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Should I Upgrade?

SamAaro

SamAaro

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 8, 2016
12
1
Hello there.
I would really appreciate people's opinion here on whether or not I should make some upgrades to my MacBook Pro.

I have an Early 2011 15 inch MacBook Pro.
It's currently running the latest OS too.

The battery no longer holds charge very well and it's been saying "replace soon" for some time.
Also, it gets hot pretty quickly these days.

My question to you is:
Is it worth buying a new battery and upgrading the RAM from 4gb to 8gb?

I found both of these on Amazon. The battery is an iMah for around £50 and the RAM (2x 4gb) is made by Crucial if I remember correctly and is around £45.

Will this help the heat problem? Is it worth investing/buying these upgrades?

Thank you for you time :)
 
SamAaro said:
Hello there.
I would really appreciate people's opinion here on whether or not I should make some upgrades to my MacBook Pro.

I have an Early 2011 15 inch MacBook Pro.
It's currently running the latest OS too.

The battery no longer holds charge very well and it's been saying "replace soon" for some time.
Also, it gets hot pretty quickly these days.

My question to you is:
Is it worth buying a new battery and upgrading the RAM from 4gb to 8gb?

I found both of these on Amazon. The battery is an iMah for around £50 and the RAM (2x 4gb) is made by Crucial if I remember correctly and is around £45.

Will this help the heat problem? Is it worth investing/buying these upgrades?

Thank you for you time :)
Click to expand...

15" 2011 MacBook Pros have issues with the graphics. So I wouldn't throw too much money into it. However, you can still get a lot of great performance out of it without hitting the wallet too hard.

It's always worth upgrading the RAM, though swapping the HDD for an SSD would be the absolute best increase for performance. If your budget allows, I'd go down that route first.

I'd avoid third-party batteries myself, but the reviews of that model seem pretty good. So it's really your discretion on that front.

What you've proposed won't help the heat problem, though once you've got the bottom case off the Mac, you can take out the fans (Torx screws) and clean them out. If you haven't taken off the bottom before, it'll likely be sardine-wedged with dust. So a spring clean with some compressed air will do it the world of good.

Let me know if you have any other queries! :)
 
keysofanxiety said:
15" 2011 MacBook Pros have issues with the graphics. So I wouldn't throw too much money into it. However, you can still get a lot of great performance out of it without hitting the wallet too hard.

It's always worth upgrading the RAM, though swapping the HDD for an SSD would be the absolute best increase for performance. If your budget allows, I'd go down that route first.

I'd avoid third-party batteries myself, but the reviews of that model seem pretty good. So it's really your discretion on that front.

What you've proposed won't help the heat problem, though once you've got the bottom case off the Mac, you can take out the fans (Torx screws) and clean them out. If you haven't taken off the bottom before, it'll likely be sardine-wedged with dust. So a spring clean with some compressed air will do it the world of good.

Let me know if you have any other queries! :)
Click to expand...

Ah ok, I see.

I've actually never had the case open and I've had it since new, so I'm guessing it's pretty dirty in there by now.

Swapping to an SSD is a good call actually. That hadn't even crossed my mind.
I will probably do this at some point too. It's probably half the reason it's gets hot, along with the dust

Thank you for your post.
 
SamAaro said:
Hello there.
I would really appreciate people's opinion here on whether or not I should make some upgrades to my MacBook Pro.

I have an Early 2011 15 inch MacBook Pro.
It's currently running the latest OS too.

The battery no longer holds charge very well and it's been saying "replace soon" for some time.
Also, it gets hot pretty quickly these days.

My question to you is:
Is it worth buying a new battery and upgrading the RAM from 4gb to 8gb?

I found both of these on Amazon. The battery is an iMah for around £50 and the RAM (2x 4gb) is made by Crucial if I remember correctly and is around £45.

Will this help the heat problem? Is it worth investing/buying these upgrades?

Thank you for you time :)
Click to expand...

Of cause it is. The 2011 are still very powerful machines.

Clean out the dust helps make it run cooler.

Upgrade the memory and put in a SSD.
 
Yep, upgrade it till it drops...like my mid-2010 17" did recently! :D
 
I had my 2011 15 inch early MBP reballed about a year and a half ago, put in 8g of memory and a 1TB SSD. Given the cost of a new machine, I am still perfectly happy with my old one. I would prefer retina, but the hi res anti glare display is good enough to get by.
 
ajcgn said:
I had my 2011 15 inch early MBP reballed about a year and a half ago, put in 8g of memory and a 1TB SSD. Given the cost of a new machine, I am still perfectly happy with my old one. I would prefer retina, but the hi res anti glare display is good enough to get by.
Click to expand...

Who did your reballing and how much did you paid?

I do have a rMBP, but I still use cMBP (17-inch, Late 2011) as my daily driver since Apple never released its successor.
 
ajcgn said:
I had my 2011 15 inch early MBP reballed about a year and a half ago, put in 8g of memory and a 1TB SSD. Given the cost of a new machine, I am still perfectly happy with my old one. I would prefer retina, but the hi res anti glare display is good enough to get by.
Click to expand...

What does reballed mean?
 
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