So I’m thinking about putting an SSD in Macbook Pro…
Alrighty dudes, I’m sure that we’ve all seen the blogpost about the SSD’s and how they boost speed significantly. As a result of that video, I’ve REALLY wanted to put one of these drives in my Macbook Pro, because since I installed snow leopard a couple months ago, things have slowed down.
I began doing some research as to how much this would increase my performance, and from what I read, it all depends on the type of macbook you have. PCworld did some really great benchmark testing here.
Granted my baby is a bit older than this, I still feel like it would breath new life into her. In additon to a SSD, i plan to put 2 more gigs of ram into it as well.
-My Macbook Pro-
Unibody
2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo
2 Gbs of ram
Snow Leopard
So I guess my question is, Have any of you done this upgrade? How much of a performance upgrade did it give you? Was is worth dropping the cash on an SSD?
Hey dude,
I have a brand new 2011 15" Macbook Pro (2.2 ghz) with an SSD in it. I would say that before you drop all the cash on an SSD, I would start first with upgrading the memory. 2gb of ram these days doesn’t cut it any more. I would start first with going to 4gb. It is a really cheap upgrade and will surprise you with the performance boost it gives you. I went from 4gb (stock) to 8gb in my MBP and didn’t notice a huge change in terms of dj’ing.
So is a SSD worth it. It really depends on what you are doing with it. If it is a DJ only machine and you do a bunch of gigging, then yes. And only because if a drunked idiot knocks your laptop off the stand, the MB will likely survive without issue. If you are not gigging a lot, I would say it is NOT worth it. You don’t need to performance it brings and will not notice any boost in Traktor or Serato (I haven’t noticed any difference aside from load times).
If you are doing a bunch of other work, it may or may not be worth it. At this point I really think it is mostly for bragging rights (which I now have many).
So to conclude, if you got the cash to burn, go for it. If not, I wouldn’t bother - wait for prices to fall on the 256gb units.
750gb WD Scorpio Blue 5400 RPM HDD (in optibay)
60gb Vertex 2 SSD
4gb of ram (gonna go to 8 when my bro gets back from italy and i put the 4 in his "black"book)
and yes, it was worth it. my macbook ('09) started acting sluggish it gave it a deffinate boost in speed / i needed a space upgrade anyways (my computer is all purpose - and i did use gig money on the upgrade).
thats cos traktor isn’t RAM intensive, 2gb is enough for most people. (realistically, though i would advise an upgrade)
[quote]
So is a SSD worth it. It really depends on what you are doing with it. If it is a DJ only machine and you do a bunch of gigging, then yes. And only because if a drunked idiot knocks your laptop off the stand, the MB will likely survive without issue. If you are not gigging a lot, I would say it is NOT worth it. You don’t need to performance it brings and will not notice any boost in Traktor or Serato (I haven’t noticed any difference aside from load times).[/quote]
what exactly would you be expecting?
The fact is, as far as DJ’ing is concerned, other than knowing your information is safe and getting a bit more battery life, SSD’s dont offer much of a benefit IMO. As far as general computer use goes they are awesome though.
I have 2GB ram in my (2009 unibody mac pro) macbook and wanted to buy 2 more GB, unfortunately, there are only 2 slots, so I can’t re-use the 2 x 1GB sticks…I need to buy 2 x 2GB sticks.
Good on ya! SSD is a fantastic and reasonably cost-affordable upgrade to almost any system. I’ve had a hybrid system running for about 18 months now and I haven’t had a single regret.
By “hybrid” system I mean I’ve got a standard 500gb 5400rpm HDD, and an 80gb SSD running inside my Macbook Pro.
The SSD runs my OS, applications, and my DJ music (only 5-10gb or so), this way I get maximum performance and stability when DJing.
The 5400rpm HDD contains everything else. Movies, music, downloads, pictures etc.
To get this beastly upgrade you need to sacrifice your CD drive bay. This was a non-issue for me personally as I use much faster & larger USB flash drives to transfer information.
Plus, after removing your CD drive, you can often find external enclosures which allow you to connect you CD drive via USB anytime you really need the CD functionality. (This site has a drive bay + external CD enclosure which worked perfectly for me)
Lifehacker has a really good step-by-step guide to installing an SSD
There are also some handy guides for those who are adventurous and want to enable/disable some OSX functions which help to maintain SSD performance and longevity.
[quote=“jprime, post:5, topic:23093, username:jprime”]
I have 2GB ram in my (2009 unibody mac pro) macbook and wanted to buy 2 more GB, unfortunately, there are only 2 slots, so I can’t re-use the 2 x 1GB sticks…I need to buy 2 x 2GB sticks.
Keep that in mind when pricing out new ram.
[/quote]To get DDR speed you need to have 2 sticks regardless. That’s what is called Double Data Rate.
If you have one stick of 1066 DDR 3 memory then it is really going to be running at 533 unless you install another stick.
Sorry to get nerdy, but that’s not technically true. DDR2, DDR3, / “Dual Channel”, “Triple Channel” are different things. Dual/Triple Channel are governed by the motherboards features, and in actual practice haven’t shown to give significant boosts in performance in most real-life scenarios.
Simply put - one stick of 1066mhz DDR3 will not to drop to 533mhz because it lacks a second stick. It’ll run at 1066mhz regardless of how many other modules are present.
What you lose out on (with one stick) is the “Dual Channel” aspect, which doesn’t really give that much of a boost anyways.
However given a choice of 1 stick or 2. I’d definitely go with 2 sticks.
I was under the assumption that your motherboard’s bus speed determined at what frequency your ram was clocked at, and the chip specification was a guideline of sorts… I could be totally wrong though
