Chosen Solution

Hi everyone, So one day I noticed that my friend’s dented and old 13" MacBook Pro was lightning fast doing all these everyday tasked. Then I asked him why it’s so fast and he told my he upgraded his laptop by removing his DVD Drive and adding 2 250GB SSD’s in his laptop and boosted up from 4GB of ram to 8GB. I’m already planning to buy a Samsung 500GB SSD and 8GB of Ram. But I don’t really need 2 SSD’s as 500GB is way more then enough for me. So I wondered what else can I do with removing the DVD Drive as frankly, it’s quite a lot of space to work with. Then I did my homework and found things called MXM’s. I kept searching around and found this person doing exactly what I’m doing but in a PC Laptop and was successful. http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/… (The Forum he posted) http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachme… (This Image is how I found about this person doing exactly what I’m doing. Found it in Google Images.) Then I started searching around if anyone else has done this in a MacBook Pro or iMac and nothing was found (Except in Mac Pro’s but they don’t really count in my opinion as they’re so customisable) . https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threa… But then I found this Forum and one person respond with “I don’t think there would be space for an MXM slot in a MacBook Pro”. But the person which asked the question didn’t say he’s removing his DVD Drive like myself. So does that mean I can fit a MXM in my Laptop with the DVD Drive fully removed and replicate like what the person did with his PC Laptop? The only problem is I’m not 100% sure is if my laptop has a PCI or PCI-E Slot for the MXM. But I found this website: https://hackaday.com/2011/03/15/no-pcies… Additionally, if there is no PCI or PCI-E Slot (hopefully not) I can maybe add one because eGPU’s make a PCI or PCI-E Slot through the Thunderbolt and it’s maybe possible to make one. Even if there is a PCI or PCI-E Slot and it’s in a weird location I can just use a Ribbon Cable to help me with that. http://www.sintech.cn/riser%20card/ST801… Lastly, to cool the MXM down when it gets hot. I can fit this fan into my laptop on top of the MXM as MXM’s are very thin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkETnnJK… I know it’s not the best fan. But I know it can do the job. But if it does get very hot, I’ll put a warning signal in my computer to warm me about my MXM getting to hot and I’ll turn my Laptop off to give it time to cool down. MXM’s: http://www.eurocom.com/ec/vgas(1)ec By the way, I live in Hong Kong where there a ton of shops with Professional Soldering Equipment. Also another one of my Friends have a Soldering Iron and Oven and he says he knows how to solder. So if there’s any Soldering necessary there are those 2 options to help me. I will do anything it takes to make this successful! So if any really difficult is needed to be done to make this a success. I will do it! So please don’t hesitate to reply even if it’s a difficult process to do. Any replies would be very highly appreciated!

While removing the optical drive can offer you some room. You would need to find a SATA to MXM interface adapter (PCI) which I’ve never seen. Keep in mind the SATA interface is only SATA II (3.0 Gb/s) so the it won’t be very good for anything heavy graphic. Then you need to have room for cooling of the MXM card the MacBook Pro’s are designed to be thin so you would end up needing to create a new bottom cover to house the cooling system and fan. Then you still have a power issue the MXM card & fan will likely draw to much power. And lastly, you would need an iMac MXM card as Apple uses custom firmware on their cards. By the time you designed and had built the needed pieces it would cost more that buying a newer model with better onboard graphics. Bottomline this is a very long reach!!

Nope not possible. The SSD and Ram upgrade is the only option to speeding up your system.