iFixit Tears Down Apple TV 3rd Generation

After tearing down the new iPad, the technically savvy bunch at iFixit got their hands on a third-generation Apple TV to do more surgery.

They popped open the small black box to find that “Apple added [a] new antenna to address complaints about range and signal strength,” and that the new hardware doesn’t rely on a thermal cooling pad, which means the custom-designed A5 chip isn’t working overtime, even though it’s now required to output video at 1080p.

Speaking of chips, the teardown revealed that the A5 is a single-core processor, as well as the following details about the rest of them:

• Hynix H9TKNNN4K 512MB RAM stacked within the A5
• Toshiba THGVX1G6D2HLA01 8GB NAND Flash
• Broadcomm BCM4330 (the same as the iPad 3rd Generation)
• SMSC LAN9730 standalone USB to ethernet controller.

Posted in: Hardware, Review