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SSD and RAM recommendations for MacBook Pro 13" Early 2011

Y

yoblanco

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 10, 2011
26
0
Hi,

I have a MacBook Pro 8.1 (13" early 2011), and I want to upgrade the HDD (320GB 5.400rpm) and the RAM (4GB, the base model).

I want to upgrade to 8GB RAM (2 modules of 4GB, correct me if I'm wrong) and something around 250GB SSD.

What do I buy? I'm looking for straightforward answers, I don not have special needs, and I would love some to the point answers because I imagine there are some “standards” that almost everyone buys, the “go-tos of RAM and SSD”.

With a brief search over the internet, I read that Samsung 850 Evo is a nice one for an SSD and it costs around 90€. About the RAM I don't know where to read. I don't know what SSDs and RAMs are supported/compatible, so I'm looking for the best possible of SSD and RAM, but again, I don't have any particular needs.

So... any straightforward answers are welcome, like “Yes, samsung 850 Evo, and two of this 4GB modules (link to amazon or something like that)”, or “No, the samsung gives problems (link about some story), better OWC, and this RAM”, etc.

Thank you in advance, and don't give too much thought to this :)
 
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Anything on sale on Amazon for the SSD would be fine. I went with Crucial's 1TB because it was on sale at the time. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IAGSDUE/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_ep_dp_0o8qzbYGDVEZE
As for RAM, I used OWC to find the RAM that was compatible with my MBP, and then went back to Amazon to do a price comparison.



yoblanco said:
Hi,

I have a MacBook Pro 8.1 (13" early 2011), and I want to upgrade the HDD (320GB 5.400rpm) and the RAM (4GB, the base model).

I want to upgrade to 8GB RAM (2 modules of 4GB, correct me if I'm wrong) and something around 250GB SSD.

What do I buy? I'm looking for straightforward answers, I don not have special needs, and I would love some to the point answers because I imagine there are some “standards” that almost everyone buys, the “go-tos of RAM and SSD”.

With a brief search over the internet, I read that Samsung 850 Evo is a nice one for an SSD and it costs around 90€. About the RAM I don't know where to read. I don't know what SSDs and RAMs are supported/compatible, so I'm looking for the best possible of SSD and RAM, but again, I don't have any particular needs.

So... any straightforward answers are welcome, like “Yes, samsung 850 Evo, and two of this 4GB modules (link to amazon or something like that)”, or “No, the samsung gives problems (link about some story), better OWC, and this RAM”, etc.

Thank you in advance, and don't give too much thought to this :)
Click to expand...
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
I purchase parts from OWC. They aren't always the cheapest but they have great customer service which is worth it for me. They also have tons of videos for DIY projects (or you can mail your stuff to them and they install the parts for you, but that is expensive)

https://www.macsales.com

You can select your model of Mac on their website and they will show relevant parts. Samsung Evo is popular but I went with an OWC SSD in my Mac mini. I really like it!
 
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In my 2011 13" MBP, I used 2x 4GB Crucial RAM, plus Crucial 512GB SSD. No problems.

In my 2012 Mac Mini Server, I used a 1TB Samsung Evo 850 SSD.

For me, I don't any preference between the two SSD's.
 
I upgraded a mid-2012 MBP earlier this year. In it, I put Crucial RAM (16 GB, 1600 MHz DDR3) and a Samsung 850 EVO SSD. The MBP performs great now after it had slowed drastically with the standard 5400 RPM HDD and 4 GB of RAM. The RAM upgrade helped, but the SSD truly made the most noticeable difference.
 
Pretty much any SSD that is SATA-3 will work. I would agree with buying whatever is on sale at amazon or newegg or similar vendors and not worrying about it. Mushkin, samsung, sandisk, toshiba, crucial, adata are just a few of the "usual suspects" and while any given brand might have a slight edge in performance or price or longevity, it's going to be slight.
 
SpinalTap said:
In my 2011 13" MBP, I used 2x 4GB Crucial RAM, plus Crucial 512GB SSD. No problems.

In my 2012 Mac Mini Server, I used a 1TB Samsung Evo 850 SSD.

For me, I don't any preference between the two SSD's.
Click to expand...

I have those two exact SSDs (but in different machines). Same story here. They're both great.
 
Thanks for all the answers.

The Crucial RAM seems obvious. And about the disks I see that there's no difference. But since I don't really need those extra 25GB and people keep saying that Samsung 850 EVO is “the best”, I will probably go for that.

A doubt that appeared today: what about TRIM? I remember hearing noise about that but it's been years since I payed attention to those news. I'm stil in Mountain Lion, but will probably go to High Sierra because of APFS (but only because of that). Is there any problem with TRIM with any disk? Or just by downloading any app I will be able to activate TRIM? Because if I remember correctly, Apple did not enable it (at least in these old OSes like Mountain Lion).
 
If you don't fill the SSD more than maybe 2/3 full, and if you don't typically write very large sequential files (multi-gigabyte), and if you don't need to squeeze every drop of write longevity from your SSD (most SSD's will outlast the machine they're in), you can generally not worry about TRIM. TRIM is a convenience hint to the SSD telling it which pages are no longer in use and can be rewritten. Without TRIM, the SSD has to in effect guess at what the filesystem is doing. Modern SSD controllers do a pretty good job of guessing, but it does impose additional writes on the SSD and may shorten its life. For the average user, that means going from way-longer-than-needed to just longer-than-needed.

I think OS X did not initially enable TRIM because some earlier SSD's had issues with data corruption. Any SSD model from the last 2-3 years ought to do TRIM properly and you can enable TRIM manually with trimforce.
 
Okey, thanks all, I will see about trimforce when I update to High Sierra, for now I will have it disabled in Mountain Lion.

I ordered a Samsung 850 Evo 250GB, and 2 x 4GB 1333Hz Crucial RAM. I hope all works well.
 
Finally ordered (Crucial 2x4GB and Samsung 850 EVO 250GB), and installed it myself, and all looks good.
Only nitpicking is that a process rpcsvchost has appeared on a few reboots that takes 100% CPU, but I kill it and no more worries.

Thank you, and this gives a few extra years to the computer. Sad that the battery is only 3h at much :)
And now waiting for APFS, which is the only reason I'm going to update from Mountain Lion.
 
Algus said:
I purchase parts from OWC. They aren't always the cheapest but they have great customer service which is worth it for me. They also have tons of videos for DIY projects (or you can mail your stuff to them and they install the parts for you, but that is expensive)

https://www.macsales.com

You can select your model of Mac on their website and they will show relevant parts. Samsung Evo is popular but I went with an OWC SSD in my Mac mini. I really like it!
Click to expand...


This is true, support the little guy!! $ for $ you are paying for support that's only a dial, email away.
 
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