Macbook Pro Upgrades and Maintenance

Hi,

1. In benchmark tests, the EVO Pro clearly beats the EVO, but in day to day use, you'd be hard pressed to notice the difference and justify the cost differential based on that. Warranty is a different situation; the EVO Pro has a 10 year warranty, while the EVO has five.

2. If you really have a Late 2012 MBP, it's a 13" Retina, and the 8GBs of RAM is not upgradeable. Given that you say you have 4GBs of RAM, you must not have a Late 2012, but really a Mid 2012 non-Retina. If that's the case, then you can upgrade RAM to 16GBs. You should stick with the RAM spec's for your machine; both Crucial and OWC/Macsales test the RAM they sell in the Mac models they're sold for. Each guarantees 100% compatibility and lifetime warranty. I'd stick with what's supposed to be installed and buy from Crucial or OWC. And even if 1866MHz RAM worked in your MBP, it would not be any faster as the bus is 1600MHz and you can't push 1866 through a 1600 bus.

3. Think twice before removing all the keys. It would be very time consuming, and the mechanisms are breakable. You might want to remove the bottom cover and gently clean any significant dust you find there, but that's about it.

1. A good fast and reliable SSD is the Crucial M300, not expensive at all: very easy to replace the HDD. This will make the mac very fast in comparison with the HDD.

2. Ram: you must be absolutely sure you have the correct settings: look at the Crucial and OWC sites: they have a configurator. There are two ram slots, place a module of 4GB in each slot, cheap. 4GB does it but "heavy" apps easily use more when available.The 15" mid 2012 non-retina can handle max 2x8GB. The retina models 2012 have on board ram , so that is a no. Again make sure you have the exact specs, higher speed serves at nothing because the speed is determined by the bus speed, not by the speed of the memory. PC3-12800 (1600 MHz) DDR3L

3. Vacuum cleaner inside, be careful around the fans they are easily hurt. Outside

How to clean your Apple products - Apple Support

Notes:

in the non-retina MBP models, there is an easy solution for replacing the DVD reader inside by an Sata SSD: see the OWC site: an adapter and a Sata SSD as in the main seat. (I have Crucial 500GB SSD in the main seat, and a Sandisk 960GB SSD in the "dvd" seat in a mid 2012 mbp).

Not sure I understand. You want speed but at a low price? Or you're willing to spend what you need to to get speed? Any SSD is going to be a big jump from the 5400RPM HDs Apple puts in their Macs. The EVO is top of the line and you pay for that.

There's no simple answer to that. The EVO is a very popular choice.

For some reviews/comparisons, here's some reading for you:

http://www.computershopper.com/feature/2016-guide-the-fastest-ssds-tested

http://www.fastestssd.com/featured/ssd-rankings-the-fastest-solid-state-drives/

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9799/best-ssds

https://hddmag.com/2015/07/best-ssd.html

Best SSDs of 2017 - CNET

http://www.techradar.com/news/best-solid-state-drives-ssds

Note that different sizes mean different speeds, with the larger capacity SSDs being faster.

The mid 2012 MBP RETINA has on board soldered Ram, so you can change that.

When the apps and OS have too little Ram, tasks are buffered on the disk. Called swaps (see the column Memory in ActivityMonitor at the bottom) or swaps out.

But no worry: if you install an SSD the swaps out do not really slow the mac down, because the SSD is MUCH faster than a HDD. So you will not really notice.

1. I think it's not that difference between 850 eve and pro.

2. You should use 1600MHz RAM if you don't want to face with RAM trouble.

3. How to Clean/Fix Broken Keys: Macbook Pro 2012 (HD) - YouTube

"Generic" RAM is a crap shoot. You may save a little money and it may work. I strongly suggest Crucial or OWC for RAM that's been tested specifically for your model of Mac.

When you have the mid 2012 non-retina, you can put in Ram easily as I said in my older post. No problem at all: put in 2x4GB, or even 2x8GB whatever is available, not expensive at all.