Upgrading Late 2011 MBP

Cferguson said:

MR,

If you could be so kind to give me some advice on upgrading my Late 2011 MBP 13".

I would like to upgrade:

• 8GB RAM —> 16GB.
• 750 HD —> 250 SSD

I need advice on installing and equipment specs. My budget is flexible and I am willing to spend more if there is a noticeable increase in performance.

I am currently considering:

RAM:
Corsair Apple Certified 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1333 MHz (PC3 10666) Laptop Memory (CMSA16GX3M2A1333C9)


SSD:
Samsung 850 Pro 256GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-7KE256BW)

or
Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-7TE250BW)

Are these products suitable and reliable? Is there a big difference between the 850 pro and the 840 EVO?

Thanks guys.

Click to expand...

The difference between the 850 Pro and 840 Evo is negligible in day-to-day usage.

The biggest performance boost you can give to your Mac is the SSD. 8GB of RAM should be fine. Just monitor your RAM usage and if it's frequently in the red zone, then only splurge on the 16GB.

I have the 2011 Early MBP 15" with 250GB Evo and 8GB of ram

I runs just fine with Yosemite

I would only suggest 16GB if you do heavy stuff as Adobe CC or programming

The main advantage is that the 2011 models have SATA3 with runs @ 6Gbit, this is supported by the Evo. Im getting reads and writes on the good side of 500 mb/s

16GB of memory is installed in my early 2011 15 MB. Works like a charm as I'll often have many safari tabs open, Lightroom, PowerPoint, iTunes, calendar etc etc open where I consistently sit above 12GB of memory use.
You could always replace the opti bay and install the second hard drive. Place the SSD in the drive slot and your current HD in the optibay.. You'll use more battery but if you are always near a power point then it's not much of an issue..