repoman27

The Haswell iMacs support both "normal" 1.5 V DDR3 and "low voltage" 1.35 V DDR3L SODIMMs. In order to operate at the lower voltage level (which consumes less power and generates less heat), you must use all DDR3L modules, otherwise they will operate at 1.5 V since the memory bus can only be driven at a single voltage.

DSL3510L "Cactus Ridge" all around again this time. Andrew was kind enough to post links to some close-ups in the comments section of this blog post.

24 Gb (3 GB) LPDDR4X packages are definitely a thing, so most likely just two of those.

Pretty sure the last one is a Pericom / Diodes Incorporated PI3DPX1205A USB 3.1 / DisplayPort 1.4 Alternate Mode 10 Gbps Type-C Active Mux / Linear Re-driver (or something similar): https://www.diodes.com/products/connecti...

Aquantia AQC107 10 GbE controller, which is only on the board if you choose a configuration with the 10 Gigabit Ethernet / NBASE-T option.

And while I’m a big fan of Ternus, don’t forget that Dan Riccio is still the Senior VP of Hardware Engineering.

Even the base configuration of the Mac mini comes with an internal 128 GB, PCIe 3.0 x4, NVMe SSD powered by Apple’s custom controller in the T2 chip. So no problem for your boot volume there.

As far as external storage goes, the performance of SATA SSDs its only slightly limited by USB 3.0 (SuperSpeed USB 5 Gbps). However, the four Thunderbolt 3 ports also support USB 3.1 Gen 2 (SuperSpeed USB 10 Gbps) natively.

I put a 500 GB Samsung SSD 850 EVO in an inexpensive USB 3.1 external enclosure, connected it to the Thunderbolt 3 port of a 2016 MacBook Pro, and recorded sequential speeds in AJA System Test of up to 498 MB/s write and 529 MB/s read. When connected through a USB 3.0 hub, those scores only dropped to 434 MB/s write, 433 MB/s read. With a pair of 500 GB 850 EVOs in RAID 0, I topped out at 857 MB/s write and 902 MB/s read.

Furthermore, PCIe NVMe to USB 3.1 bridges are now becoming available, which will allow you to get similar performance from a single, relatively affordable, M.2 drive.

Yes, all Macs can boot from external media—USB, Thunderbolt, FireWire, even SD card. Just hold down the option key when booting to select the boot volume. It can also be set in System Preferences… > Startup Disk. However, the default security settings on Macs with a T2 chip are to disallow booting from external media. This article explains how to use the Startup Security Utility to change those settings: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208198

Almost certainly the Aquantia AQC107, same as Apple used for the iMac Pro.

LG UltraFine 5K displays use Thunderbolt 3 for input—two DisplayPort 1.2 links are transported over a single Thunderbolt 3 cable, which is not a problem for this Mac mini. The MegaChips level shifter / protocol converter (LSPCON) is just there to convert the third DP 1.2 link from the integrated GPU to HDMI 2.0a with HDCP 2.2 for the HDMI port. Apple’s technical specifications page for the new Mac mini has a “Video Support” section which breaks down the output capabilities.

Let me revise my previous speculation with some further speculation… The power budget for the USB Type-A ports is 21 W, which would allow Apple divider mode 2 (2.1 A @ 5 V, or 10.5 W) on both ports at the same time. That also adds up neatly to 150 W.

This is total speculation, but the components on the board probably require right around 85 W.

The Thunderbolt 3 ports share a power budget of at least 44 W for both Vbus and Vconn. 39 W would be for Vbus, which would allow two ports to supply up to 15 W (3 A @ 5 V) and the other two to still meet the USB 3.x minimum requirement of 4.5 W (900 mA @ 5 V).

The two USB Type-A ports probably share a power budget of at least 16.5 W, which would allow Apple divider mode 3 charging up to 12 W (2.4 A @ 5 V) on one port while still meeting the 4.5 W USB 3.x minimum on the other.

That adds up to 145.5 W, which still leaves 4.5 W of wiggle room.