Upgrading RAM and HD on a midyear 2010 macbook pro

I want to upgrade my midyear 2010 macbook pro. After upgrading the OS to yosemite, the system is a little sluggish. Currently, I only have 4 GB of ram and I *don't* have an SSD. So, I want to max out the ram and upgrade to an SSD.

I was thinking of getting these two items:

8GB Kit (4GBx2) DDR3 PC3-8500 Unbuffered NON-ECC 1.35V 512Meg x 64
CT3309355

and

Crucial MX100 256GB SATA 6Gb/s 2.5" Internal SSD
CT5416960


That will set me back about $200.

However, I know there are other compatible makes/models. I am not made of money, but $200 seems okay. I just want to make sure I am not throwing away money when I should have spent a little more on a much better product.

 

While I totally agree on getting matched RAM SoDimms, you may be able to get away with a single 4GB stick if your system contains a 4GB stick instead of 2x 2GB ones.

With the money you save (or even if you can't...) I would highly recommend to get a bigger SSD, period. Not only should you consider OP'ing the SSD by 25-30% (leaving you with ~167GB usable capacity) to reduce WA factor and GC routine times to the minimum, giving the user a much more responsive storage subsystem performance, but you'll also immediately (roughly) double the performance over the smaller model too because of increased parallelism and interleaving possible with more nand chips better matched to each controller channel.

Sure, the cost of the drive will be your whole current budget. But the time to setup a better matched to 2015 and forward SSD will be the same and, you will get better performance and less chance of filling up the drive and pushing it to less than HDD levels.

See:
http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00KFAGCUM/...5381&creativeASIN=B00KFAGCUM&tag=shopbotca-20

I would also at least attempt to install 2x 8GB SoDimms too. Especially if you regularly sleep your mbp and leave programs open instead of closing them when you're done. 16GB RAM may not be possible, but if it was, the performance boost I've seen on other mac systems warrants trying this out.

 

According to apple, the laptop only takes 8GB max. Also, it currently has 2x2GB. So, I would have to buy all new ram. I noticed there are several different options on crucials site that are compatible with my model (different voltage?). Does it matter which one I get so long as it is 8GB and compatible?

http://www.crucial.com/ScanListView...926C3&urlRequestType=Base&langId=-1&catalogId

I don't mind spending more if it will be worth it in terms of performance increase. I just don't need anymore storage than my current 250 GB. Can you link me to a resource that shows how a larger drive will increase my performance?

 

I'd buy the lower voltage RAM. Can't comment on if it works or not though (but if it says it's compatible, then at least it should be returnable).

I wouldn't necessarily trust the apple resources as they are simply repeating what Intel would have stated back in 2010. Like I said, it is worth to try if 16GB RAM would work on your system with the workload as specified above.

See:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8066/crucial-mx100-256gb-512gb-review

Don't forget that these speeds are for a brand new drive with no O/S or partition on it. Steady state results will be much less in real world usage.

And again, the larger capacity is not just to store files on - it can be used effectively to keep sustained performance higher by OP'ing the drive. Whether you use a 30% or a 50% OP is not an issue, if you really don't need the capacity today, but the drive will be much more useful when you've moved onto another system in a few years - for you, or for a higher resale value to the next owner.

Again; keep in mind that the 512GB nominal SSD is really only;

512 x 1000 x 1000 x 1000 = 512,000,000,000 bytes.

Divide that by 1024 and again by 1024 and again by 1024 = ~476GB raw capacity to Windows or OS/X.

476 x 0.70 = ~333GB available to the O/S and user after OP'ing by my recommended 30%.


If you want to cut this down by another 77GB (for a 50% OP level - of which I have several dedicated SSD's in exactly that setup) it only helps with keeping performance high by keeping the WA, GC and other internal routines of the drive out of the users face as much as possible.


Your call of course, but I've seen a similar setup breathe new life into such systems and have kept the call of a new mbp at bay for over 2 years now.

 

Which CPU is in that Mac?

 

ajkula66: It is Intel Core2 Duo 2.4GHz

tilleroftheearth: Well, after some digging around, I do believe it can take 16GB if I get the right RAM.

http://blog.macsales.com/16302-some-2010-mac-owners-can-get-more-ram-than-they-thought

This is exactly my model.

I was totally unfamiliar with the concept of OP'ing an SSD. This is exactly why I posted this question. I really appreciate your input, tileroftheearth. It has been very helpful.

How large of a SSD would you recommend getting? I know nothing of OP'ing other than what I have read after a little googling. Is there a guide that can show me what I should do? The article I read made it seem like there were some nuances to it.

I don't mind spending more money, but it has to be a good value. I can't pay a huge markup for a marginal gain. But these options look like they might be worth some extra cash.

Thanks again for your help.

 

And that's exactly the reason why I had asked the question...just make sure that you're able to return the RAM for a refund if the machine decides to bark at it...

I'd say that at current prices 480/500/512GB seems to be a "sweet spot"...

Depending on how much you're inclined to spend on the SSD, I'm certain that we could come up with some suggestions...

 

p754,

as ajkula66 suggested above, the 480-512GB nominal capacity SSD's are the best value right now.

See:
http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00KFAGCUM/...5381&creativeASIN=B00KFAGCUM&tag=shopbotca-20

The above is just about the absolute minimum I would buy if I needed an SSD today. Keeping in mind that the brand, the controller, the nand configuration and type and the capacity (including OP'ing) need to be balanced to give the user a better than HDD experience over the course of ownership.

For about double the cost, look for either the Samsung 850 Pro or the SanDisk Extreme Pro (with my bias towards SanDisk), at either the 480-512GB capacity point or larger (at higher cost, of course).

There is no mystery to OP'ing - although I can't tell you step by step how to do it on a mac platform, all you need to keep in mind is to specify the capacity that the O/S will be allowed to use - before it is used at all. So, basically, you'll tell the O/S to partition the drive to ~70% of it's indicated capacity (not what is printed on the box, rather, what the O/S is telling you at the time of partitioning).

With that done, just make sure you don't inadvertently extend/expand the working partition to include any of the 'unallocated' space we've left for the SSD's controller to work it's internal routines with. Unless of course, you've run out of space and need it at some future time.

An additional note; the owner of the similar mac setup did two installs with the new hardware. One; he did a full restore from a time machine backup and although the system was obviously faster, even I mentioned that it was not as fast as I though it would be.

The second install was a clean install of OS/x, followed by a clean install of his programs and data. This is the install he is working on to today. Very fast, very responsive and as mentioned, the newer mac's don't hold the 'I must upgrade now' allure for him as they once did. Make no mistake, if he was doing video/audio editing the newest hardware is a no-brainer, but for his more mainstream usage patterns, upgrading to a current mac is simply transferring his bank account to apple (his words) with no appreciable gain in his day to day usage.

If I haven't mentioned it before: stay away from any TLC nand based SSD's. Samsung 840, Samsung 840 EVO especially. They have issues with reading (yeah; reading) older data that was written to nand after about a month or so.

See:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1512915/...enchmarks-needed-to-confirm-affected-ssds/300

See:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1507897/...d-drops-on-old-written-data-in-the-drive/1790


Worse, Samsung issued a 'fix' in October 2014 - but the issue still plagues some users... and Samsung won't recognize that the original (non-EVO) 840 has issues too.


Hope that is enough to get you started. Let us know how this goes for you. Thanks.