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Best upgrades for a 2011 Early MBP 13" 2.3gHz

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frankc92

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 24, 2011
37
61
Seriously regretting not getting the 2.7 now but i am considering various other hardware upgrades for the 2.3 2011 13"

Am considering upgrading to max ram capacity (probably 8gb) since monitoring activity i find myself under 500mb free

Also considering an hdd upgrade either to ssd or a bigger capacity hdd......

anything else you guys can think of?

also, can anyone link me to guides on purchasing ram sticks and installing on my laptop!!

greatly appreciated, thanks for all the help.

cheers!

enjoy ios 5 everybody
 
for RAM get whatever is the cheapest 204 pin 1333mhz sticks from newegg. they're beyond easy to install, ifixit has a walkthrough if you feel you need it.

as for the SSD, everyone is going to have a different opinion(and everyone is going to say I'm wrong and crazy), but I love my OCZ Vertex 3. No issues with anything, sleeps/hibernates/wakes/boots perfect, and is crazy, crazy fast. no beach ball issues, no lagging, just super fast performance, and now they're only $180. the MAX IOPS version is now only $230, so I would go with that just to get the best performance possible; with the total laptop cost (with RAM and SSD) being like $1500, a $50 difference for something better seems like an easy decision imo.
 
i see in your sig that you have a 60gb ssd + a nother hd. is there room in the mbp to place 2 hdd's??

and preferebly boot off the ssd/process of ssd and have the rest just as storage?
i ahve this setup in my desktop but dont know if there is room in the mbp casing to do this too??
 
frankc92 said:
i see in your sig that you have a 60gb ssd + a nother hd. is there room in the mbp to place 2 hdd's??

and preferebly boot off the ssd/process of ssd and have the rest just as storage?
i ahve this setup in my desktop but dont know if there is room in the mbp casing to do this too??
Click to expand...

It is called Optibay, but there are cheaper alternatives, if you look around.
 
Upgrading RAM on Macbook Pro 13" Mid-2009

Hey everybody i have a Macbook Pro 13" Mid-2009 i have 4GB(2x2) on it. I want to upgrade it to max which is 8GB(4x4) i believe. Which Memory cards would you recommend?
Thanks!
 
SSD in main bay, keep it cheap if you must but remember it has to run good. Then throw your current HDD or a bigger drive in an optibay with 6 or 8 gigs of RAM and call it a day...I run my computers hard and am planning on going to 6gigs of RAM and getting a 64 or 80 gig SSD for the OS and Final Cut Pro X rendering. I imagine it will produce some nice results.
 
Seagate XT ST95005620AS

I have a Santa Rosa MBP (pre-unibody) and upgraded it to 6 gb of RAM (its max) and a Seagate XT (ST95005620AS). It seems twice as fast as it did. These upgrades cost much less than an SSD -- you can get the XT for $100 or so if you shop around. And it's nice to have 500 gb storage vs. much less.
 
i just recently bought an ssd and a hard drive caddy for the optical bay, and i fitted the main hard drive (500gb) into the caddy in the optical bay and the ssd into the main bay for the os.
the process went smoothly and everything fit together perfectly without any modification. i got mine from amazon for less than $20 for the caddy by the way.
while it is convenient to have the extra storage handy all the time vs the useless dvd drive that i hardly ever use. but i quickly realize my battery life is very short. probably about four hours or four hours and a half. with the ssd alone i can about eight hours or more.
i removed the hard drive from the optical bay and install it in an enclosure and stuff in my book bag for when i need it. the dvd drive draw very little power when it sits idle, unlike the hard drive which has to spin all the time.

if you need large storage space for convenient and you don't travel around all day or like a student, then go ahead and install two hard drive and suffer a little battery life. for daily commutes and studying from place to place, you might as well spend a little extra cash and get a 256gb or 512gb ssd and ditch the mechanical hard drive and you will appreciate the battery stamina it offer.
 
if you have no use for the superdrive, and don't want the optibay HDD to affect your battery life (not that it should be spinning up if you aren't using it), treat is something like an external drive and unmount the optibay HDD through disk utility, then whenever you need it "plug it in" by mounting it, and when you're done, unmount it again.
 
I hear that the more Mac or Apple stickers you put on your MBP makes it 1% faster per sticker.
 
DWBurke811 said:
if you have no use for the superdrive, and don't want the optibay HDD to affect your battery life (not that it should be spinning up if you aren't using it), treat is something like an external drive and unmount the optibay HDD through disk utility, then whenever you need it "plug it in" by mounting it, and when you're done, unmount it again.
Click to expand...

I'm a student so I value battery life and I was just about to ask if this possible! Thanks!

EDIT: Not to thread jack but no one ever responded to my similar thread so quick question! Ive got a 2010 MBP 13" stock C2 Duo and I video edit. My hard drive is gonna go to hell soon anyways so I figured I would get an 80gig SSD throw another HDD in an optibay and call it a day BUT I'm curious about RAM upgrades...if I up my RAM to 6gigs will I notice some improvement? Or will I need to go with 8gigs for dual channel? I know 6gigs will work from the massive thread someone made but I want to know if my Final Cut Pro X workflow will be a bit less oh crash :/
 
Last edited:
DWBurke811 said:
if you have no use for the superdrive, and don't want the optibay HDD to affect your battery life (not that it should be spinning up if you aren't using it), treat is something like an external drive and unmount the optibay HDD through disk utility, then whenever you need it "plug it in" by mounting it, and when you're done, unmount it again.
Click to expand...

i haven't though about this. but i have played around with mount it and unmount it couple of times. but i didn't know that unmount it would result in better battery life. have you confirm this? i was thinking since it's plugged in, it must be drawing battery power anyway. even if it's not spinning up. like standby power.

man, i'm very tempted to instal that caddy back in again. I can just have it unmount all the time, and mount it when i need to use it.

aww man, i don't feel like hacking my way back in the macbook again. i already took it apart 15 time already, and i really hate to take it apart one more time. the threads on those little screws can only tolerate so many cycles until they give away. i had to reapply thread lock to keep them from backing out.

somebody please confirm this before i commit another remorse.
 
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