Mid 2012 Macbook pro RAM upgrade

[Heavybarrel]

Hello everyone,

I'm looking to upgrade my mid 2012 macbook pro model, currently its a 2.5 GHz i5 with 4GB 1600 DDR3 RAM and 500 GB HDD. I'm looking to upgrade both the RAM and the Hard Drive.

For the RAM; I'm looking at Corsair vengeance and G.Skill ripjaws, but I'm wondering if I should go with CL9 or CL11 and whether I should get a 1.35V or 1.5V.
I've looked up on many forums, i haven't found any conclusive opinion on whether my Macbook pro requires a 1.5 Volt RAM or 1.35V. And also if my macbook supports CL 11 or CL 9. The lower the Cas Latency the better, but many have suggested that i stick with CL 11 because it has to match the timing of my motherboard. Can you suggest the most suited RAM for my Mid 2012 Macbook pro.

For the hard drive; I'm torn between a SSD (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147248)
and the Hybrid SDD by Seagate (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178340)

I'm wondering how good the Hybrid drives really are? Are they really on par with the SSD, with regards to performance and speed? And how reliable is it? I've read some reviews about it crashing within few months of installation, are there any concerns with its reliability?

 

[Weaselboy]

Here are the specs from Crucial for your RAM. Buy whatever brand you want from a trusted vendor and can get for a good price that meets those specs.

DDR3 PC3-12800 • CL=11 • Unbuffered • NON-ECC • DDR3-1600 • 1.35V •

As far as the SSD (your links are broken), the Samsung EVO and Crucial MX100 are about the best bang for the buck out there right now.

I have no experience with the Seagate hybrid, but if you search the forums there are quite a few posts from user who have installed that model.

 

[xiwong]

I have the same MBP as you, and upgrade HD and RAM last year. I have 2x 8GB Crucial Ballistix DDR3 1600, which is CL9 and 1.35V. You should get 1.35V RAM, but the difference between CL9 and CL11 is likely not noticeable in real life so I would just pick the cheaper one. Make sure to read reviews, as most likely someone has tried to put the RAM in a MBP and has experiences.

I have a 840 EVO in my system, and it runs great. I have a Seagate Momentus XT hybrid hard drive on a Dell Latitude, and I wasn't very impressed by it. I don't restart my computer so the SSD cache was never optimized very well, and it sucks more power than a conventional HD. I would just get a SSD.

I've always had good experience with Samsung and Crucial SSDs, but Crucial's recent offerings have not been quite as impressive for me. Again, I would just pick the cheapest one with the capacity you want and good reviews. Its going to be such an improvement over your HD that a faster vs. slower SSD likely won't feel like much of a difference for you.

 

[meson]

I just upgraded my machine a couple weeks ago. I opted to swap one of the stock 2GB ram sticks with a single 8GB Crucial stick (best price I could find with those specs at the time) with the specs listed by Weasleboy. I had a hard time finding what the specs of the stock ram were, followed his advice, and all is happy with the machine.

The reason for the single 8GB stick is that my wife does some heavy photo editing, and should I pass the machine on to her (a real possibility in the future), she'll need 16GB of ram, and going all the way to 16 was not in the budget this time around.

If you are putting in matching sticks of ram, then match the speed latency and voltage. Based on reviews and such that I read, many have had success with both CL 9 and 11 and 1.35V and 1.5V ram. As long as they are matched, I think the logic board can handle all well.

I was intrigued by the hybrid, but settled on the SSD in the end. I went with a Crucial MX100 256GB. I picked up a USB 3 enclosure, and used it to install the OS on the SSD. Once installed, I put the original HDD in the enclosure and use it as an external drive. For now I have some of my media on the external, but I'm still not sure how fond of the idea I am.

The SSD in this machine is well worth the upgrade. I never thought a dual core machine could feel this powerful.

Good luck with the upgrades!

 

[Heavybarrel]

I think going with the Corsair Vengeance seems like a good bet, its CL9 and 1.35 (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233588).

With the hard drive; I'm still in a dilemma because I don't get a lot of storage capacity with the SSD. Therefore I was wondering if it would be a good idea to get the 1TB seagate hybrid now and in future get a SSD, and slot the hybrid drive in the optical bay, as I don't even remember the last time i used it, and slot the SSD in the main bay.

Also I have read in many threads that a SSD doesn't perform well in the optical bay, is there any truth to that?

 

[Weaselboy]

I think going with the Corsair Vengeance seems like a good bet, its CL9 and 1.35 (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233588).

With the hard drive; I'm still in a dilemma because I don't get a lot of storage capacity with the SSD. Therefore I was wondering if it would be a good idea to get the 1TB seagate hybrid now and in future get a SSD, and slot the hybrid drive in the optical bay, as I don't even remember the last time i used it, and slot the SSD in the main bay.

Also I have read in many threads that a SSD doesn't perform well in the optical bay, is there any truth to that?

The Crucial kit for your machine is $76 on Amazon. IMO no reason to spend $99 for the Corsair product.

 

[meson]

You could certainly put the hybrid in the optical bay. The issue with the SSD in the optical drive is that some of the older machines didn't have SATA III connectivity in the optical bay. My 2012 reports the optical connection as SATA III, and I bet yours does too. However, the only way to know that it will negotiate proper SATA III speeds is to place a drive in the bay and find out. From what I've read, I don't think many if any have issues with an SSD in the optical bay of 2012 models.

The worst case scenario is that you have to open the computer again and swap the location of your drives, as a slower connection in the optical bay won't be an issue for the internal HDD.

