Unbelievable cool video. Thank you for all you've done for the community of old Mac users, your patches have helped me keep so many of my machines useful!

Wow, just wonderful I've never seen anyone do this before, this man is very talented

In 1986 I cut out the 64k of memory from my first Mac and soldered in 128k with guidance from Dr. Dobbs Journal. Thought that was pretty cool but my oh my how times change! Brilliant work, sir, kudos to you!

I've watched this in absolute awe. This is a great work of art I'll never be able to perform. Well done, mate! Keep it up! I'll just save money for my new Mac Mini M2 by the end of the year. There's no way I'll find someone as competent as you to do such a thing and still make it affordable.

It's amazing they sold this machine up until the end of 2018. We still have some of them in our labs. and we specced them pretty well at the time, they had the 2.6ghz i5, 256GB SSD and 8GB RAM. They run terribly today on Monterey, and it's officially supported! Yet we have 2012 i5 iMacs with after-market SSDs added and they run like a dream on Monterey using OCLP.

Amazing project. It's incredible what we can do with older tech nowadays.

You NEVER fail to amaze me with your skills!

Dude, you are amazing...I have been following yours videos since you started making the patches for old mac...

Great job on the hardware upgrades and restoration. I'm sure the switch to an ssd will make overall everyday tasks faster and quieter and cooler operation

dosdude, you are one epic person. That was a lot of work for such minimal gains and something tells me that wasn't why you upgraded.

well, this is definitely an upgrade that no else is going to do

From a tinkerer perspective it's amazing what you did there, complete desoldering/reballing/resoldering plus programming of bios, I draw my hat and fully heartily applaud this work and dedication. From a non mac users perspective... why is there no slot for ram and a socket for cpu? Yes I now, new ultrabooks are also guilty of soldered on cpu/ram/ssd, but up till 2013/2014 the larger notebooks still had replaceable cpu/ram and ssds. And desktops, we don't have to talk, they are fully upgradeable in most cases.

Thank you for the video. Fun to watch. I ordered a preheater, flux and 4 ram IC's from Ali expres, gonna give it a go once everything has arrived.

Unbelievable, jaw-dropping stuff, I'm absolutely blown away. I take my hat off 🎩

So happy to see you gave the CPU bigger balls.

That was amazing principally the reballing step, congrats!

Reballing that apu is the most difficult part because of the warping you mentioned, on the 10th gen intel had to glue a metal support bracket to the corners to avoid It

I love to see so many fans of this great man. He deserve all the compliments.

Very impressed by dosdude1's skill and precision. This is way above my pay grade. Will say this: I've a 2012 Mac Mini, the last Mini where both RAM and drives were socketed (not soldered) and so upgrades there were plug and play. The CPU of my old Dell Latitude was not soldered either so upgrading that was also simple for this klutz. All of which is to lament that newer tech, with glued cases and soldered everything, requires dosdude1 level expertise to service.

Amazing how it’s done. Very skillful. Quite interesting.

That Geekbench improvement doesn't seem exciting, but doing math it is almost a 50% better performance! That's a lot!! Great work 👏👏

Wow, your video is very good! What you did is a work of art! Very nice!

More great work thanks Collin. Any chance of showing us the board pre-heater that you use please? Thanks EDIT - I found the answer in one of the comments. Cheers. hot air station, Puhui T8280 preheater, Madell QK853 preheater, and Aoyue 4545W nozzle for doing the large BGAs.

That really will be breathing new life into that machine. I think the i7 from that generation was a proper hyperthreaded quad core even in the 13" Macbook Pro, though it may have still been the lower powered variant. Still, it should work wonderfully with the upgraded processor and memory. Always fun to watch people keep these older machines viable with electronic wizardry. Edit: I was mistaken, the i7 u series from that generation was only a dual-core processor. How disappointing. Still, just getting a substantially faster clock speed will make a world of difference for that mac, as will the upgraded graphics. At least as far as general computing goes. Intel Iris was never a gaming powerhouse, but it's perfectly capable for general UI tasks and video playback.

Love your work mate! Total boss effort!

Mate you are a wizard of computing

Impressive work and excellent explanation.

Looked forward to this one particularly.

Hell Yea! Great Work Sir. New to Apple due to the M1, after finding your tutorials I traded a pile of old PC Boneyard collection for some 2011 & 2012 minis; just to learn how apple did things. Thanks for the help!

Wonderful. You are not an ordinary person, you are special.

