2012 MacBook Pro 15

[Yaccity]

i just picked up a used 2012 MacBook Pro 15 on eBay with an i7 Quad (Ivy Bridge) and the Hi-Res Matte screen. I have a couple of questions...

1) what would be a good SSD for this machine? I was looking at the San Disk Ultra II

2) Which OS should I use in general...Mavericks or El Capitan?

Thanks in advance
[doublepost=1464308525][/doublepost]The computer will be used as a duly driver for office tasks, music, YouTube watching, and perhaps light illustrator - nothing major.

 

[emilioestevez]

1. SanDisk, Samsung, Toshiba are the top SSD makers

2. Mavericks for the best performance

 

[MacInTO]

Nice! I also just got one of these a few weeks ago!

I put a 1TB Samsung 850 PRO in mine. I use El Capitan.

 

[Yaccity]

I have a Ultra II on order but I'm not sure if the Samsung is a better option..

 

[Samuelsan2001]

I prefer crucial drives myself like the mx200 series, but all modern drives max out a SATA 3 connection so it's not all that important which one you get they'll all outlive a 4 year old laptop whatever.

 

[Yaccity]

I got a pretty good deal on a Samsung 850 Pro at my local Microcenter today. I'll stick with that, and add 16GB or ram. I am hoping to get a year or two out of the machine.

 

[DFWHD]

I got a pretty good deal on a Samsung 850 Pro at my local Microcenter today. I'll stick with that, and add 16GB or ram. I am hoping to get a year or two out of the machine.

I'd think with those upgrades, you'd get 2 years out of it easily if not more.

 

[Count Blah]

I got a pretty good deal on a Samsung 850 Pro at my local Microcenter today. I'll stick with that, and add 16GB or ram. I am hoping to get a year or two out of the machine.

Depends on what you are doing. As long as you don't need a beefy GPU, and quite frankly non of the MBP line has a top notch one, you will be fine for a long time to come.

When you long in the tooth for an upgrade, I recommend you perform a simple set of test - rip movie, etc... And compare the 2012 against whatever you would replace it with, and marvel at how little difference there really will be.

Again, anything GPU related will lag horribly, and moving 100Gig files will lag as well. But if you are not in need of either, then ...