DIY How To Upgrade Your Macbook Pro Guide!

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Hey Guys I just wanted to open up a discussion thread on upgrading your mac

Because I just upgrade my 2009 Macbook Pro (5,1) with some more RAM and an SSD Drive and so far its been awesome – definitely worth the upgrade (saves me from having to get a new computer for a little longer! lol)

So if you have an older mac, macbook pro, macbook, whatever, and its been going super slow (mine was CRAWLING. I could hardly use it.) and deleting stuff off your harddrive and using programs like OnyX just isn’t cutting it, then its time for an upgrade!

The first thing that you should do is check out a list of model identifiers like this -> http://www.everymac.com/systems/by_capability/mac-specs-by-machine-model-machine-id.html

Find out what your model is, and what the identifier is (mine was 5,1) and that really helps you to find tutorials on how to do these things (and whether you can or not!). For example, I almost got 16 GBs of ram for my macbook pro but realized that it maxed out at 8GBs so luckily I noticed that haha and picked up the 8 instead.

Going through the upgrade process was pretty painless but I got stuck at some parts because they say to “be gentle” or “lightly push” things into place and I had to really apply some pressure to get it to snap into place haha – so just be careful and make informed decisions! lol

So anyway one of the best resources I used was http://www.ifixit.com/ – they have a ton of high quality hi res pictures of the gadgets (look up the one you have and go to town!) and that really helped me to see how things are *supposed* to look when I was putting things back together – its a good idea to try to remember the way it goes before hand of course, but some of the cables are hard to remember when you haven’t done it before. Keep all the screws you take out ready to go back in the way that they came.

Another great guide (with videos) is the powerbookmedic – I used the videos at http://www.powerbookmedic.com/mac-repair.php to help see exactly how one piece came out (the isight airport cable connection) I couldn’t figure out how to get it back in, and watching them take it out really helped me to snap that thing back in there

If you have an late 2008 or early 2009 macbook pro and you want to upgrade your Ram and add a second harddrive (SSD) like I did then here are the pieces I used, and some more specific videos that helped me get the job done!

Crucial 8GB Kit (4GBx2) DDR3 1066 MT/s (PC3-8500) CL7 SODIMM 204-Pin Notebook Memory Modules CT2CP51264BC1067 –> http://amzn.to/VxOL36

SAMSUNG 830 Series 2.5-Inch 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-7PC128B/WW
–> http://amzn.to/WECHtA

JacobsParts® 9.5mm SATA Optical Bay Hard Drive Caddy Adapter
–> http://amzn.to/11PED8d

Of course feel free to shop around, those are just the parts that I went with, and these videos helped me to through the actual process of making the upgrade

Fastest MacBook Pro on The Planet Upgrade Part 1: Overview & Memory Install ->

Fastest MacBook Pro on the Planet Part 2: Hard Drive to SSD Swap & 16GB RAM ->

How to install HDD Caddy Macbook Pro Unibody Late 2008 / 2009 with Samsung 830 SSD ->

(I enjoyed the soothing music on that one haha)

How to Upgrade RAM in a 2009 / 2010 MacBook Pro – Memory Replacement – MacBook Tutorial ->

Anyway I hope this thread helps you guys that want to upgrade your macbook pro! If you have any questions or maybe advice (or even want to start your own thread about another DIY project, or upgrading another gadget, go ahead, the forums are for you guys!) just let us know with a reply or a comment!

Thanks!

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