How to upgrade RAM in an Apple Mac mini 2018 from 16GB to 64GB - Watch as it all goes wrong for me!

hello and welcome to hama reviews my name is christopher hamer and today we're going to be doing something slightly different i've owned this mac mini 2018 now for just over a year and a half and although it's a pretty zippy machine with an i7 processor i found that i'm starting to really run up against the limit of the amount of ram i have in it so when i ordered this i got it with 16 gigabytes i admittedly didn't expect to be doing quite as much video editing as i ended up doing and i think it's fair to say that a lot of the applications have started to really be able to take advantage of more ram so as a result i bought this ram upgrade kit from crucial and i'm going to walk you through upgrading the ram in a mac mini from the perspective of someone that's never done anything like this before now i have been part of a couple of computer builds in the past but it was a very long time ago and my contributions to those projects were relatively small now this mac is actually um toted to be user replaceable in terms of ram however apple does advise against it the reason for that is that you have to take the machine apart to quite a high degree in order to do so so i'm going to take you along the journey with me i'm going to be following the ifixit um mac midi late 2018 memory replacement guide i have my ifixit protect toolkit i'm not sponsored by them but quite honestly i think it's one of the best value toolkits with you know the amount of tools that you get and their guides are pretty good and i followed them for some camera stuff in the past so i'm hoping they don't let me down on here i have heard there's a few pitfalls with this upgrade the first is you have the led on the front uh which sometimes gets disconnected and not reconnected or broken so i know that's something that we're going to be careful of and equally just going to be careful not to break my mac in the process given that has all my data on it is backed up but you know i don't want to have to go through the fun of um trying to get it repaired so without further ado i'm going to launch into it i have a second camera set up so you guys can see what i'm doing we'll switch to that um as and when hopefully you get to see what i'm doing um otherwise this might not be terribly useful but i think it's just going to show you how easy or how hard it is to do this upgrade if you have little experience of upgrading or indeed building computers in the past so without further ado let's get going so i'm just going to open up my tool kit first so i have everything ready i think it's fair to say this kit really does have everything you need which is incredibly useful so i'm just going to lay that out like that and hopefully the other camera can see what i'm doing so the first step is to power off and unplug your mac before you begin and then we're going to use the prying tool to remove the back cover now interestingly i actually have the back cover of my mac mini off all the time now some of you might hate that in terms of the amount of dust that you're going to get onto your mac mini on the inside however i use a special aluminium cooling block with a fan built in and it's required to have it open so hence why there are fingerprints on the inside of this so we have pried that off fairly easily using the prime tool now the next step is we are going to remove the antenna plate which is this metal plate here for which we're going to need the tr6 torx screw so let me go to tr6 here we go i'm not convinced that's the right one because i just forgot how this is laid out there we go tr6 wonderful so we're just going to remove i think we've got six screws to remove so we'll start off with this one so you can see the most i do like the fact that this is magnetized i would recommend that you put the screws somewhere um very easy to get to and try and group them together as you go and i'm going to use the box of the screwdriver set and for the inside screws and i'm using the case so the um plastic back that we've taken off already for the screws on the antenna plate so i have done this step before i haven't done any more than this but i have actually taken this plate off to have a look before i almost pulled the antenna cable off which wasn't the smartest thing i've ever done but um hopefully we're going to avoid that so we have our six screws removed i'm gonna move on to step four right now we're gonna gently remove this plate i'm gonna use the um tool again just to get this off easier now if i remember the cable is right there on the inside okay so i'm just gonna hold this i think i'm gonna hold this up for now how are we going to do this best oh let's have a look what it says uh step five use the torx tr6 to remove the 2.8 millimeter screw securing the antenna cable to the next mini logic board okay right so that is this screw here right i see so on the inside here we have a little screw that's holding the antenna um cable in place hopefully we can get to that without pulling the cable out because we can that's great so that's the screw moved we're just going to pop it inside that case um and now we're going to use the tweezers to gently pry it off apparently it's extremely fragile so we're going to be very very very careful with that just use the l-shaped tweezers in order to do this oh there we go and that's off great so now we've removed the antenna plate with the antenna cable and the little screw was just on the inside here which is holding down this little plate so that's come off and nothing seems to be broken so far so so far so good