[Question] What MBPr are upgradable?

[iceman600]

My MBP 2011 just died on me and im in the market for a new one. I heard that the new MBP are not upgradable anymore... Is it really the new thing now? No room for upgrades? Thinking bout that makes me wonder what would happen to Other World Computing where the sell Apple upgrades

Is there a MBPr i can get that is upgradable? Thanks

 

[nando4]

My MBP 2011 just died on me and im in the market for a new one. I heard that the new MBP are not upgradable anymore... Is it really the new thing now? No room for upgrades? Thinking bout that makes me wonder what would happen to Other World Computing where the sell Apple upgrades

Is there a MBPr i can get that is upgradable? Thanks

Late 2012 and early MBPr had soldered CPU, RAM and used a somewhat upgradable SSD. Though compared to the mid-2013 units, they have have significantly shorter battery life, only have Thunderbolt1 ports and use slower SSDs. See http://www.everymac.com/systems/app...na-display-13-how-to-upgrade-ssd-storage.html on how to upgrade those units.

If serious about those units then consider the 13" cMBP with it's 1280x800 (non-Retina) LCD. It has upgradeable standard SATA storage (primary + optical drive), has proper RAM slots. CPU is soldered.

Latest Haswell 13" and 15" rMBPs are locked-down consumables. CPU and RAM is soldered. Battery is glued and they use proprietory pcie SSDs. iFixit giving them a 1-out-of-10 for repairability.

http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Retina+Display+Late+2013+Teardown/18696
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Retina+Display+Late+2013+Teardown/18695

Saying that the highest spec Haswell 15" rMBP with Iris Pro graphics packs a lot of performance and battery life in a small package. Furthermore, it's processing/gaming performance can be increased via it's (exclusive with 13" MBPr) 20Gbps Thunderbolt 2 port by attaching a eGPU. See

[GUIDE] 2013 15" Macbook Pro + GTX780Ti@20Gbps-TB2 (Sonnet Echo Express III-D) + Win8

Otherwise if wanting upgradeability in a small chassis then recommend looking outside the of Apple space. Haswell 14" Dell E6440 with replaceable battery, socketted CPU allowing CPU upgrades inc i7-quad, 900P *matte* LCD, 2xRAM slots and 2xSATA connectors allowing use of standard HDDs/SSDs, plus a eSATAp socket allowing bootable external media and an expresscard slot. The penalty of course is weight and thickness. 14" Dell E6440 can be had for considerably less than a rMBP on ebay or Dell Outlet. NBD business-continuity warranty eclipsing Apple's offering. Also consider a 14" Dell E5440. It uses a slower soldered ULV CPU+chipset, delivering longer battery life in a slightly thinner chassis.

 

[yjchua95]

My MBP 2011 just died on me and im in the market for a new one. I heard that the new MBP are not upgradable anymore... Is it really the new thing now? No room for upgrades? Thinking bout that makes me wonder what would happen to Other World Computing where the sell Apple upgrades

Is there a MBPr i can get that is upgradable? Thanks

In all rMBPs, the CPU and RAM are soldered to the logic board. I went for 16GB RAM in both my rMBPs because they weren't upgradeable.

Having soldered components is the reason why the rMBPs are much thinner and lighter than the cMBPs.

In the mid-2012 and early-2013 ones, there are mSATA blade SSDs upgrade kits from OWC and Transcend.

In the late-2013 ones, no PCIe SSD upgrade kits are available (mind you, they aren't the M.2 PCIe NGFF SSDs either, they're a proprietary form of PCIe SSDs from Apple, made by Samsung and SanDisk).