Buy new Macbook? Or keep customzing the Old one?

Hello,

I have a Macbook Pro from about 3 years ago. I have replaced the HDD with a 256GB SSD and upgraded the RAM from 4GB to 8GB. Both items were brought from non-apple retailers.

I upgraded to Mac OS X 10.9.2.

I have 100GB of music, I take photos (large RAW data images from my Nikon DSLR's and do much photo/video editing: Adobe Elements, premiere, lightroom, etc.

As time has gone on throughout these months, my Macbook has been crashing while running one of those listed programs.

I do not know what else there is to do. I really don't want to spend $2000 on a new Macbook just yet. At this point, I would need at least 512GB;SSD (I'll never use HDD again). My current one is starting to show its age and I do not want to spend hundreds of dollars on parts that may or may not improve it by much....look where that's got me now.

Should I suck it up and cough up the dough for a new one? Or are there any other suggestions on what can be done to improve my current Macbooks performance? With photo/video editing as the main use, its a tough call.

Thanks!

Has it always crashed like this or is this a more recent thing?

Recent. As in the last few months. It can run a program from 5 minutes to an hour. Doesn't matter how many other programs there are.

Sometimes the program itself just crashes, sometimes the computer restarts and it always tells me there's was a problem (error message), but never says what it was other than "Report" or "ignore".

pmk814 said:

...and upgraded the RAM from 4GB to 8GB.

Click to expand...

How long ago did you upgrade the ram?

- Nick

SSD = replaced 12 months ago
RAM = replaced 6 months ago.
upgraded to OS X = 1.5 months ago

This whole crashing scenario started 3 months ago.

I tried switching back to the old ram. Same issue continues. i reinstalled all the photo/video editing software. No luck.

pmk814 said:

I tried switching back to the old ram. Same issue continues.

Click to expand...

That was a great idea switching back to the old ram as a test. Too bad it didn't help.

Here are three things to try:

- SMC Reset
- NVRAM/PRAM Reset
- Run Onyx (free maintenance app)

Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)
About NVRAM and PRAM
Titanium's Software • Index page

HTH,

- Nick

When you get it going right, consider an external hard drive in a caddy connected to the Firewire 800 port and use that for you music and photos. USB2 will be simply too slow.