I still have one of the 2014 i7 Minis as a daily driver, but unfortunately only 8GB Ram, which starts to become a problem these days. Also, while it has a factory SSD, that one is very slow - slower than a budget sata SSD these days. Upgrading the SSD could help, soldering more ram myself is far out of my league, and getting someone else to do it would be expensive enough to rather save up for a used 16Gig M1 mini. Still, it's awesome to see that it can be done. Great video, dosdude1 !

Im waiting for this, thank genius dude 👏 🥇

Amazing job. Is a dream your job. Congrats from Brazil

Very interesting, but too difficult for a nebbie. You are a master technician. It have been super interesting for me to known the technologie for smd circuits reparing. Thanks.

Bro I love these kind of content

Great video for someone like myself. I’m looking at purchasing a 2014 Mac Mini so now I know that, whilst the ball-ache of doing this process myself isn’t terribly difficult (merely mundane), it does require a set of unique tools and isn’t cost-effective unless scaling the operation. Alternative, spend £20 extra for the 2.6GHz model regardless of RAM and upgrade the whole unit a year later to the 2018 model. Thanks!!!

you are my hero, great and patient work...

Holy hell! I thought I was cool upgrading my 2012 mini with 16G of RAM and 256 SSD. This is hardcore. Well done! I love my mini! Have Big Sur on it and for daily home stuff it works great. At my work office I have the latest Apple gear. EDIT: Geekbench 704 / 1726 with the i7 / 2.6Ghz / 16G / SSD / 4000 Graphics.

i think the surface tension of the solder is strong enough to warp the hot chip when you take it off the board with the vacuum pump.try next time to flip it next on a paper towel with tweezers from the sides.i have removed cpus with tweezers aswell with 0.5mm metal blade tool.but overall you are a pro :D .keep up the good work

Amazing job as always !

Wonderful experience! Thank you.

Amazing as always. Apple probably needs to hire you to do prototype manufacturing/testing and repair.

AMAZING WORK, CONGRATS!

Man I think u came from another planet.. 👍👍

Very interesting video! So much for the average joe doing the upgrade as in the older Mini's where memory and cpu were socketed. As a bench tech for commercial communications equipment one would have to invest in some very serious gear just to do these upgrades. Gone are the days of diy repairs and upgrades for the average individual. I do have half of the equipment needed however reballing would not be my cup of tea. Do you do this work as an occupation or hobby? Again thanks for the informative video!

fantastic video very detailed information - thanks Dosdude :-)

Going to need this video now. Knowing nothing about Mac mini's I bought a 2014 Mac mini, base model. Opps, soldered on RAM :) Going to fit this into a G4 "lampshade" iMac. "

Awesome stuff as always!

Have you considered marking the chip outline on the board before you remove the old cpu to help align the replacement chip?

You are watching a master at work 🫡

oh god! oh my god!!! this video is going so technical OMFG!

Great job was done! Awesome.

Phenomenal work!

legend just to align those memory contacts. and those cpu solder balls!

His skills and tools we be valuable when the SHTF.

@dosdude1 amazing work man! I have a 2014 mini and thought I’d be able to follow along lol… yea I hate admitting defeat but think this is beyond my capabilities 😑.. Your work is impressive though!

🎉you really up on spec these machines

I'm on a late 2014 mac mini with 4gb ram and an ssd. I think the ssd makes all the difference for me. This computer as is with the ssd is fantastic. Thanks for the information and the how to. You're super talented.

Very interesting to see this kind of '"upgrading". Follow-up question: Will 4 x 8GB memory chips work as well? Or is 16GB really the max memory for a 2014 i7 Mac Mini?

You have some amazing skill level.

Wow amazing job dude

Great video sir!

Nice Target Display Mode IMac’s. I use two 24-inch Apple Cinema Display with my 2014 Mac mini i7 at home. And yes I know about OCLP 😊

I’m impressed with your upgrades. I was told by a guy who is a certified apple tech that the memory couldn’t be upgraded. Do you do work for other people. I have a late 2014 mac mini. I’ve never done any soldering. I would be very nervous doing something like that. How much did the parts cost and where did you find them?

Not something I could do but great work.

Looks nice and professional, except the part with cleaning the CPU over a DVD player

Awesome work. A complete novice here, so please excuse my ignorance, but I didn't notice you putting any fresh solder on the RAM chips. It looked like you cleaned off all the old solder from the pins on the logic board, added flux to the new RAM chips and then put them on the logic board. Where did the fresh solder come from to solder the new chips onto the board?

