Been doing some reading and searched around a bit for answers, but since I only got a few threads from <2014, I figure I’ll ask anyway…
I’ve got a mid-2012 13" Macbook Pro with the following specs:
2.9 GHz i7 processor
8 GB Ram
750 GB SATA Disk HD
Running Sierra v10.12.X
From my reading, I’ve gathered that the two best upgrades I can do are
16 GB Ram from OWC
Solid-state HD
I’m guessing that my HD isn’t a SSD, so I’ll probably do that pretty quickly along with the Ram upgrade. I plan to run Traktor for a while until I get my sea legs back, then switch back to Ableton since I used to DJ using Live 6 and would like to do some production down the road too.
Am I on track here? I don’t want to throw money away, but I do want something fast and efficient. Ultimately, I DJ for the love of the music and creating an awesome energy for people, so I don’t necessarily need something that an international touring DJ would use, but I do want the best I can get out of the computer without blowing a grand on it.
RAM prices are very high these days due to the manufacturers cartelling like shitbags. You should be OK getting buy on 8GB if it’s just for DJing. At least for now. It will also give you another avenue for upgrade later.
Get a decent SSD and you’ll see a big change in performance. Apps opening much faster, saving files will be faster, boot times will be 10x faster.
What you’re saying is true, but the scale matters. It’s only about $30 more for a 16GB kit for a MBP than when I last did it in 2011. Yes, it’s kind of ridiculous. But, it is also faster ram IIRC (1600 vs 1333). The issue is not that the prices have gone up from carteling, it’s that they haven’t gone down because there haven’t been any improvments in manufacturing in years.
Kind of like how processors haven’t really gotten faster for a long time, just more energy efficient. There are technical reasons for that, and you can be sure that companies are pouring untold amounts of money into getting over them despite the fact that it may not be possible without some huge breakthrough (which is going to be expensive as hell).
I had no idea things like this existed! My CD drive is useless anyway, so this’ll be a perfect replacement. Brilliant idea!
Thank you all for your input! Doesn’t hurt to keep this discussion going as I’m sure there are others with similar questions too. Now I just need to decide on a controller or two lol… Plenty of threads already on that though.
Edit: another question: my mac runs hot sometimes. Any idea if there’s a way to keep it cooler?
Macs run hot as a rule, I use the Macs Fan Control App to run the fans higher than normal at all times seeing as i have an extra HDD installed. A little extra noise, but peace of mind that your hard disk will probably not experience heat damage.
[BEATPORT_PRO][/BEATPORT_PRO][quote=“mostapha, post:9, topic:76828, username:mostapha”]
SMCFanControl was what I used. Or something like that.
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I remember there was a significant reason why I stopped using SMC Fan Control - what that reason was however
Alright, I put the new SSD in the factory slot, and my original HD in the optical drive carriage. The HD was on Sierra, and I downloaded the upgrade to High Sierra and installed it on the SSD. Now, when booting from the SSD, it recognizes the HD but doesn’t load it in the finder. How can I access it? All my music and files are on there and I want to transfer some stuff to the SSD…
I also use Symlinker to “connect” certain default folders to the spinning HDD e.g. Logic Library, Photos, iTunes Music, VM’s & Documents.
Depending on the size of your SSD you might not need it, but for large folders it can prevent running out of space fast on the SSD (e.g. my photos library is 120GB and Logic is 50GB+ at this point.)
