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2GB RAM or 7200rpm in MacBook C2D

SpaceMagic

SpaceMagic

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 26, 2003
1,745
29
Cardiff, Wales
Hey all,

I have £x pounds to spend (a limit) and I wondered which would be more beneficial, upgrading from 1GB to 2GB Ram or buying a 7200rpm drive. If so, where should I buy the ram from (open probably only to UK people... and the answer will probably be crucial :p)? And which drive should I buy (open to everyone, I hear seagate best?)

cheers in advance,

SpaceMagic
 
I'd get the RAM, skip a 7200rpm drive and go for a Seagate (hard to source in the UK) or Hitachi (easier to source) 160GB 5400rpm PMR drive if you have any spare cash.

The real question is how much hard drive space do you need right now?
 
what does PMR stand for? Is it the new Perpendicular drives? And.. are they faster or slower than normal 5400rpm drives? I don't actually really need 160GB...
 
SpaceMagic said:
what does PMR stand for? Is it the new Perpendicular drives? And.. are they faster or slower than normal 5400rpm drives? I don't actually really need 160GB...
Click to expand...

Yep, perpendicular. They're faster than normal 5400rpm drives, benchmarks put them equal to 7200rpm models. If you don't need 160GB then why not just stick with the stock 80GB drive for now? Spend the money maxing your RAM.

The beauty of the MacBook is you can upgrade your HDD in the future easily and without voiding your warranty. HDD prices will fall, but RAM looks to be increasing in price.
 
Getting the additional RAM will benefit your performance much more than the
hard drive.

Selecting your hard drive has more to do with how you plan to use your notebook.

IF you plan on dual booting Mac OS X and Windows XP, then you'll want either a larger internal drive or a good fast external.

The default OS X install and the formatting takes up more than 20 GB of your primary hard drive space. With a lean custom install, you can knock that down
to just over 10 GB without losing anything important.

In reality it's less expensive and safer to have a good fast external drive like the
Western Digital MyBook Pro 250 GB HD or something similar.

Since you're on a tight budget, I'd go for the extra RAM performance and worry about the hard drive later.
 
The problem is, the move from 1gb to 2gb isn't cheap. I realise I could ebay the current 1gb but nuisance.

I'm being silly really, i should see after I've got the machine. I'm just used to my 1.8 G5 with 3GB ram and 10,000rpm raptor boot disk, which is very fast. That mac is 3 years old and I suppose I just want to see a perchase made 3 years later can at least match the machine... but i doubt it.
 
drlunanerd said:
Yep, perpendicular. They're faster than normal 5400rpm drives, benchmarks put them equal to 7200rpm models. If you don't need 160GB then why not just stick with the stock 80GB drive for now? Spend the money maxing your RAM.

The beauty of the MacBook is you can upgrade your HDD in the future easily and without voiding your warranty. HDD prices will fall, but RAM looks to be increasing in price.
Click to expand...


Does this mean that the MBP C2D HDD bay isn't easily accessible?

CaPo
 
capoditutti said:
Does this mean that the MBP C2D HDD bay isn't easily accessible?

CaPo
Click to expand...

Unfortunately yes. It's means taking off the whole top case to get at it, and while not very hard, there's potential for damaging it and possibly voiding the warranty.
 
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