okay uh now we're on to step eight okay so this is one of the interesting things about the mac mini that i've because obviously i've read this guide already online which is that we actually need to remove uh the whole board um of the mac mini out of the case so that's how this really differs from previous generation so i did have the generation before this and it was just the case of pulling off the back plate removing one set of screws and you could change the ram not so much of this one so now we're going to use the same tr6 screwdriver to remove two screws securing the fan to the logic board okay right then so we're going to now see there's one here that's quite tight remove that okey-dokey separate one here and then the second one is here excellent so apparently we're going to be able to remove that once we've loosened the ones that are holding the fan to the rest of the case so far i have to say i'm not finding this the most difficult thing i've done um in terms of actually getting to this point i'm kind of feeling okay about it i'm just hoping that this isn't uh lulling me into a full sense of security because what i don't want to end up with is a broken mac mini right so we're just removing the rest of these screws around the fan casing i would recommend if you're doing this to follow the um tutorial that i fixed it's giving you because it is actually quite good so apparently we're just going to be able to remove this fan now and so we are excellent okay uh i see there's a ribbon cable apparently if you grasp the fan cable by all six wires and gently lift it to unplug it from the logic board okay oh yeah and that just literally pulls out wow so now we have the fan out of the mac mini that has gone well so far now we're going to grasp power cable and fully lift the disconnect from the logic board okay so where's the package okay that's this one here so you should just be able to wiggle and lift this out it doesn't really want to oh there we go okay that's out great what did you do oh yeah so now this is the dreaded led indicator light um so this is the part which we need to be really careful with i'm just gonna pry underneath i don't know if that's not it's not having it let's have a look here if we can get it from this side oh there we go and it's off and i haven't taken the connector with it so fingers crossed that cable is going to end up lighting up the led in the future otherwise i guess i am going to be without an led so now we need the tr-10 driver so we're going to put back the tr6 and grab the tr-10 and now we're actually going to remove the two screws that are actually attaching the um logic board to the case be interested to see if this really is the only two screws wow that's certainly tight enough uh that really is holding down because that's i did feel like i'd end up with more screws in this so so far i'm feeling quite confident here i did have a quick flip through the guide but it seemed like i'd be taking more out than i am so um so far i'm feeling quite confident uh let's have a look now right so this is the interesting step we've now actually loosened the um the internal logic board from the case and now we need to push it out of the case um so in theory we're going to be placing the thumb on either side of the fan and we're just going to be pushing wow and then it comes out this is somewhat incredible i'm genuinely stunned at how easy this step has been because i thought this was going to be a lot more difficult so this is now the empty um mac mini case the only thing you have left in here is the power supply unit i suggest not touching that um i've had bad experiences my one experience actually with a with a uh building a computer was was um a bit of electrifying because i made a few mistakes so um i definitely say you don't want to do that right i guess now we have the easy part which is we can actually take the old ram out so now we're on to the tr5 so if i just grab the tr5 which is here we are going to be removing the i guess it's the electromagnetic magnetic field and protector for the ram i can't see any other reason why you would have um this kind so with these um screws i'm actually going to put them inside the um [Music] antenna uh bit of metal that i have on my desk here because i'm going to need them very soon again in order to in order to put the new ram in um so now we can just lift the shield apparently i see so it actually slides off it rather than lifting it so you just slide it off and then we have the ram so i think we can just pull the sides back i've done this before and we can pull out the there we go and pull out the first one this is apple ram so this is you can say the manufacturer no i don't think it does but um the one eight gigabyte stick and there's the other eight gigabyte stick so that's great we've got two sticks out now crucial memory is the exact same spec as the original apple memory and it's a heck of a lot cheaper so the ram upgrade to 32 gigabytes was crazy um i think i did upgrade this to i can't remember if i had to upgrade this to 16 or not whether it was part of the i7 processor um but either way um i'm feeling relatively right in terms of lining these up it's worth noting that the hole in the center of the ram is actually slightly to the left so you just need to match up where the gap is to where the indentation is and you can push it in once you hear it click you know it's in and we'll just take the second one excellent again make sure it's lined up we're just going to push that in and i think that's it so we can push this down it's quite an interesting design the um the rubber to hold this on it feels decidedly