Can MacBook Pro support 32 GB Ram!

MacBook Pros are good for enterprise software development that involves working on UNIX/Linux system (Since OSX is Darwin UNIX)

I, personally, would benefit from 32 gigs, or even 64 gigs, of RAM in a MacBook because it allows me to stand up mini instances of services on my laptop to test against while I'm developing. It also gives me more options for how I can run my code locally (I can work on a larger set of data or run more instances of a service/application simultaneously).

A lot of times in development/IT, your choice is between Windows or OSX for your development laptop. You would be hard-pressed to find a large company willing to give you a Linux laptop (not saying it never happens, but it's really hard to get corporate leadership on-board with supporting personal Linux laptops).

If you're developing services that will run on Linux or UNIX servers, Windows is a worst-case OS because of it's terrible terminal interface (it redraws to the screen in ways that can make text that's there disappear from the display, SSH connections often get randomly dropped/frozen, it only supports 16 colors which means console editors like Vi and Emacs look butt ugly, and development environments that use coding languages designed for *nix (like Ruby) or tools that leverage *nix tech (like Docker) can be more difficult to install and get working and more buggy on Windows.

In this case, since Linux isn't an option, OSX is actually the right tool, even with the limited RAM.

When working with large RAW image files it is best to have 4gigs per processing core. i7 has 4 +4 virtual ones so 32gb ram makes sense. Also, when is Apple going to make parallel thunderbolt3 ports for a PCIe X8 connection to eGPUs

Heck, Apple doesn't want us to put 16GB on the regulars, much less 32! And that's this year's crop. But anyway, we can only hope, cause speculating will only get you booted from these forums.

Can't help wondering, what do you need 32GB especially in a portable for?

The projected lifecycle of a Mac is 3 years, which corresponds to the full AppleCare coverage. And thus far by that time the advances in everything computer related are such that the computer does feel dated. So if you need cutting edge computing power, that's a reasonable planning horizon unless you've money to burn. Since the 2011 models 16GB have worked flawlessly provided you used the right speed (1333 MHz in 2011, 1600MHz in 2012) and the correct CAS timing. But officially that is unsupported except on the highest end Retina (that mysteriously has exactly the same CPU as the other unsupported models).

Beware that these portables are just that, not server-grade computers. Pushing them to the edge or beyond the envelope will cause them to fail, usually due to thermal issues. A Mac Pro desktop tower has much greater possibilities for such kind of usage: at the highest end you can officially go to 12 3.06GHz cores, 64GB RAM and 8TB HDD. Unofficially, probably much more.

Everyone seems to be overlooking the fact that single 16 GB SODIMM modules do not exist, at least not yet anyway. The prevailing theory is that they probabaly won't be available until the next generation of Intel's CPU architecture, codename Haswell, and/or until the adoption of a DDR4 standard. We're talking 2014 at the earliest for a starting point. Remember, 8 GB modules have been available for a couple years, but only very recently have they become affordable.

Also, 16 GB of DDR3-1600 will work fine in a 2011 MacBook Pro.

Hello joy,

I too have been frustrated by this predicament.

I'm an it consultant and have the need to run at least 8 virtual machines at the same time(I'm ignoring the comments about why you need that much memory though - that always frustrates me on boards like this).

I run VMware fusion and have windows 2012 servers with 1gb ram and one processor and I would love to assign MORE RAM! The only way I've been able to get them running (with 16gb ram) was to replace my hard drive with an ssd(I've even taken out the DVD to raid 0 my drives but that does come with other problems so be aware).

I yearn for he day this happens too, until then I'll have to stick with my current MBP (which is a shame as I'm away in the usa and could have picked one up cheaper than the uk) or move to windows laptops.

Here's hoping,

Bill5ter

They are here... 😉

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7742/im-intelligent-memory-to-release-16gb-unregis tered-ddr3-modules

Now if only OWC would release the goodies! 🙂

Yes I run 16 GB of 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM in my late 2011 17" MBP w/out issues.

More details: http://www.intelligentmemory.com/dram-modules/ddr3-so-dimm/

Eric.1776, did you get this working, or did you run into problem caused by lack of support from Intel mentioned in your first link?

FWIW, I've been running 16GB for a couple of years without any problems. I think the fans might work a bit more when I'm running multiple VMs, but that's likely just the CPUes.

I too am interested as to whether anyone has gotten 32GB working on a late 2011 Macbook? I'm in the same predicament....

Has anyone revisited this question with Crucial's (newish) RAM?

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-16GBx2-PC3L-12800-SODIMM-CT2KIT204864BF160B/dp/B01 1ISG132/

Someone from Crucial has left a comment indicating it would probably not work, but it does not sound like it has been tested.

I just tried that Crucial 32GB kit in a Late 2011 15" MBP w/ i7-2760QM as well as Mid 2012 15" MBP w/ i7-3720QM and neither would post (they work fine with 16GB kit though). I was really hoping they can take 32GB but even though processor supports 32GB, it may be system firmware related but most likely processor only supports it across 4 memory banks and not 2 (for instance in case of Dell Precision 17" laptops). So pretty much I can confirm that no, you can't have 32GB at least in 15" MBP laptops.

I can confirm the same.

2 x 16 GB installed but only 16GB registering.