Mac Book Upgrade

[heydee]

I bought a Mac Book in 2006, refurbished, 2Ghz Intel Core Duo with 512 MB 667 Mhz DDR2 SDRAM.

It blew up some time in 2009 and I had a new hard drive installed. I absolutely love it, but am growing increasingly frustrated at the speed of the processor, so am thinking of upgrading.

Can anyone advise on whether I can keep the same hardware and just buy a new processor/hard drive upgrade or do I need to purchase a new mac book altogether (it wouldn't be the end of the world...) - relative costs would be great if you know approx.

Cheers

 

[bobtomay]

The processor is not upgradeable in the MacBook, MacBook Pro, iMac or (I think) any of the Intel Mac Minis. It is a part of the systemboard.

 

[6string]

I'd be looking at your minimal Ram first, and then questioning how big your HD is, and how much space you have left!

 

[brockmant]

I bought a Mac Book in 2006, refurbished, 2Ghz Intel Core Duo with 512 MB 667 Mhz DDR2 SDRAM.

It blew up some time in 2009 and I had a new hard drive installed. I absolutely love it, but am growing increasingly frustrated at the speed of the processor, so am thinking of upgrading.

Can anyone advise on whether I can keep the same hardware and just buy a new processor/hard drive upgrade or do I need to purchase a new mac book altogether (it wouldn't be the end of the world...) - relative costs would be great if you know approx.

Cheers

If you do get a new MacBook Pro there are a few of us waiting to see if the new MacBooks being released with have the i5 processor. You can wait with us lol.

 

[chas_m]

Your machine is perfectly capable and should perform very fast.

You could probably spend around $200-300 upgrading the RAM and hard drive and upgrading to Snow Leopard, and would have for all intents and purposes an entirely new machine that can play with the big boys except on the graphics card front.

I have a machine just ever so slightly above yours, a 2007 2.16GHz C2D with a 320GB hard drive in it and 2GB of RAM. This thing FLIES on the internet, runs Photoshop CS3, the latest iLife and so forth.

If you've got the money burning a hole in your pocket, sure wait for the i5 MBP (I don't think the iCore chips are coming to MacBooks anytime soon, but I could be wrong) and buy something new.

But for a minimal amount of money I think you'd be QUITE surprised at how much better your present hardware can run.

 

[Division.Bell]

Hey there,

I'm also looking to upgrade my HD. I've found a couple drives I think would work, but I'm not sure which is the best option for me:

Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD6400BEVT 640GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Seagate Momentus 7200.4 ST9500420AS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Anything 500gb and up is easily enough room for me, so I'm really just looking for whatever will perform best with my machine; just need it to run quickly, smoothly and quietly. Also, what kind of enclosure will I need to buy to hold the outgoing drive? I'll just be using it as an external for backing stuff up.

Thank you!

 

[turk616]

Try a Hitachi...

I've had Hitachi HD's--Travelstars--and swear by them. Take a good look at Hitachi 500gb Travelstar/7200 rpm/16mb cache. I just purchased it from Tiger Direct on ebay, free ship! $88.99!

Rarely, if ever, hear about a Hitachi problem. Seagate another story...

 

[Kevin6432]

Put 2 gigs of RAM in it and upgrade to Snow Leopard. It will be like a new machine.

 

[Division.Bell]

Alright, so I have a couple questions then:

- What's the difference between the rpm and cache in different drives? For example, is higher rpm and higher cache automatically better, or does it depend on other things?

- Can my configuration take 2gb more RAM? I remember reading that my computer can only use up to 3gb RAM and that having 2gb matched memory would perform better than 3gb unmatched.

 

[Janus 006]

Yeah, definitely upgrade your RAM. I was running a 2007 new Macbook on 1 GB for a while and my computer crawled. Just having Firefox and one other app running would leave me with less than 25 MB on many occasions. I recently bought 2 2GB sticks from Amazon: Amazon.com: Kingston Apple 4GB Kit (2x2GB Modules) 667MHz DDR2 SoDimm iMac and Macbook Memory (KTA-MB667K2/4GR): Electronics

I'm not sure if that will work on your machine, given that it's older, so make sure to check.

Also, I have a Seagate 1.5 TB drive. Picked it up at Costco for around $100. Great deal, works like a charm. It only supports USB 2.0 (no firewire), but I don't mind. Some people have complained about the model I bought, but it has worked fine for me so far.

 

[heydee]

OMG!

I bought 2 x 1GB RAM from Crucial and installed them as per a demo on Youtube.

Turned the computer on - it boots, but nothing happens on the screen! I think my hard drive has blown (again....)

To cap it all off, I re-tried after giving it a few hours and on booting, smoke started to come from beneath the keyboard and it smelled of burning. I kid you not. I am absolutely gutted. Looks like I will have to buy anew after all....

Anyone any idea what could have happened - it can't be a coincedence. I have tried putting the original RAM in, but it appears to be fricked.......

 

[osxx]

Smoke leaving the keyboard spells $$$$ time to go shopping.

 

[heydee]

Or a very quick typist....