graphics, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and PCI-based flash storage options for the higher-end models. But as it turns out, this upgrade wasn’t like many fans had expected and most of them were pretty disappointed to find out that Apple had stopped offering a build-to-order quad-core processor upgrade and dual-drive storage options that exceed 1TB.

According to some speculations, the Mac mini also includes soldered RAM, which has now been confirmed by Macminicolo’s Brian Stucki. Stucki says that Mac mini’s RAM is “not user accessible” meaning that whoever purchases the Mac mini will be limited to 16GB of RAM and this would need to be upgraded while the purchase of the machine is being made from Apple.

The three different models of the Mac mini can be upgraded to a maximum of 16GB of RAM and the price with the upgrade will be $300 for the base model and $200 for the mid and high-end models. There is no way to upgrade the RAM but Stucki says that it is possible to replace or upgrade the hard drive, but doing so /4/void the warranty.

source: macrumors

Confirmed: RAM in the new Mac mini is not user accessible. Hard drive can be replaced/upgraded, though not keeping warranty.

— Brian Stucki (@brianstucki) October 17, 2014