Recommended Posts

I want to upgrade an early 2011 Macbook Pro, it's running a little too slow.

It officially supports 8Gb, but some people say it can run 16Gb just fine.

Replacing the RAM after purchase would be a relatively huge hassle for me.

So if anyone has already done this (put 16g in early 2011) on their MBP, I would love to hear your experiences.

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1126056-2011-mbp-ram-question/
Share on other sites

I want to upgrade an early 2011 Macbook Pro, it's running a little too slow.

It officially supports 8Gb, but some people say it can run 16Gb just fine.

Replacing the RAM after purchase would be a relatively huge hassle for me.

So if anyone has already done this (put 16g in early 2011) on their MBP, I would love to hear your experiences.

How is it a huge hassle? Its as simple as remove 8 screws on the bottom and swap out the ram chips. Nothing hard about that.

I did mine 3 days ago and its worked great! typing the message on it right now. I went to kingston

http://www.kingston.com/en/memory/search/devices?DevicesType=Desktop

You have to choose notebook from the menu and then it recommends what you need. I only put in the 8 gig in mine, yes it might run 16gb but i would rather stick with a supported configuration. I have had kingston for years, and its been great RAM. You might be able to put 16 gig in it but what happens if you boot into os x and it only shows 8 gig? I would save the difference for coffee!

  • 4 months later...

With "replacing" I meant getting the shop to take back my 16GB and replace them with 8GB in case it turned out my mbp doesn't support them.

Got 16GB of Kingston working for half a year now, great, if the next OS X is not going to be any more memory hungry, then you're right about the coffee.

It's a good thing there isn't much going on in the Mac Discussions, else I wouldn't have found this post.

You MBP will support 16GB fine. I have a Late 2011 15" MBP and it has 16GB in it. even my Late 2009 13" MacBook only officially supported 4GB but I put in 8GB and it worked fine :D

I want to upgrade an early 2011 Macbook Pro, it's running a little too slow.

It officially supports 8Gb, but some people say it can run 16Gb just fine.

Replacing the RAM after purchase would be a relatively huge hassle for me.

So if anyone has already done this (put 16g in early 2011) on their MBP, I would love to hear your experiences.

If you're doing it because it is a 'little slow' then I think you're better off maybe checking the computer, clean install, what applications you have running in the background - maybe investing in an SSD maybe a better investment and then putting the old rotating disk in an external hard disk case (maybe an external hard disk case with Thunderbolt?).

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Posts

    • Hello, Christian Maas' XVI32 is a nice (and very small) hex editor. Speaking of hex editors, many years ago a colleague and I who both worked at Tribal Voice managed to edit a copy of the company's PowWow instant messaging client to make it behave better now that all of its lookup servers and other server-side tech was gone.  The program didn't support NAT (RFC-3022 was introduced in January 2001, the same time Tribal Voice was shuttered), but it still worked okay if you manually set up port-forwarding on your router.  The server at http://powwow.jazy.net/ hosts a copy (usual warnings about downloading and running untrusted code from random internet servers apply). I occasionally use some tools like Funduc Software's Search and Replace and Application Mover when I need to make mass-edits to text-based files or move programs with a hard-coded installation directories, respectively.  When I need to figure out the exact LCD panel inside of a laptop, EnTech Taiwan's Monitor Asset Manager is my go-to tool for that purpose. JD Design's website (now hosted on github.io) has a number of interesting freeware and shareware utilities.  I used to use their TouchPro utility to set the file timestamps on software I was mastering to match its version number (e.g., version 3.00 of a program had all of its files dates set to 3:00AM, and so forth). Karenware has a number of interesting freeware utilities, too. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky  
    • I still use HexChat! Not really as ancient as the 1994 AutoCAD above my post, but I have never found anything better to replace it. Yes we still operate an IRC server https://www.neowin.net/irc/ 😛 
    • At work we still have a couple of people that use a version of AutoCAD LT purchased in 1994. This predates Windows 95 and works fine on versions of Windows up to XP. Its long since run in an locked down isolated XP VM, accessible via RDP. I did install LibreCAD for them, however they said it was just too different to get to grips with. In all fairness one of them is now 75 and the other is almost 60.
    • On my music making (non internet) PC Sony Acid Pro 7.0 Adobe Audition 2015 Korg Legacy Collection Windows 7 SP1
    • Anyway to download these versions without being on the Experimental builds?
  • Recent Achievements

    • Week One Done
      Jeroen Wilms earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Week One Done
      rolfus earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Month Later
      Leroy Jethro Gibbs earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Conversation Starter
      flexorcist earned a badge
      Conversation Starter
    • One Month Later
      AndreaB earned a badge
      One Month Later
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      509
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      198
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      138
    4. 4
      ATLien_0
      90
    5. 5
      Steven P.
      82
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!