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Upgrade HDD&RAM MacBook 3,1 SR 2.2Ghz

D

DiScO197

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 27, 2008
162
1
Hi Folks,

This gets asked a million times on a daily basis I expect, so sorry about that! I've read the upgrade section which is very helpful but I was looking for some recommendations / advice on what HDD&RAM upgrades to buy. I was looking at a seagate momentus (ST9500420ASG) 500GB, 7200 but when I googled the model number, the first thing that came up was a post on the seagate forums regarding incompatibility with the Mac due to the fact this hard drive has a free fall sensor which apparently conflicts with the built in sudden motion sensor. Anyone have any experience on that? I need a drive that will run at 7200rpm so this checked all the boxes for the price but could be out now? I have read the SR 3,1 will take 4GB of ram so I was just looking at the dual 2GB corsair value pack (VS4GSDSKIT667D2). Any input much appreciated :)
 
i got 4gb of Crucial RAM. they have an excellent rep and guarenteed compatibility. the ram works great

and then i got the seagate momentus 500gb 7200.4. works very good and fast. i had a hitachi 7k500 before it and this seagate is quieter at idle, runs cooler at idle, and takes up a noticeable less amount of battery. i also have hdapm installed to keep the load cycle count down on all my drives.

this combo is excellent. also the momentus xt hybrid is a good drive as well. but i heard people are having an issue with the spin down of this drive like many drives in a mac. but hdapm fixes this issue. i have a full instruction set in how to install it if you would like..

after upgrading ram and hd, it really let my late 09 macbook shine. no more bottlenecking the cpu yanno? really snappy machine and good for the price. mines faster than my friends 2.4ghz stock pro.
 
Your MacBook can actually take up to 6GB RAM. 4GB is plenty, but if you wanted more you can do 6. OWC makes great RAM, that's where I got mine and it works like a charm.

If the free-fall sensor in the HDD conflicts with the one in your MacBook, it's possible to disable the MacBook one so that they don't conflict. Or you should be able to purchase what is essentially the same drive without the sensor.

@happle: I think you mean less of a CPU bottleneck. A 7200rpm drive doesn't saturate even a 1.5 Gbps SATA connection, so it's still bottlenecking, just less so.
 
Cheers both, I appreciate that. Happle, was it the value select RAM you got? And what is the model number of the drive you bought if you don't mind? I would really much prefer a HDD that is easier on the battery and especially quieter as I do a bit of mobile recording in Logic Pro. I'm not familiar with hdapm? I would hazard a guess at it being some kind of power management thing? The components you have I should think will be the likely choice as I have bought these brands for years and never had a problem. Cheers.

Ignore the RAM thing I see you said Crucial, not Corsair! I shall take at look at that also!
 
iThinkergoiMac said:
Your MacBook can actually take up to 6GB RAM. 4GB is plenty, but if you wanted more you can do 6. OWC makes great RAM, that's where I got mine and it works like a charm.

If the free-fall sensor in the HDD conflicts with the one in your MacBook, it's possible to disable the MacBook one so that they don't conflict. Or you should be able to purchase what is essentially the same drive without the sensor.

@happle: I think you mean less of a CPU bottleneck. A 7200rpm drive doesn't saturate even a 1.5 Gbps SATA connection, so it's still bottlenecking, just less so.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that! I have bought RAM from OWC before for my MacPro and they have been outstanding. Even though I'm in the UK, they honour their life time replacement warranty without any fuss. It's always the import duty I get concerned about but I shall certainly give it another look. So you think I can get 6 gig of RAM in my machine? I would go for that if was not much more expensive. I'm basically trying to extend the life of this machine as much as possible. Cheers.
 
DiScO197 said:
So you think I can get 6 gig of RAM in my machine? I would go for that if was not much more expensive. I'm basically trying to extend the life of this machine as much as possible. Cheers.
Click to expand...

Look at my sig. I've got the same MacBook model (3,1) as you and I currently have 6GB RAM in it. After the RAM and a 7200rpm HDD, this computer screams compared to its speed before. Unfortunately, it is a bit more expensive because you need 4GB+2GB instead of just two (cheaper) 2GB sticks.

If you ever have questions about capacity or practically anything else, MacTracker will tell you all you need to know. You can confirm that your model accepts and uses 6GB RAM there as well.
 
this model. you must get the model without the G at the end of the model number. the g stands for g sensor, but mac already has one so if you get the drive with the G it will conflict with the macs g sensor. heres the exact drive i got.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...eagate_momentus_7200.4-_-22-148-374-_-Product

and your lucky i paid 100 bucks for mine less than a year ago.

oh and for the crucial ram, go to their website and they have a machine that tells you exactly what ram you need.
 
Fantastic help folks, can't fault it. Thanks for that link iThinkergoiMac. Yes, I saw you have the black one. It's encouraging that you have found such a performance gain. One question though if you don't mind. By using a 4GB and 2GB stick of RAM, will you get the dual channel mode (if indeed there is such a thing here, I might be making this up!) and of course they won't be a matched pair. Is it really that important? Cheers.
 
DiScO197 said:
Fantastic help folks, can't fault it. Thanks for that link iThinkergoiMac. Yes, I saw you have the black one. It's encouraging that you have found such a performance gain. One question though if you don't mind. By using a 4GB and 2GB stick of RAM, will you get the dual channel mode (if indeed there is such a thing here, I might be making this up!) and of course they won't be a matched pair. Is it really that important? Cheers.
Click to expand...

i dont think a 4 and 2 gb stick will work good. youll want matching sticks like 2 3gbs.
 
DiScO197 said:
One question though if you don't mind. By using a 4GB and 2GB stick of RAM, will you get the dual channel mode (if indeed there is such a thing here, I might be making this up!) and of course they won't be a matched pair. Is it really that important? Cheers.
Click to expand...

Your laptop does support dual channel mode if you have a matched pair. Thus using a 4GB stick and a 2GB stick will not give you dual channel mode. However, dual channel mode only gives you so much performance increase (and is far more important on a Mac Pro where you have 8 slots than on a laptop with 2 slots). 6GB RAM is more of an increase in performance than 4GB with dual channel. In other words, 6GB RAM is still faster than 4GB RAM, even without the dual channel mode.

happle said:
i dont think a 4 and 2 gb stick will work good. youll want matching sticks like 2 3gbs.
Click to expand...

There aren't any 3GB sticks for this MacBook (that I'm aware of). As I said before, 6GB RAM is more beneficial for performance than 4GB in dual-channel mode. I can attest that the combo works extremely well.

Honestly, I think 4GB will most likely be enough. I just wanted to let you know what your options were in case you wanted more.
 
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