| This. This. This. I have "refurbished" 2 MacBook Pros now, and this is part of my process. Max out the RAM, install SSD, replace battery, reapply thermal paste, clean with canned air. When I did this to a 2009 13" MBP that got me through grad school (already had max RAM and an SSD), I found that it ran cooler than I remember it running when I first bought it. Recently, I bought a used 2011 15" MBP (no HDD, swelled up battery, popped out trackpad, missing case screws) for $100. I used an SSD from my desktop that recently became a media server, then spent $110 on 16 GB of RAM, a new battery, and screws. That machine is killing it. This is one of the things that saddens me about everything after the retina MBP transition: we can no longer do all of these kinds of major performance enhancements on our own, and some of these repairs have become much more difficult. Edit: I use Noctua NT-H1 because it has excellent thermal characteristics and it isn't electrically conductive so it won't kill your hardware if you get it somewhere you shouldn't. http://noctua.at/en/nt-h1.html http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/noctua_nt_h1/5.htm https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Noctua/NT-H1/4.html |