Macbook upgrades

[MatthewR]

I've been looking at selling my macbook recently as it's not often I use it. I have however the last week been using it for downloads and photo editing. Unfortunately it's not the fastest machine out there for photo editing.

question is, is it worth upgrading the ram to 2 x 2gb and changing the hard drive to a 120gb SSD as I have a large has drive that my media is stored on.

The cost is around £150 from crucial however I have £50 amazon vouchers so would look to utilise these for the Ssd.

also is is easy for a complete novice to upgrade the ram and hard drive?

 

[rdoxenham]

Depends on the model - which do you have? Turn it over and find the model number, should start with an "A"

 

[welshname]

The cost from crucial is £150 for the upgrade in RAM? The 16GB upgrade for my MBP is less than that from there :/

 

[Rob]

I think he meant that 150 for the HDD and the RAM, but he wants to get the HDD from amazon due to having vouchers.

 

[welshname]

Ahhhhh. 4GB is pony. If you can push to 8GB and you Mac will take it then do it.

 

[MatthewR]

I know 4gb is pathetic, however unfortunately its all the standard macbook will take.

and yes £150 is for the HDD and the RAM.

Anyway, as said which is the best to get first?

 

[welshname]

The RAM IMO. You'll notice the difference more with that than the SSD

 

[rdoxenham]

In my opinion, SSD.

Biggest bottleneck in any system, within reason, is spinning media. When you have to load something or open a new application, it has to fetch it from the disk and place into RAM, so to speed it up you can implement much faster storage. That being said, if you don't have much available RAM, it has to swap to disk frequently to keep the most active memory in RAM, so ideally you'll need both!

4GB is fine, provided you don't try and load 10.8 or 10.9 on it. I'd stick with something stable and less memory intensive like Snow Leopard, provided that you can run all of your applications on it.

Cheers
Rhys

 

[Tom]

Be nice to know what mac it is.

Totally agree with the above (except to add ram too as its so cheap), SL is a good shout because it has TRIM support.

 

[MatthewR]

Its the 2010 standard white Mac Tom its the last of the 'Macbooks'

 

[seb]

[video=youtube_share;2_vdbj8y5Zk]http://youtu.be/2_vdbj8y5Zk[/video]
Tom LOL

 

[MatthewR]

Wow, didn't expect results like that seb.I figured if I'm opening the macbook I may as well only do it the once..going to treat myself on payday.

Is it worth getting the 240gb ssd over a 120gb bearing in mind I have a 2tb nas drive?

 

[Tom]

The white mac with the rubber bottom can do 8gb I think

 

[MatthewR]

Really? I'll have to do some research then as that is obviously much better than 4gb!

 

[Tom]

Yeah, well my 2009 MBP has 8GB so...

 

[ThomasBrentnall]

Yes it's 100% worth upgrading, the speed increase from a ssd is incredible. 4GB is your limit though

 

[Tom]

That machine is far from low spec, it will run mavericks easy and with an SSD + 8GB will be an extremely decent machine.

 

[MatthewR]

Just found these two quotes:

http://www.everymac.com/systems/app...13-polycarbonate-unibody-late-2009-specs.html

*Apple officially supports a maximum of 4 GB of RAM, but third-parties have confirmed that it actually supports 8 GB of RAM.

http://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/16998/Max+ram+in+mid-2010+MacBook

8gb are listed on everymac: CLICK here for the alturl redirection (since the pasted links from everymac are always changed)

Edited by: markus weiher ( May 21 2010 )
Good reference +
rj713, Oct 13 2010

The MacBook (Mid-2010) has the same chipset as the 13" MacBook Pro (2010), so it too can support 8GB of RAM. Apple only says that you can expand up the 4GB, but you can install more than that. When expanding the memory always use this type: DDR3 @ 1066 MHz. Installing DDR3 1333 may work, but the chipset will run it at 1066 because of the frontside bus. Just to be safe, use the memory I specified.
Jon Fukumoto, Mar 13 2011

+ @markus great answer. @Jon What you say about the 1333MHz is not really true that the FSB/chipset will determine the RAM speed. On many modern laptops/computers the RAM has it's own crystal to determine RAM frequency/speed. Apple incorporates a separate RAM bus using it's own crystal/oscillator on many of it's boards since moving to Intel.


ABCellars, Jan 7 2012

Looks like ill be going for 8gb. Cheers for your help guys!

 

[Tom]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00505EZYW/?tag=cliospnet01-21

+

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00826WEX0/?tag=cliospnet01-21

Will do the job, i've hit your budget a tad, sorry.

 

[MatthewR]

Tom beat me to it!

 

[MatthewR]

Perfect, ill get them ordered when i get in. Lets hope i can follow the simple instruction videos online now!

 

[MatthewR]

would this one be ok instead Tom

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00A1ZTZOG/?tag=cliospnet01-21

 

[Will.]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BQ8RM1A/?tag=cliospnet01-21

This one is the upgraded version that Tom listed. Although it has a few less GB storage.

 

[ThomasBrentnall]

would this one be ok instead @Tom

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00A1ZTZOG/?tag=cliospnet01-21

NONONONONO
Don't buy anything with a shitty SandForce controller

 

[MatthewR]

LOL fair enough. Ill only need 120gb so ill get the one that Will. has posted.

Hopefully it will feel like a completely new machine!

 

[ThomasBrentnall]

LOL fair enough. Ill only need 120gb so ill get the one that Will. has posted.

Hopefully it will feel like a completely new machine!

http://www.ebuyer.com/539151-samsung-120gb-ssd-840-evo-ssd-only-mz-7te120bw These ones are good too

 

[Eliganza]

I upgraded my old MBP from 2gb RAM to 4gb (the most it will run is 6gb) and added a 120gb SSD, made a huge difference. Well worth it.

 

[Al_G]

I'm guessing for the most basic of stuff (running Mavericks) you're unlikely to see a performance increase from upgrading your ram from 8GB to 16GB?