Mac Studio Teardown Shows M1 Ultra Huge Chip Package (Update)

The YouTube Channel max tech opened up a Mac Studio with M1 Ultra and took a closer look at the inside of the system. Unlike the current Mac Pro and the Mac minis with M1 chip, for example, the Mac Studio is not particularly easy to open and, according to Apple, there are no options for changing the hardware configuration.

The rubber ring on the underside has to be removed in order to access the screws on the housing. Then layer by layer is removed from the case, making the Mac Studio a full-fledged system: the power supply, the antennas and many of the connections that are routed away from the mainboard to the sides of the case via ribbon cables.

But as soon as the power supply was removed, two M.2 slots for the NVMe SSDs became apparent. These are therefore not soldered and therefore initially suggest that the SSD memory can be exchanged or expanded. Apple apparently relies on the extremely short M.2 2230 (30 mm long). For the desktop, most people are familiar with the M.2 2280 SSDs, which are 80 mm long. Since Apple has been installing the SSD controller in the T2 chip or SoC for several years, it should still not be possible to replace the SSD.

However, Apple offers an upgrade program for the Mac Pro, which also uses M.2 SSDs. The slightly larger M.2 2242 are used here, which do not fit into the Mac Studio.

The highlight of the teardown is certainly the package of the M1 Ultra. Under the heat spreader are two M1 Max chips, each with around 420 mm², which are combined into one chip using a silicon interposer. There are four LPDDR5 chips each to the right and left of the rectangular chip, which are available to both the CPU cores and the integrated GPU as unified memory. The main memory cannot therefore be exchanged – as with all current M1 solutions.

Only the narrow, rectangular area of ​​the M1 Ultra is provided with thermal paste and only over this area are two heat pipes for cooling. According to Apple, the power consumption of the chip should be around 60 W. The M1 Ultra is still in one package with the LPDDR5 memory under the heat spreader.

Of course, the comparison of the package size between the M1 Ultra and AMD Ryzen only shows the proportions. However, we are comparing apples to oranges here, because the main memory would also have to be included for the x86 processor.

All information about the Mac Studio, the configurations and also the prices can be found in the news about the announcement.

updated:

Luke Miani attempted to expand SSD storage in Mac Studio. First of all, when opening the case, it is noticeable that the area of ​​the PCB below the second M.2 slot does not contain any components. If you leave the SSD installed by Apple in its first slot and plug in a second one (Luke Miani had two Mac Studios available), the Mac Studio no longer boots. The LED on the front flashes an SOS code.

Putting the primary SSD in the second slot was also unsuccessful. The SSD was not recognized at all. As a final step, the two primary SSDs were swapped to see if the working SSDs were working in a previously working slot. They didn’t.

So Apple seems to be making a direct connection between the SSD(s) and the SSD controller in the M1 SoC. This coupling does not appear to be changeable by the end user.