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MacBook 2010 is slow without battery, any way how to speed up?

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macasker

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 27, 2021
1
0
hi. I have old 2010 MacBook white with dead battery and MacBook is too slow.
6gb ram, 250gb hdd and intel c2d 2,4ghz.
its any way how to overclock cpu back to speed without battery?
because I looked and new battery cost about 30 - 50$ and I think its too much, bcs this laptop price is about 60$ lol.
thank u.
 
Holes Flow

Holes Flow

macrumors newbie
Aug 20, 2020
6
3
Others wiser than me will comment, but you will always get more mileage from an SSD vs. HDD. And you can use it in a newer machine later wen you sell yours for $60.

And get used to Apple pulling sneaky stuff.
 
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ian87w

macrumors G3
Feb 22, 2020
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Indonesia
macasker said:
hi. I have old 2010 MacBook white with dead battery and MacBook is too slow.
6gb ram, 250gb hdd and intel c2d 2,4ghz.
its any way how to overclock cpu back to speed without battery?
because I looked and new battery cost about 30 - 50$ and I think its too much, bcs this laptop price is about 60$ lol.
thank u.
Click to expand...
It depends on how much money you want to spend on the laptop. The regular recommendations would be new battery and replacing the hard drive with SSD.

As for cost, it's more about how much money would you want to spend for a laptop. If you cannot afford a new laptop now, the cost of battery and SSD will be a lot less than a new laptop. But if you already think it's too slow anyway (Core 2 Duo is kinda slow by today's standard, even for browsing), then save the money into a new laptop budget.

So first question you would want to ask yourself is, how much money are you willing to spend on a laptop.
 
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stefanski

stefanski

macrumors member
Apr 11, 2004
78
25
Australia
Good points by ian87w. There comes a point where things just aren't worth keeping alive. Your particular model is 11 years old. Nothing even remotely new will work on it as you well know. You can't overclock the CPU and the CPU itself is just not up to today's tasks no matter what you try. Buying an SSD is going to speed things up but really, even 50 bucks seems like a waste and you already pointed out that the battery is worth more than the laptop.

Find yourself a reasonably priced old MacBook that has at least 8GB, an SSD and some faster ports. They won't cost the world but you get much better performance without much hassle.
 
profcutter

profcutter

macrumors 68000
Mar 28, 2019
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Just remember that with a dead battery, these machines are in limp mode: they throttle to 50 percent. If you can find a new battery, you’ll get that speed back, but it is true that at this point, it may be worth moving on to something a hair more modern.
 
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profcutter

profcutter

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Just keep in mind that the throttling is there for a reason. If you pull too much power without a battery, the computer will shut down without warning
 
TheShortTimer

TheShortTimer

macrumors 68040
Mar 27, 2017
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London, UK
stefanski said:
Your particular model is 11 years old. Nothing even remotely new will work on it as you well know.
Click to expand...

Huh? I'm running Catalina on an 11 year old machine with 2GB of RAM - half the amount that Apple states is the minimum requirement and far less than the 6GB RAM that the OP's machine has and it's humming along nicely! :D

tj8IQVu.png


stefanski said:
You can't overclock the CPU and the CPU itself is just not up to today's tasks no matter what you try.
Click to expand...

Perhaps you should clarify what you're referring to as "today's tasks" because the 1.4 Ghz C2D CPU in my MBA is almost half the speed of the OP's machine and under Catalina it's easily up to the task of running the latest browsers (including TOR), productivity software, sending emails (with the latest encryption protocols), using the desktop versions of WhatsApp and Signal, accessing Video on Demand services, playing films in HD and much, much more. They all come under the category of "today's tasks" and I can accomplish them on my 11 year old MacBook Air without any struggling.
 
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macsound1

macrumors 6502a
May 17, 2007
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SF Bay Area
When you first did this install on your 2010 macbook air was it an old install that you migrated or was it a fresh install?

Personally, I had an old Mac Mini that was soooooo sloooow and just doing a fresh install made it feel as fast as my quad core i7 MBP

Also, what's the patcher you have open. This is what allowed you to install Catalina on an unsupported mac?
 
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TheShortTimer

TheShortTimer

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Mar 27, 2017
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macsound1 said:
When you first did this install on your 2010 macbook air was it an old install that you migrated or was it a fresh install?
Click to expand...

I have Snow Leopard, Mojave and Catalina installed on the MBA. Originally it was Snow Leopard, High Sierra and El Capitan. I replaced High Sierra with Mojave and migrated El Capitan to Catalina. You can read about my experiences in full here. :)

macsound1 said:
Also, what's the patcher you have open. This is what allowed you to install Catalina on an unsupported mac?
Click to expand...

