Mid 2012 Macbook pro upgrade

[umad13]

Hi guys, I’m new to this forum so my apologies if this has already been asked before. My mid 2012 macbook pro 13” has gotten hella slow these past few months. It is core i7 2.5 ghz. System preferences say that I can only have a maximum of 8gb ram in the memory slots, 4+4 (currently I’m at 4gb).

My question is that is that is it advisable to upgrade it to 16gb of ram? I know some people on here have said they have done it. But does the macbook support it in performance? As compared to 8gb of ram that the system says is allowed. If anyone can answer this I be really grateful.

Also if I am to upgrade it then which brand should I go for?

 

[MBAir2010]

depending were you live, the USA has some great Mac upgrades such as OWC and crucial.
which included videos and strong warrantees on their upgrades
avoid ebay and amazon if possible due to cheaper parts and no or feeble warrantees.

The RAM upgrade is to 8 would speed things up considerably.
i think yours can go 16, but that info is easily found online.
your processor is solid and you do own a great laptop
and of course a SSD drive will make processing much faster.

hope this helped

 

[bunnspecial]

Yes, the mid 2012 models(as well as the 2011s) can support 16gb RAM. This is well documented, and I can tell you that I used a 15" mid-2012 with 16gb RAM as my primary computer until February of this year.

Back in the days when nearly every Mac had upgradable RAM, Apple often "officially" stated the max at half what the computer would actually support.

16gb RAM+ an SSD are a fast recipe for great performance on the mid-2012s.

 

[SpotOnT]

I would recommend first checking your hard drive. Is it SSD? Mechanical hard drives do wear out over time. As do early SSDs, if you did a SSD upgrade many years ago. So first check your hard drive health. Moving from HDD to SSD will give you the greatest improvement for your money.

You can upgrade to 16 GB of RAM, but unless you need more RAM, that won't make much of a speed difference. You can check how much RAM you are currently using in Activity Monitor. If your computer is running out of RAM during your every day use, than yes, more RAM will help.

The last thing to consider is software updates. Sometimes you can get much better performance on older hardware using older version of Mac OS. For example, using Mojave instead of Catalina might make a big difference for you. Any chance the slowdown you are experiencing is tied to a recent Catalina security update?


Edit: I just noticed you said you are currently on 4 GB of RAM. If that is correct, yes you probably need to upgrade your RAM, especially if you are running Catalina. You can do either 8 GB or 16 GB depending on your budget. OWC (macsales.com) and crucial (crucial.com) are the best options in the US.

 

[umad13]

depending were you live, the USA has some great Mac upgrades such as OWC and crucial.
which included videos and strong warrantees on their upgrades
avoid ebay and amazon if possible due to cheaper parts and no or feeble warrantees.

The RAM upgrade is to 8 would speed things up considerably.
i think yours can go 16, but that info is easily found online.
your processor is solid and you do own a great laptop
and of course a SSD drive will make processing much faster.

hope this helped

Thank you for that response! Yes I think I should upgrade it to 8gb first and then see how much of a difference it makes. Otherwise I’ll just jump to 16gb. The hard drive is a ssd, 512 gb. I’ve only used some 140gb of it. Do you think upgrading the SSD makes sense or should I leave it at 512?

Also someone was telling me that not all ssds work with apple and you have to get apple used ssd from someone who’s willing to sell otherwise they don’t work. Is that true or just bs?

 

[umad13]

I would recommend first checking your hard drive. Is it SSD? Mechanical hard drives do wear out over time. As do early SSDs, if you did a SSD upgrade many years ago. So first check your hard drive health. Moving from HDD to SSD will give you the greatest improvement for your money.

You can upgrade to 16 GB of RAM, but unless you need more RAM, that won't make much of a speed difference. You can check how much RAM you are currently using in Activity Monitor. If your computer is running out of RAM during your every day use, than yes, more RAM will help.

The last thing to consider is software updates. Sometimes you can get much better performance on older hardware using older version of Mac OS. For example, using Mojave instead of Catalina might make a big difference for you. Any chance the slowdown you are experiencing is tied to a recent Catalina security update?


Edit: I just noticed you said you are currently on 4 GB of RAM. If that is correct, yes you probably need to upgrade your RAM, especially if you are running Catalina. You can do either 8 GB or 16 GB depending on your budget. OWC (macsales.com) and crucial (crucial.com) are the best options in the US.

Hard drive is SSD and it has about 350gb available out of 512. Was thinking of going for the new 14” inch macbook but I think I can squeeze out another year out this monster.

And didn’t upgrade to Catelina, still running Mojave. Thought maybe the new upgrade will slow it down so sticking it out with mojave for now.

Ram is definitely running out every time. I mostly just run chrome with tons of tabs open and don’t really use heavy programs, so hopefully the ram upgrade will help.

And thank you for those links! I’ll check those out.

