White MacBook 6,1 - RAM and SSD upgrade questions!

[danistyping]

My girl has a white MacBook model 6,1 with a 2.26ghz Core 2 Duo and only 2 GB RAM. The thing crawls, its really quite sad. We are about to blow the thing up if it doesn't get upgraded.

Here are my questions:


1. Can it take an SSD? CHEAP is priority - from 128GB - 256GB. Any recommendations are greatly appreciated. Big fan of newegg.

2. RAM - I believe it is DDR3 1067mhz...same deal. The computer has 2 1GB's right now. Can it max out at 4 or 8? 4 will do fine, but if I can get 8 in there we can future proof it a little bit...

3. Should I install one before the other? Both at the same time?

4. I am upgrading her from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion...skipping an entire OS. Any potential issues here?


Thanks so much guys!

 

[brop52]

Max is 8GB. This G.Skill set for $34.99 will work well. (Have it in my late 2008 unibody MacBook).

As far as SSDs go you missed the boat on some great deals but you might want to wait a bit for another good deal. Sign up for the eblast on Newegg. I don't have a SSD because the cost is prohibitive but if you go from 5400 to 7200 you would get some benefit. I just upgraded mine to a 500 7200 SSD "hybrid" Seagate Momentus XT. I got it for a steal at $30 off at Newegg but the deal is no longer active. The SATA is SATA II so maxes out at 3Gbps so I wouldn't recommend getting a top of the line one. SATA III SSDs will work but are expensive. I'd post more but I'm on my phone posting this by the pool.

As for one or the other, RAM will get you the cheapest bonus in terms of more VRAM and avoiding page outs. The SSD is probably the biggest increase in performance you can get at the loss of drive capacity and huge expense. What you do depends on your budget, computer needs, and whether you might be opening too many programs at once (not quitting after done will slow the computer due to RAM requirements).

I'd recommend joining ebates at ebates.com as you get 1% cash back. PM me if you are interested.

Mountain Lion should be fine. I have it on my 08 MB.

 

[israelmunoz]

Depends on your usage!

You can check the Activity Monitor to see how much RAM you're using at any given time.
Taking that into account, you could see if you'd need more!

Now, I'd definitely recommend an SSD! It's one of the biggest improvements one can make to an slow laptop (or PC), however, you'd have to see both your storage needs as well as how much you'd want to invest on the macbook, as SSD's run on the pricey side...

 

[brop52]

Another cool little utliity is iStat Pro and set it up as Advanced Memory/RAM. It will give you all the info you need about RAM usage and other things as well.

 

[danistyping]

Great thanks guys! I ended up order a Toshiba 128GB SSD SATA 3. Even though the comp is only sata 2, I went sata 3 so that one day I can sell it on ebay and put the old hdd back in the computer when I sell that. It was only 15 bucks more than the sata 2 drive.

I got 4GB RAM. Only $21...wow. This stuff is getting cheap. She does work processing and youtube and will never need more than that.

I am waiting until after I install the SSD to upgrade her to mountain lion. This way I don't have to get into cloning the drive...I can simply install the ssd, boot the comp from her snow leopard dvd and restore from time machine, THEN update to Mountain Lion on the ssd. Make sense or is there a way I could upgrade her to snow leopard now, before the ssd and ram upgrades?

 

[BRyken]

Your way should be fine.

 

[RSL]

Great thanks guys! I ended up order a Toshiba 128GB SSD SATA 3. Even though the comp is only sata 2, I went sata 3 so that one day I can sell it on ebay and put the old hdd back in the computer when I sell that. It was only 15 bucks more than the sata 2 drive.

Are you getting SATA 2 speed with the SSD? (You can check this by going to the Serial ATA info in the system profiler.)

Just curious because some SSDs (mostly Sanforce controller) don't operate at 3gbit/s. Thanks.