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Suggestions upgrading my old white mac unibody

B

britpoprule

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 31, 2015
59
1
Hi there! I wanted to ask your help as I'm about to upgrade my old white macbook unibody of some years ago. Here are the details :

Model Name:MacBook
Model Identifier:MacBook7,1
Processor Name:Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed:2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors:1
Total Number Of Cores:2
L2 Cache:3 MB
Memory:2 GB
Bus Speed:1.07 GHz

I've always been suggested to upgrade the ram and I think I will upgrade it with 8GB.
I've recently been told about the hard drive. To buy an SSD. What would you suggest? That's even more expensive than the ram.

Thanks
 
An SSD will make a SIGNIFICANTLY greater improvement than just adding RAM.
It will give a user experience that is much, MUCH faster!

You can find 240-256gb SSD's in the $70 range now.

The replacement job is EASY -- just be sure to use THE RIGHT TOOLS.
Go to ifixit.com to see the "replacement guide".

You might consider putting in more RAM while it's open.
You should upgrade to at least 4gb of RAM.

You -might- be able to add a 4gb DIMM in one of the slots (leaving the other DIMM "in place") for a total of 6gb.

Folks will tell you that having two "differently-sized" DIMMs will result in a machine that won't "run as fast" as a "matched pair" of DIMMs, but I predict you won't even notice the difference.

But again, adding the SSD will REALLY boost the overall performance.
 
The 7,1s use DDR-3 and can take up to 16gb. I'd suggest 8gb as a good compromise between cost and performance-it should cost $40-50 USD and will make a big difference(16 will be a lot more expensive and the improvement won't be as noticeable).

These machines aren't picky about RAM. You need DDR-3 PC3-8500(or higher) SO-DIMMs, which any computer parts vendor should be able to supply. Similarly, just a plain 2.5" SATA SSD will be fine.

$125-150 should get you both 8gb and a 256gb SSD. You will think you have a new computer!
 
This one is recommended for a MacBook but are you sure 256gb is enough?
britpoprule said:
Hi there. Thanks for your answer. I was already looking at crucial.com.
I'm just not sure yet about the hard drive. About these two :

This one of £69.59
http://uk.crucial.com/ProductDisplay...&storeId=10153

And this one of £77.99
http://uk.crucial.com/ProductDisplay...&storeId=10153

They're both compatible and pretty much the same. The more expensive has more reviews so I guess it's slightly better?

Thanks[/QUOTE
Click to expand...
 
Whether "256gb is enough" depends on how much you have on the HDD -now-.

How much storage space have you consumed through the years?
 
britpoprule said:
Hi there. Thanks for your answer. I was already looking at crucial.com.
I'm just not sure yet about the hard drive. About these two :

This one of £69.59
http://uk.crucial.com/ProductDisplay...&storeId=10153

And this one of £77.99
http://uk.crucial.com/ProductDisplay...&storeId=10153

They're both compatible and pretty much the same. The more expensive has more reviews so I guess it's slightly better?

Thanks
Click to expand...
They will both work. The MX200 is a little faster, but on your older machine you will never notice the difference. I would go with the cheapest option.
 
britpoprule said:
I've been advised against buying a 6.0 GB/S and take a 3.0 GB/S one.
I also stumbled accross this post from this forum of another user trying to upgrade his hd to ssd.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/upgrading-to-an-ssd-for-my-macbook-5-1.1759003/

I'm a bit confused. If you were in my shoes, which hd would go for? I don't know any other online shop in the UK apart from crucial.
Click to expand...
I don't know who is telling you not to use a SATA III drive, but it will work just fine. Read over my and other's comments in that thread you linked.

If I were you, I would just grab that Crucial BX100 and be done with it.
 
Considering your MB is about the same age/spec as my 2008 aluMB, keep this in mind.

When finally dies on you the harddrive will be the only part you can salvage. New Macs use soldered RAM and SDD.

