What kind of upgrades should I do with a 2011 Macbook pro?

[kvnkvnkvn]

I have a basically brand new 2011 Macbook pro that was used a few times and put back in its box and sat in closet 8 years. During that time I thought that it was lost as I moved 4 times to 3 different countries. I found it as we were cleaning up my moms house due to Covid 19 and going through old boxes. I turned it on and it works fine; I want to upgrade it and give it to my mom

What kind of upgrades would you recommend for it.

RAM - do you prefer Crucial, Cosair, G Skill, OWC
SSD - do you prefer Samsung, Western Digital, Sandisk, PNY,

 

[profcutter]

Expect to replace the battery, it's been sitting a long while, lithium batteries don't love that. Crucial seems to be pretty reliable. I updated my 17 inch with a micron ssd, it's lasted several years so far.

 

[justashooter]

Keep an eye on the battery. A friend had one that sat for 3 years and they wanted it going again. I plugged it in and charged it a bit and booted it up (wanted to make sure it worked). Put it on a shelf and ordered parts (SSD, more ram). About ten days later took it down to upgrade it and the battery had swollen and forced out the bottom cover. The battery is my signature picture to the left. New battery, Crucial MX500 500gb SSD, more ram and a clean install of the OS and it works great. I have one Samsung but the Crucials (I use the MX500 series) are a little less money and work great.

 

[ihakim]

You can replace your optical drive with an SSD as well. I did that and put two SSDs in my old MBP 2011 13"

 

[Audit13]

Is this a 13" or 15"? Just curious because the many of the 15" models suffer from a bad Radeon GPU.