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ChuckNaked

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 21, 2011
1
0
I am a recent convert from a long time love affair with pc and linux based machines. I mainly do a lot of web designs, web application development, and graphic designs work. I also occasionally have the need for some 3D work and do a lot of personal video and after effects work.

I am planning on buy the new MacBook Pro 17,money is an issue but performance is a must. I figure is it best to get it stock then upgrade the ram and hard drive. A 5400 rpm hard drive is usless to me and so is 4gb of ram. I guess I'm asking should I upgrade my mac through mac or get third party and upgrade myself. I have build all my pc and linux machines but have really never gave macs more than a glance.

Any advice on how to get the most bang for my buck would be greatly appriciated!!
 

legreve

macrumors regular
Nov 22, 2010
244
0
Denmark
There is a large thread on how to upgrade those parts yourself, and it's a breeze...

As long as you're not making changes that involves removing the logoic board (like changing thermal paste), it extremely easy fixing the other parts like HD, ram and optibay.

If you've gotten use to speed, there's two options I guess. Buy a WD Scorp black 7200 hd and put it in instead of the 5400. (put the 5400 in an IcyBox and you can use it as an external drive fw800), or buy a vertex 2/3 and put that in the main bay, buy the WD scorp black and put that in the optibay and put the stock drive in the IcyBox, and you have a super fast main drive, a nice work / storage drive and a decent storage drive.

The ram you can get from the most popular ram vendors. I bought 8gb Crucial myself... it's very cheap but works as intended.
Also worth keeping an eye out for 8gb modules, which unfortunately are very expensive at the moment. The new MBP will eat 16gb ram... and some even say the processors will work with 1600mhz. I haven't read a confirmation though that they actually run at 1600.

One thing to prepare for... if you do the two drive thing, it will affect your battery life unless you get use to unmounting the 2nd drive when not using it.
On the other side, you can gain battery life by getting this app:

gfxCardStatus

I was going around with 4.5 hours at best before I got it. After I got it and got used to changing gfx to integrated card when not doing anything serious I'm easily getting around 6-7 hours of life. Nice nice...
 
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