So purchasing an even larger SSD than needed is still wise as it can be placed in an external case, and have plenty of use for it down the track. say 250gb is ok, 500gb is nice to have,

RAM otoh will be difficult to offload second hand and its almost standard with windows PC's depends which country you're in.

As for me, my 2008 is running just fine with osx 10.9 and I plan on keeping it until it decides to give up or to slow running my two VM images simultaneously.
 
thisMRguy said:
Considering your MB is about the same age/spec as my 2008 aluMB, keep this in mind.

When finally dies on you the harddrive will be the only part you can salvage. New Macs use soldered RAM and SDD.

So purchasing an even larger SSD than needed is still wise as it can be placed in an external case, and have plenty of use for it down the track. say 250gb is ok, 500gb is nice to have,

RAM otoh will be difficult to offload second hand and its almost standard with windows PC's depends which country you're in.

As for me, my 2008 is running just fine with osx 10.9 and I plan on keeping it until it decides to give up or to slow running my two VM images simultaneously.
Click to expand...
I have a 2008 aluMB and just put a SSD in it also 8GB of RAM, and it flies. All my parts are compatible with my daughters 13 inch MacBook Pro, so she can use this stuff if I get a new MacBook.

I didn't buy the SSD or the RAM thinking about selling parts, I did it to make my machine better. It's a cheap upgrade and I just don't want to spend the money yet upgrading.
 
I threw a Crucial MX100 SSD into my Late 2009 MacBook and it flies. Couple that with at least 4GB of RAM and your MacBook will feel new all over again.

Be very careful with choosing your SSD, many SSDs are bottlenecked by the Nvidia MCP79 SATA chipset, make sure to do some research. Crucial SSDs are typically good for these MacBooks.
 
ZircoBen said:
Be very careful with choosing your SSD, many SSDs are bottlenecked by the Nvidia MCP79 SATA chipset, make sure to do some research. Crucial SSDs are typically good for these MacBooks.
Click to expand...
Where did you find this info? Now I wish I went with the Crucial SSD, but I got a great deal on a Toshiba one
 
Primejimbo said:
Where did you find this info? Now I wish I went with the Crucial SSD, but I got a great deal on a Toshiba one
Click to expand...

It's all over the internet. Just search "MCP79 SSD" and you'll see a whole bunch of people who have struggled with it.

What will happen is that if you use an SSD that isn't fully supported by the chipset, it will 'negotiate' the speed down to 1.5 Gbps. The MacBook is technically 3.0 Gbps, and even at that most modern SSDs are being bottlenecked by the 3.0 speed.

What is the exact model of SSD you got?

If you check in System Report (is that it? On my PC right now) and go to SATA, tell me what the "Negotiated Link Speed" is.
 
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ZircoBen said:
It's all over the internet. Just search "MCP79 SSD" and you'll see a whole bunch of people who have struggled with it.

What will happen is that if you use an SSD that isn't fully supported by the chipset, it will 'negotiate' the speed down to 1.5 Gbps. The MacBook is technically 3.0 Gbps, and even at that most modern SSDs are being bottlenecked by the 3.0 speed.

What is the exact model of SSD you got?
Click to expand...
Toshiba Q Series Pro

I just looked under the system information
Then under SATA/SATA express
Link speed is 3 GB and negotiating link speed is also 3GB
 
Last edited:
I had a Toshiba Q Series that negotiated 1.5Gb link speed in my old MCP79 2008 aluminum MacBook. I eventually switched to a Crucial and it worked at 3Gb link speed.
 
Last edited:
pastrychef said:
I had a Toshiba Q Series that negotiated 1.5Gb link speed in my old MCP79 2008 aluminum MacBook. I eventually witched to a Crucial and it worked at 3Gb link speed.
Click to expand...
I read there was a firmware update that fixed this. I think there is a Q series and Q pro too, I have the pro.
 
I had a regular Q series. I searched high and low for a firmware update. Emailing and calling them proved totally useless. Their website provided absolutely no support. I'm glad I got rid of that drive.
 
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