Upgrades for Black Macbook (compatibility)

dr4g0nf1y · 7 Feb 2011 at 15:09

Going to be getting my bonus from work soon and need to upgrade this mac as other computers have been a priority.

Picked this up after christmas 2008 so this the SATA 150 160GB HDD and 2x 512mb 667MHz ram modules.

RAM:

I believe I can go up to 3GB but will not get the performance I want so I'll go for 2x 1GB CL5 667MHz 1.8v

Branded chips I'm not too sure what will currently work as I can't see what determines compatibility.

Harddrive:

This is where I'm going to struggle I believe. I'd definitely upgrade to at least a 7200rpm drive but again I've checked pages and apparently only seagate/fujitsu 200gb drives were the highest spec drives at the time that were compatible.

As for the Momentus XT, apparently doesn't fully work so SSD might be an option but again with drives being SATA II and III's I'm not sure how the speed will change. For instance the 40 Intel X25-M is 250mb/s so will that be maxed out at 150mb/s or 125mb/s or not compatible at all.

Any options would be considered.

Not that it matters but I want the fasted performance available (cost not thinking about at the moment), battery life not bothered about and main work will be photo/flash editing/rendering.

Thanks

startrek2 · 7 Feb 2011 at 16:18

it wont really stop or be a bottle neck,,

SSD will fit and be a extreme upgrade probably the most single thing you can do and its boot speed will be impressive and opening apps

a 7200rpm wont be as near but of course cheaper and lot more space. however they can have vibration allthough not such a real problem just a word to caution..

i would update ram and use SSD ...

FreeStream · 7 Feb 2011 at 16:59

As long as it fits any SATA SSD or HDD will work.

Spyhop · 7 Feb 2011 at 19:41

SSD still gives you zero seek times and no moving parts regardless of whether the transfer rate gets capped a bit.

Any RAM of the correct spec should work. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Intel Macs are picky about RAM at all.

dr4g0nf1y · 8 Feb 2011 at 02:15

pfft... got no idea anymore, never know where I am when upgrading macs and what OSX can be installed on.

Pretty much a confirmed purchase is the Corsair 2GB.

So all in all what sort of read speeds would I been expected to get from an SSD?

Might have got confused somewhere but even the speeds on SATAII drives are still some way off the full 300MB/s so does that mean that even a SATAIII drive will perform better on a SATAII port? As too a USB3 on a USB2?

Little puzzled there

dr4g0nf1y · 8 Feb 2011 at 21:20

out of interest (after thinking) what problems are likely to arise with using a momentus xt drive with snow leopard?

FreeStream · 8 Feb 2011 at 21:59

None at all? :confused:

dr4g0nf1y · 9 Feb 2011 at 13:52

Good, but not completey compatible with - Reviewed by: Matt (Stafford)

This drive is really quick, and you can definitely notice a speed increase. I ended up getting rid of mine though, as it wasn't completely compatible with Mac OS X

Saying this there was another review saying it was okay and fully compatible

FreeStream · 9 Feb 2011 at 15:50

dr4g0nf1y said:
Saying this there was another review saying it was okay and fully compatible

The only drives that I have ever come across that don't work (and even then in some cases they work fine) is the WD drives with accelerometers in them as they conflict with the internal ones in the MBPs.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_Motion_Sensor

I have the £60 500Gb 7200 WD BEKT in mine and it works wonderfully.