It's the macOS Catalina Patcher by the legendary DosDude. You can download it from here - the instructions are extremely clear and easy to follow. A patched version of Catalina is created and then installed. It's an absolute doddle! :D
 
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TheShortTimer

TheShortTimer

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Amethyst1 said:
In my case - watching lolcat videos at 8K, playing the latest games at 8K with all settings maxxed, Big Data analysis, 3D modelling, the works! The poor ol' MBA can't do that :(
Click to expand...

It can't but then it was never designed as a powerhouse in the first place. The fact that it can hold its own in many areas, 11 years on from its release is an impressive feat. :)
 
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bobesch

bobesch

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Oct 21, 2015
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Kiel, Germany
macasker said:
hi. I have old 2010 MacBook white with dead battery and MacBook is too slow.
6gb ram, 250gb hdd and intel c2d 2,4ghz.
its any way how to overclock cpu back to speed without battery?
because I looked and new battery cost about 30 - 50$ and I think its too much, bcs this laptop price is about 60$ lol.
thank u.
Click to expand...
Hi, did you already come to a conclusion?
As previously mentioned a new battery (30-40$) and an SSD (250GB/30$) will bring Your Macbook back to life.
I don't believe you'll get something comparable for the same price, if Your's MB is in otherwise good condition.
Your current spinning-drive may serve as a backup-drive for clone-backups (CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper!) within a 10$ USB3-case.
You may even install Sierra/HighSierra/Mojave-Patch onto that machine and it will run fine with 6GB of RAM.
(My daily driver is an early2008 MBP with nearly same specs as your MB but has lower benchmark-results and I'm quite happy with it.)
A white MacBook is really iconic and worth to get some attention.
Please leave a response how everything worked out for you & good luck!
 
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iluvmacs99

iluvmacs99

macrumors 6502a
Apr 9, 2019
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macasker said:
hi. I have old 2010 MacBook white with dead battery and MacBook is too slow.
6gb ram, 250gb hdd and intel c2d 2,4ghz.
its any way how to overclock cpu back to speed without battery?
because I looked and new battery cost about 30 - 50$ and I think its too much, bcs this laptop price is about 60$ lol.
thank u.
Click to expand...
The only way to restore the CPU back to its native speed is either --

1, Put a battery in so you get your native CPU speed in supported macOS or hacked macOS.

or

2, Install Linux like Ubuntu 20.04 or Linux Mint 20 which are both modern OS. Linux doesn't care if you're running with a battery or not. In fact, I gave my MacBook Pro 17" 2009 C2D to my dad running Linux Mint, first without the battery, and now with a cheap battery. Speed is fast with or without a battery @ 3.06Ghz, but having a battery makes it portable again.
 
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iluvmacs99

iluvmacs99

macrumors 6502a
Apr 9, 2019
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Amethyst1 said:
Can you objectively confirm (using benchmarks or whatever) that the CPU is indeed running at full speed even without a battery?
Click to expand...
Yeap. In fact, when I installed Linux, which was Ubuntu first and then switched to Mint 20, both were showing the CPU running @ 3.06Ghz, which is the actual speed for this Core 2 Duo on the 17" MBP, and it was really fast and coping with Ubuntu 18 and now Mint 20 no problems. I got the MacBook Pro from the recycling place where I worked for like $10 because without the battery, it was pretty much useless running at half the speed with macOS. I was surprised that installing Linux removed that limitation. I was skeptical at first, but I did some speed tests as well as doing terminal commands to speed step through all the speeds available on the Core 2 Duo and sure enough, @ half the speed, it was working as slow as it was on macOS without the battery. But when I speed step back to 3.06Ghz, it was definitely working as it should @3.06Ghz and when pushed, it makes the laptop much hotter and you can fix that speed permanently via terminal command via CPUfreq as well, though I didn't have to. This wasn't my idea though. I was actually inspired by a guy who always came to our recycling facility looking for computer parts and who was homeless, but always dressed very nice like a business person, with a beat up MacBook Pro without the battery and a broken WIFI module that he picked out for like $5, and he fixed it up running Ubuntu and a USB broadcom WIFI patched under Ubuntu so he could apply for government benefits and odd jobs in our public library which has WIFI and a free AC outlet. I was surprised that it ran on his MacBook Pro at full speeds and so I thought why not try it on my $10 MBP.
 
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