Translation:
Noriaki_Live wrote:
Hello everyone
I have a MacBook Pro (13-inch, Early 2011) No.A1278 Can you upgrade the Mac?
I've seen many community posts where certain technical data were missing and went nowhere or where many said whether it works or not.
If the question comes: Why did you get an old Mac?
1.) Looks nicer
2.) Financial
3.) this is my first Mac and didn't want to spend a lot of money on it Thank you in advance for your help
It depends what you mean by upgrade.
macOS 10.13 High Sierra is the last version of macOS available for that model.
You can replace the internal hard drive with an SSD upgrade. The SSD upgrade will provide you with the biggest performance boost possible. However, not all SSDs are compatible with all computers. I know that the Crucial MX500 SSD has worked well in the past, but I don't know how the current version is these days since SSD manufactures no longer publish the technical specifications to include the chipsets used in their products. Avoid the Crucial BX500 SSD as it is complete junk.
The memory in this laptop is also removable and upgradable to 16GB I believe (2x8GB). However, memory doesn't give much of a performance boost. How much memory is needed depends on the workloads involved. Test the laptop with a memory & system intensive workload, then check Activity Monitor's memory tab to see the memory details. If the Memory Pressure graph is Green and both Swap & Compressed memory are in the low MBs range, then you have enough memory. If the graph is green, but is showing GBs of Swap or compressed memory, then you need to install more memory for that workload. The same also applies if the Memory Pressure is red. If the Memory Pressure is yellow, then you are borderline on memory.
Macs are very particular about the memory they use so it is best to only use memory from Crucial or OWC. Last time I checked, I don't think Crucial had any memory for such an old system, but OWC I believe still has it. Never buy memory based solely on technical specifications, because Apple doesn't publish the full list of necessary memory specifications.
Also, the memory slot nearest the Bottom Case tends to fail after years of use because of pressure that gets exerted onto the memory slot through the center of the Bottom Case. The pressure causes the solder joints on the memory slot to crack which can lead to system freezes when that memory slot contains a memory module.