um wonky but um i guess that's how it's been designed ever so slightly worried i'm gonna break it here but um i'm sure there's logic to how it's been done just going to double check the guide to see if anything i'm doing wrong so apparently we're just going to hold them to the side push these down okay so i have managed to pull the rubber grommets off which wasn't ideal but hopefully we can get those back on in a second so that wants this side i believe okey dokey i'm just gonna fit this cover back on so i have just skipped uh part of that step slightly so i did have a minor issue which is i actually pulled out the clips a little bit too far they're clearly very fragile and i wasn't completely aware of that hopefully it won't cause any issues but where i've pulled the clips out what i've done is i've i've pushed them back in place and i've had to use the grate actually to hold this in place because the clips are pushing outwards so i've held the rubber together as i've pushed this on top it's a bit annoying that's happened i don't think it's a deal breaker um i do think that might have some minor issues if i need to use applecare because they're not going to be too happy about the fact i've bent those pins but i'm going to have to wait and see hopefully i never need to use that and dare i say i haven't got a huge amount of time left on applecare at this point anyway so hopefully we're okay but yeah that's a bit annoying um i guess that is one of the things when you do these upgrades yourself you can end up making uh minor mistakes like that which hopefully won't affect the performance of the device but will affect um things like warranty so in theory if you do this properly i think it won't void your warranty but if i was apple um knowing how they've been like in the past of me they won't like the fact that i've done this if i try and go in with apple care so hopefully and we're not going to cause too many issues but it is worth saying being to be aware of so now i've got the new ram installed um i can actually go ahead and put the old ram inside the crucial box for storage because it's always worth keeping hold of these things in case you have any issues in the future so just put them back in the case great that's a good place to store it and now we're going to basically follow the uh ifixit guide in reverse so at this point i'm going to interrupt myself because it turns out that things didn't go quite according to plan as you can see by my awkwardness as i've gone through the um installation of the new ram i was having some trouble and what it actually done is bent the retaining clips for the ram so much that a prong that sort of keeps the tension up had popped out now at the time i hadn't realized this and as you're going to see i've used the ram shield to actually hold it in place against the rubber mounts now that's actually not the right thing to do what you should be doing is having a look at your um prongs the the actual clips of the ram and look very carefully and you'll actually be able to see where you've popped out um the actual uh retaining part and if you take a pair of tweezers or very thin nose pliers you will be able to bend that back in underneath there's like a a little um it's a very obvious section where you can basically clip it back in and then you're going to be fine because your ram clips won't be broken of course at this point in the video i don't know that so i just wanted to add that information here in case you're wondering what was going on i'm going to show you the rest of this clip as well but as you're going to see at the end of this video all wasn't well so we are going to once we've put this great on which we've done we are now going to put the logic board back inside the mac mini case so when we're doing this we're going to be very careful of the um little cable at the back for the lighting and equally just going to be careful that power cable as well so just going to push this back in place and that's clipped there nicely just going to put that power cable back in well actually i think i might be skipping ahead first off we're going to put those two screws in they're actually holding the um holding the logic board in place that might make more sense so that's the t10 is what we needed for that one where are we nice large ones here just gonna put those back in excellent tighten that down not too much but not too little either great so now we know it's properly in place now we can put those cables back so just going to start off with a slightly fiddly one which is going to be the power cable i'm just going to help a little bit with by using some tweezers in order to help my help me get guided to where i need the cable to be it must be said these are quite fiddly um that is something i'm noticing is the cable side of things is very fiddly indeed right just make sure that's all the way down right now we're going to gently put that cable back in for the light because i know this is the part where some people have had issues um so we're just gonna gently hold it with our tweezers oh no not quite excellent that one's back in so hopefully that'll light back up once we're done now we put the power kill back in now we need to put the fan back in so just gonna put that cable back in for the fan first so just hold it above and click it into place i'm just going to make sure this fan lines up nicely with the various screw holes which it does excellent so i'm just going to put these screws back in you need to move back to the that's the tr6 for this part uh where are we tr6 is right here he's worth always remembering to make sure you're using the right bit in