 

[theBostonian]

The mid-2012s have SATA 3 connectors for both the optibay and the hdd bay.

I purchased this Samsung 850 Pro (it's cheaper here oddly) which I'm going to be putting in the optibay. The HDD I'll be keeping in the hdd bay so that it can take advantage of the sudden motion sensor.

By all accounts this SSD is pretty nifty, it uses a new technology NAND that is fast but more durable than the previous 840 iterations. It also comes with a ten year manufacturer's warranty.

As for RAM, I would say going with the Crucial kit is the best option since it's the same low voltage option as that provided by Apple.

 

[Heavybarrel]

The mid-2012s have SATA 3 connectors for both the optibay and the hdd bay.

Will you be using both the drives separately or are you going to fuse them together? If you chose to use them separately, what drive does your data gets transferred/downloaded to?

 

[theBostonian]

The mid-2012s have SATA 3 connectors for both the optibay and the hdd bay.

Will you be using both the drives separately or are you going to fuse them together? If you chose to use them separately, what drive does your data gets transferred/downloaded to?

I'm afraid I'll be using them separately but if I had more spare cash I would have bought 2 1TB SSDs and configured them into a striped RAID 0. The problem with it tho is you can't have bootcamp on it and also FileVault doesn't work apparently but the disk speeds are out of this world.

With the speed and durability of the Samsung 850 Pro (it has a 150TBW rating) I would just keep all data on that anyway. I'm going to keep 700 for OS X and 300 for Windows 7.

You should read up on the Samsung 850, by all accounts it's one of the best SSDs released this year.

 

[Heavybarrel]

I'm thinking that I'll get the Seagate 1TB SSHD (hybrid drive) now, and wait for sometime, maybe until the prices go down for the SSD, and i'll get a 250GB or 500GB SSD, considering my budget at that time. And for good measures i'll just slide the SSD into the main HDD bay and hybrid drive in the optical bay.

This way I don't spend a fortune and get plenty of storage, because right now I only have a 500GB HDD and <50GB is left. What do you think? Hybrid drives can not be worse than a regular HDD, right?

Also if you chose to use your drives separately, which drive will act as the main? I mean if you download something or you're trying to safe your data, what drive would that get saved on?

 

[theBostonian]

I'm thinking that I'll get the Seagate 1TB SSHD (hybrid drive) now, and wait for sometime, maybe until the prices go down for the SSD, and i'll get a 250GB or 500GB SSD, considering my budget at that time. And for good measures i'll just slide the SSD into the main HDD bay and hybrid drive in the optical bay.

This way I don't spend a fortune and get plenty of storage, because right now I only have a 500GB HDD and <50GB is left. What do you think? Hybrid drives can not be worse than a regular HDD, right?

Also if you chose to use your drives separately, which drive will act as the main? I mean if you download something or you're trying to safe your data, what drive would that get saved on?

You could always get a 128GB SSD and turn that with the mechanical HDD into a fusion drive. There are tutorials on the internet.

The SSD is the main drive, I'll probably load other OSes like Solaris or OpenBSD on the mechanical drive to experiment on.

As I said, if you remove the mechanical drive from the HDD bay you won't have the protection afforded by the sudden motion sensor. Both bays have SATA III so it doesn't matter where you put your SSD.

Hope this helps!

 

[hallux]

I have both the 840 EVO and the Corsair Vengeance memory kit in my mid-2012 MBP, both work VERY nicely. I have the 16 GB kit but the 8 GB kit would be similar. I bought a large SSD, so I had no need to keep my HDD and put the SSD in the opitbay location.

Both upgrades serve different purposes, the RAM will be noticeable when working on memory-hog applications (VM, for one) while the SSD will be noticeable in application load times and boot times.

 

[Heavybarrel]

I have both the 840 EVO and the Corsair Vengeance memory kit in my mid-2012 MBP, both work VERY nicely.

I think i've kinda made my mind, I feel there is no point in buying the 1TB Seagate SSHD, as it only has 8GB of NAND, and for storage I already have 500GB HDD.

Now I think I'm going to go for the EVO 840 (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147248)
And I will just put this in the optical bay, combined 750GB should be enough for me. Are there any other SSD's for similar price range that one may suggest?

The question now is that should i just use both drives separately or as a fusion drive? I have a lot of movies and songs, i feel i should keep those on the HDD and just download the OS and applications on the SSD. I don't want to clone my HDD, just want a fresh start (lol) with the SSD. What would be the best way to configure my HDD and the SSD?

 

[Weaselboy]

I have both the 840 EVO and the Corsair Vengeance memory kit in my mid-2012 MBP, both work VERY nicely.

I think i've kinda made my mind, I feel there is no point in buying the 1TB Seagate SSHD, as it only has 8GB of NAND, and for storage I already have 500GB HDD.

Now I think I'm going to go for the EVO 840 (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147248)
And I will just put this in the optical bay, combined 750GB should be enough for me. Are there any other SSD's for similar price range that one may suggest?

The question now is that should i just use both drives separately or as a fusion drive? I have a lot of movies and songs, i feel i should keep those on the HDD and just download the OS and applications on the SSD. I don't want to clone my HDD, just want a fresh start (lol) with the SSD. What would be the best way to configure my HDD and the SSD?

Crucial MX100 is comparable and $30 less on Newegg.

I'll let someone who uses Fusion comment on that, but if you are thinking of keeping your user account on the HDD, that can cause problems. I would keep the OS and apps and User account on the SSD, then move any large folders under the user account (like maybe Pictures and Music) to the HDD.