The first Mac Studios have arrived at their owners’ homes, and some have taken their courage and their two-handed screwdrivers to reveal their innards.
This interesting video from the YouTube channel Max Tech is full of lessons, starting with the way to open the aluminum block. As we suspected, the screws simply hide under the circular rubber pad under the machine.
Once the latter have been removed, the lower aluminum panel is simply removed, revealing the Wi-Fi antennas (three in number) and allowing a glimpse of the 370W power supply whose components are placed on an aluminum cup, then both SSD slots (only one is occupied on the disassembled model) equipped with proprietary connectors (which are different from those of the Mac Pro, the SSD module -which only includes flash memory, the controller is managed by the T2 or M1 chip- of the latter being also longer). This is good news all the same (an M.2 port in PCIe 4.0 would obviously have been even better, simplifying the evolution/replacement of storage), because a Mac Studio with failing storage will not be doomed, and options to increase or replace storage may emerge, either from Apple or from a third-party manufacturer.
The disassembly also allows us to appreciate the cooling system (here that of an M1 Ultra chip) sandwiching the Cupertino SoC (with a backplate equipped with two heat pipes) which we can for the first time enjoy gigantism.
The M1 Ultra chip, here compared to the Ryzen 3 3300X
It must be said that the IHS (for Integrated Heat Spreader
the metal plate used to protect the chip and allow better heat dissipation) hides two M1 Max chips linked by the UltraFusion connector as well as unified memory (this design therefore preventing any change in the amount of RAM).
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