 

[profcutter]

Ignore people telling you to only use a used apple SSD. The later machines need an adaptor to use a generic ssd, but yours doesn’t. If your drive seems slow, you might want to check the drive cable, they seemed to die on the 2011/2012 machines. Yes I’d upgrade to 16 Gb ram.

 

[SpotOnT]

Hard drive is SSD and it has about 350gb available out of 512. Was thinking of going for the new 14” inch macbook but I think I can squeeze out another year out this monster.

And didn’t upgrade to Catelina, still running Mojave. Thought maybe the new upgrade will slow it down so sticking it out with mojave for now.

Ram is definitely running out every time. I mostly just run chrome with tons of tabs open and don’t really use heavy programs, so hopefully the ram upgrade will help.

And thank you for those links! I’ll check those out.

Oh excellent - sounds like all you need is a RAM upgrade and you should be good to go. I just upgraded from a 15" 2012 MacBook Pro. Did a SSD upgrade and a 16 GB RAM upgrade years ago. I think that thing will keep you going well for another year of Chrome, light use, etc.

Thought #1: You can get OWC and Crucial RAM pretty much anywhere (B&HPhoto, Amazon, etc). Just head to their official site first to find the part number you need. Both OWC and Crucial are good quality and have good customer service, so just go with whatever you can find in stock/cheapest.

Thought #2: If you have any concerns about your SSD, you can download Black Magic Disk Speed Test from the App Store (free) and just run a speed test on your drive. It is possible your SSD is wearing out or has some issue with TRIM or something, but based on everything you have mentioned, it is almost surely just a limited RAM issue. 4 GB is not a lot for multi tabs web browsing in Mojave.

 

[justashooter]

Hard drive is SSD and it has about 350gb available out of 512. Was thinking of going for the new 14” inch macbook but I think I can squeeze out another year out this monster.

And didn’t upgrade to Catelina, still running Mojave. Thought maybe the new upgrade will slow it down so sticking it out with mojave for now.

Ram is definitely running out every time. I mostly just run chrome with tons of tabs open and don’t really use heavy programs, so hopefully the ram upgrade will help.

And thank you for those links! I’ll check those out.

You installed a SSD in this macbook pro? Because it comes new with a hard drive. A SSD makes an incredible difference.

There are a few things about the 2012 MacBook Pro 13. I have 2 of them and have upgraded both.

-The best way to speed them up is a SSD, I have used both Crucial M500 and Samsung Evo's SSD's.

-The SATA cable is known to go bad on this model, if the computer has suddenly become sluggish there is the possibilty the SATA cable has gone bad. A way to test this is to take the drive out, install it in an external USB3 enclosure, boot from the external enclosure. If the computer runs faster this way then your internal SATA cable is bad. Easy to replace, OWC and ifixit both sell them (less than $14) and have instruction on how to replace.

-I put 16gb ram in mine, but I use photoshop and some video editing, certainly 8gb ram will help. Crucial, OWC, Micron brands usually. I got my 16gb used on ebay for around $40.

You should get at least 450mb/sec read and write speeds with the blackmagic test.

A previous thread on this topic:

MacBook pro mid 2013l2

My preference, and I have upgraded 6 or 7 of the 2009 - 2012 13 inch models, is to clone the hard drive to the new ssd. Put the ssd in an inexpensive USB3 2.5 inch enclosure like this: https://www.microcenter.com/product/451202/sabrent-25-sata-hard-drive-usb-30-enclosure Format the SSD to the...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[Sean Whalen]

Apposed to what comes in these laptops I was surprised to see that when I put in 16 gb of DDR3 1867 it actually registered as that, if I’m not wrong they came with DDR3 1600, I do not have a slower set of 16 gb of DDR3 so if someone could figure out if there was a difference that would be cool

 

[Yebubbleman]

Hi guys, I’m new to this forum so my apologies if this has already been asked before. My mid 2012 macbook pro 13” has gotten hella slow these past few months. It is core i7 2.5 ghz. System preferences say that I can only have a maximum of 8gb ram in the memory slots, 4+4 (currently I’m at 4gb).

My question is that is that is it advisable to upgrade it to 16gb of ram? I know some people on here have said they have done it. But does the macbook support it in performance? As compared to 8gb of ram that the system says is allowed. If anyone can answer this I be really grateful.

Also if I am to upgrade it then which brand should I go for?

The chipset will support 16GB of RAM, even if Apple doesn't officially support it. Though, unless you are either in the state of California or the nation of Turkey, Apple isn't supporting anything with that machine, so you're good to upgrade it so long as you get the correct kind of RAM (PC3-12800 1600MHz DDR3 SO-DIMMs). I generally like Crucial.

That all being said, unless you are running Windows 10 on that machine, there isn't a supported macOS release out for that model anymore and you're definitely better off upgrading to something newer.