First video of yours I've seen. Absolutely phenomenal job. I pulled the BIOS chip off of my 2014 Mac mini main board, dumped it, modified it, reflashed it, and resoldered it, but this is so beyond any of that. My only question is what is the motivation for this over buying something used (even the exact model you're upgrading to) or some other option? The challenge? Learning? Fun? Because I can't imagine any cost "savings" having to buy a Mac donor board + RAM chips, no less the stencil, etc. and sundry equipment I assume you already had and time required.

Dude you should do custom orders. I'd love to see my Mac mini 2014 upgraded like that!

something therapeutic about soldering bga's

당신은 천재입니다. 진정한 능력자... 멋집니다.

Amazing work :)

Awesome job!

That's a good use of an old DVD/CD ROM drive.

I'm going up to Canada from Portland Next year hopefully to learn Microsoldering and smartphone repair but once I get comfortable soldering I am super excited to be able to do this kind of thing. I literally just bought a Mac Mini from late 2014 for 100 so that I could use opencore to upgrade to Monterry and run BlueBubbles server off of it but I noticed the appalling 4GB of RAM and I'm like that'd be good to upgrade.

You are godlike! I wonder if it's possible to make the same trick with Intel Mac Mini 2018, but instead replace cpu to Xeon and add ECC memory?

Collin, what is the progress of you installing 32gb of ram on the 2015 15” mbp? And upgrading the vram to 4gb?

Great video. I just have the same Mac mini. Off topic, how do you open this Mac mini? I want to disable the internal speaker since my internal speaker now makes a gurgle sound. Now, I just use the external speakers. I cannot disable it by changing through the setting since I already deleted my MacOS. I have replaced it with several Linux OSes.

Nice video! I was wondering if there any place were you share the tools that you use for this memory and cpu upgrades. It looks like a preheater and regular reflow station but I would like to confirm. Keep it up!

Have you tried putting the chip into a clamp after removal for cooling? May help with the warping. (would need flat even planes for top and bottom of the chip between the clamp)

Hi will you be able to produce a patch for Macs that now will go out of system upgrades like the fabulous Mac book Air 2017 ?

Awesome video, Nice work! What do you typically do with the machines once you finish these upgrade-proof-of-concepts?

Amazing skills, my only question relates to your touching of the CPU soldered contacts and the ball mask - I would have expected to have to keep well away from both to avoid finger oils or sweat contaminating the finish yet it clearly did not. Has this always been your experience ?

Hey can you please write down in your video description which hardware are you using? I would like to know which preheater, which reball station, which soldering iron and which hot air gun are you using. I want to upgrade my equipment and I need some inspiration or tips. :-D I've asked you a while before in comments in other video but I've never got respond.

You are THE BEAST!!!! very very nice just Bought a used MAC mini 2014 to do this!! 2 Question Please 🙏 Where i can buy the ram chips and how find because i try with Elpida EDFB232A1MA-GD-F i can´t? where i can buy a new CPU and what are the especifications? Thanks u are incredible!!!!

This was insane!

Wow great job!

You are a fckn genius. I see The Force is strong with you.

Crazy skills.

So cool. I have one of these machines that I just replaced with my first ever BRAND NEW Mac, an M2 Mac mini with 16 gigs. I'd love to bump the ram in my 2014 up to 16, but I haven't touched a soldering iron in years. Do you do this for other people for a fee or know of anyone who does?

Excellent

what an amazing guy how clever he is i watch his other videos too he cool 😎

Fantastic work!! I want a 2014 mac mini with 2015 mbp internals (broadwell + iris6100 graphics). If you had a spare 2015 MBP, could you somehow manage this?

you are so incredible!

Is it really necessary to swap the me region or would it be easuer to just remove with an me region and reflash the memory? Thanks for the great video.

I would like to see you fit or modify the part or parts required to get apple OS to boot natively on any laptop or desktop pc.

Reverse Engineering!! --- It's an ART and Science that doesn't get enough appreciation. - This guy is a gem!

Fantastic

what would happen if you sacrifice the donor board and remove cpu by heating cpu trough the macbook pcb? would cpu still bend or perhaps the donor board would bend and cpu remain straight i know it would work better with ir heaters but in the past i was fixing old motherboards by barbarically heating donors over a gas stove and just picking what i needed well i also resoldered them without cleaning or rebaling but i was young and supid and 60% of it even worked

omg the solder balls looks hard.