Discussions about the M4 version of Mac Mini have never stopped in the past six months. The main reason is that the new Mac Mini does have an advantage in terms of price. Many developers and users buy Mac Mini to build soft routers, NAS or for daily work. However, Apple's memory and solid-state drives have always been more expensive than gold, so many users buy the starting Mac Mini, which has a relatively small storage space and is difficult to support daily work use.
Peripheral manufacturer Satechi recently launched a new solid-state drive box for the M4 version of the Mac Mini. It emphasizes the M4 version because the size of the solid-state drive box is exactly the same as the M4 version of the Mac Mini. Of course, users can also use this solid-state drive box on other Macs, but the size and placement are not as beautiful.
The Satechi solid-state drive enclosure can be placed directly on the Mac Mini and then interconnected through a very short USB-C data cable. The hard drive enclosure itself supports the USB 4 protocol, so it can also provide higher read and write speeds.
There is no cooling fan in the hard drive box itself, but there are built-in heat dissipation holes and thermal pads. Theoretically, it should not be a big problem if it is placed on the top of the Mac Mini. However, if it runs under high load for a long time, heat dissipation issues must be considered. Usually, when the temperature of the solid-state drive exceeds 80°C, the read and write performance will be limited by the main control chip.
In terms of price, the Satechi USB 4 Mac Mini NVMe SSD hard drive enclosure is priced at US$119.99, or US$99.99 after using coupon LIMITED20. The hard drive enclosure supports up to 8TB NVMe SSD. Of course, users need to purchase and install the solid state drive themselves.