order to screw some of these screws because it can be easy to use the wrong one which might fit and it might turn but you'll probably end up damaging the screwdriver which is obviously less good when it comes to using that bit in the future because you will take the edges off the actual screw bit which obviously is a major issue so once you've got these in place and there's two left i think we're going to be pretty much back together so this has been much quicker than i was expecting um and if it weren't for the ever so slight damage to the um holder for the ram this would have gone completely without a hitch which i'm feeling pretty good about to be honest i'm just going to put this in here there we go great tighten that up i'm not sure if that camera's gonna be able to see more if i turn it around so once you've got the fan in so that means we now have to do the antenna cable which is going to be a little bit fiddly so the antenna cable is located just here for the connector and that's the screw hole so if we get it lined up correctly so we know which way it's going i'm just going to start off by ensuring we've got the um got the orientation correct i think that's the bit that we need to start off with so it's going to be like that that's the correct orientation so i'm just going to fiddle inside here holding that orientation so if you have the um if you have the case on top of your computer like that you'll actually be able to get to that screw hole really easily unfortunately i haven't worked out until now right then so the final step let's put this shield and antenna element back on so it's worth noting there's various different types of screws so you want to put the right screw in the right place and i think reconsulting um the actual ifixit um [Music] the ifixit guide on which screw goes where is probably the easiest way of doing this so we want the larger screws i believe up here so oh they're here right okay and so that's the one so we have a big screw here we have a big screw at the diagonal of the airport card not even sure apple's actually calling them airport cards anymore they might well be i do miss the airport extreme and airport express wi-fi routers that are my favorite we switched to uh netgear orbee now but um they're not quite as stable as the apple versions where but unfortunately you don't get the um latest generation of wireless connectivity with those with the older airports so don't have much choice i'm just going to get these last few screws in here and the last one and we just need to put the case back on and there we have it an upgraded mac mini so as i alluded to my last clip where you saw me um from the future as it were um things didn't work out how i wanted them to so i'd installed the ram i'd taken the mac back to my desk plugged in the power cables etc and it wouldn't fire up correctly um i was getting the fan spinning up i was getting the led at the front but it seemed to be in a boot loop and it just wouldn't boot itself up now i tore the um mac mini down again i installed the ram again i rejigged it it was at that point that i realized what i'd done to the prongs so i worked out how i could fix them i didn't need to force the ram shield back down and hope that would fix the issue but it didn't it turns out that one of those ram sticks was faulty which is somewhat insane given the trouble that i'd had installing them so i had to return those and rather than dealing with a another ted and the future if i wanted to upgrade 64 gigabytes i went straight um it sold 64 gigs so 232 gig sticks of owc rather than crucial ram the only reason being i could get the owc ram sooner i decided not to record that because i've kind of gone through everything and as much as i look like a bit of an idiot at par during parts of this where you see my various mistakes hopefully that might give you um some things to avoid and some tips on what not to do hopefully you find it i'm not sure entertaining interesting maybe just plain boring to be honest but i thought i would share the whole video nonetheless just with that extra information that i'd gained throughout and i'm glad to say that you can fix it if you do bend those prongs out too much i actually bent two of them out so it's very easy to do lifting the rubber surrounds off the actual um ram slots already makes it a lot easier to see how far you're bending it and not break it but equally it's saying just to bear in mind so i hope you found this video interesting potentially useful it's certainly a guide on what not to do as much as what to do but thank you very much for watching if you're still with me if you have any questions or comments pop them in the comment section no doubt some of you all have some some things to say about my my skills here uh equally if you enjoyed the video give it a thumbs up if you didn't give it a thumbs down and i hope to see you again next time if you haven't already as well please do subscribe it really does help the channel thank you very much for watching goodbye

Channel: Hamer Reviews

Views: 3,015

Keywords: Hamer reviews, hamer, Christopher hamer, chrisahamer, Christopher Hamer reviews, tech, Mac mini RAM UPGRADE, Mac mini ram upgrade guide, Mac mini ram, Apple Mac, Apple Mac mini, Mac review, apple review, imac, Mac pro, ram upgrade, how to upgrade ram, ram upgrade gone wrong, Apple Mac mini ram, Apple Mac mini ram upgrade, Apple Mac mini 2018, Apple Mac mini 2018 ram upgrade, apple mac, Apple ram ugrade, apple 64gb ram upgrade, Mac mini 2018 ram upgrade guide, Mac mini 2018

Id: nzTrdf-ijyU

Length: 26min 28sec (1588 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 15 2020