upgrading tips MBP 2011 17''

[stefmesman]

so ill be getting my mbp 17'' next tuesday if shipping goes as planned.

after ive sold my current computer ill have some cash left to get some upgrades (now or in the near future)

i ordered the base 17'' with a 500gb 7200 instead of a 5400 750gb.

ill be doing large video projects so ill be in need of space. i dont think SSD is a good upgrade considering i need the space. optibay mod could be. but i still have to be able to burn DVD's on location. unless there is a low profile external burner out there? ill be using it alot without magsafe attached so i need the battery life.

first thing ill upgrade is the ram from 4gb stock to 8gb 1600mhz Kingston hyperX

anyone have any ideas to improve my mbp?

 

[bluesteel]

i've got a Seagate 750GB 7200RPM HDD ($85) for my "user" account. i installed that in the optical bay with a MaxUpgrades kit, and put the SuperDrive in an external enclosure that came with the kit (http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&product_ID=186&ParentCat=348). i think that burning a DVD will be a bit slower via the external USB enclosure than the internal SATA connection.

i use a really fast 80GB OCZ Vertex 2 SSD ($139) for System/Apps in the main hard drive bay. i use the 750GB 5400RPM HDD that shipped with my computer as a portable backup for the faster internal 750GB HDD in the optical bay. the 8GB RAM upgrade made a big difference for me as well.

 

[stefmesman]

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How does battery life keep up with both ssd and hd running in optibay?

Edit: do they ship to europe?

 

[sunnyj]

I have a 2011 17" 2.3 Ghz. 750 GB HDD and heres a list of things i got from OWC. i put the SSD in the dvd drive bay and move the dvd drive to a external enclosure. the SSD will be my boot drive. I also use this computer for editing video and djing.

 

[Bobby Corwen]

Congrats

Optibay above (maxupgrades) is the best because the external casing (kinda) matches better than alternatives. 100$

7200 Scorpio 750gig 2nd drive 80$

Ram get gskill to save or crucial (Kingston is fine) for quality. 70-100$

Apple bluetooth track bad 70$

Wireless keyboard 70$

Hdmi video out cable $30 (do not buy 3rd party! ..Probably)

Vivitek 1080 projector from the future 130' screen in full HD 750$

I hope u got the 2.3 :/

 

[stefmesman]

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I didnt get the 2.3 as it doesnt give a large improvement other then2mb more cache.

 

[bluesteel]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; nl-nl) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

How does battery life keep up with both ssd and hd running in optibay?

Edit: do they ship to europe?

to my surprise, having an SSD and HDD running at the same time hasn't made much of a difference in battery life....SSDs use less power than a standard HDD. but battery life isn't great on laptops anyways, especially with the apps i'm running. i rarely get more than 2.5 hours on the battery alone. i tend to have mine plugged into AC power most of the time.