Macbook pro 13 retina RAM replacement. Why can't I increase the RAM on Macbook Air and Retina? Price for increasing MacBook RAM capacity

If you need a MacBook Air RAM replacement, find a good Apple laptop troubleshooter on YouDo. The technicians registered on our website quickly and efficiently change the RAM on devices from 11, 13 and other years at a low price. You can find on Yuda’s website both employees of Moscow service centers and private performers.

In what cases do you need specialist help?

If you suddenly find that your MacBook is running worse than before, this may be a sign of faulty RAM. An Apple computer device must be urgently sent for diagnostics if:

• There are malfunctions in programs that functioned normally after installation
• The MacBook often freezes for no reason
• During operation, the device suddenly turns off

You may need to increase the amount of memory or replace modules if the RAM has completely failed. The type of adjustment will be determined by a laptop repair specialist.

Why is it worth placing an order on YouDo?

There are many specialists who repair Air 13 laptop models (of any year of manufacture) registered on our website. You can contact a performer whose characteristics you like. By ordering services on YouDo, you receive:

• competent diagnostics of MacBook
• high-quality repairs
• long-term warranty on the use of the device
• the ability to call a technician to your home or have the device delivered to the service center by courier
• opportunity to be present during setup

If you need new components to set up your equipment, you don’t have to look for spare parts yourself: the technician already has the necessary parts on hand.

The specialist will familiarize you with the document in advance, which indicates what work he performs. After looking at it, you will immediately understand whether the technician can undertake the repair of a faulty device. The text of the document looks something like this:

MacBook Air, year of manufacture	Types of services
	Diagnostics, display replacement, keyboard repair, cleaning after moisture gets inside, RAM replacement.
	Diagnostics, display replacement, keyboard repair, cleaning after moisture gets inside, RAM replacement, video card adjustment.
	Diagnostics, replacement of the display and screen glass, cleaning after moisture gets inside, replacing RAM, adjusting the video card.
	Diagnostics, replacement of the display and screen glass, keyboard repair, cleaning after moisture gets inside, replacement of RAM and CD drive, video card adjustment.
	Diagnostics, replacement of the display and screen glass, keyboard repair, cleaning after moisture gets inside, replacement of RAM and CD drive, adjustment of the video card and wf module.
	Diagnostics, replacement of the display and screen glass, keyboard repair, cleaning after moisture gets inside, replacement of RAM and CD drive, adjustment of the video card and wf module. Prevention.
	Diagnostics, replacement of the display and screen glass, keyboard repair, cleaning after moisture gets inside, replacing RAM and CD drive, adjusting the video card and wf module, repairing the charging cable. Prevention.

Service cost

Working with RAM is fast and inexpensive. Removing and installing RAM modules takes less than half an hour - most of the payment is for the cost of the spare part. Service and private masters from Moscow determine prices based on:

• remoteness of the service center (for example, replacing RAM on a MacBook Air 2010 in the center of Moscow costs less than the same procedure outside the Moscow Ring Road)
• qualifications of the specialist offering assistance
• the need for a technician to visit your home or for courier delivery

Each specialist has a price list indicating the cost of services. It could be published on YouDo and look something like this:

MacBook Air, year of manufacture	Price for increasing MacBook RAM capacity
	From 600 rub.
	From 650 rub.
	From 700 rub.
	From 750 rub.
	From 800 rub.
	From 850 rub.
	From 900 rub.

If a computer specialist discovers problems with the device other than the internal memory, he will offer help in eliminating them. You will have to pay a larger amount for additional repairs.

How to place an order on YouDo?

If you need a MacBook RAM replacement, post a request on our website. Report in it:

• your model type (11, 13, 15 years of manufacture, etc.)
• what is the current state of the RAM (the MacBook slows down slightly or refuses to work at all)
• when do you want to replace the part?
• what is the cost of replacing MacBook Air RAM (you can indicate in your application the gradation of prices that suit you).

Modern, thin, light and powerful, the MacBook pro Retina is almost perfect. it can handle almost any task, but if for some reason the retina’s performance is not enough for you, we start thinking about an upgrade. Any upgrade means replacing the hard drive with an SSD, increasing the amount of RAM, replacing the video card and processor.

But if we are talking about the MacBook - in all modern models, starting from 2009 (and in some cases even earlier), it is very difficult to replace the central (CPU) or graphics (GPU, video card) processor - BGA soldering is required, accurate calculation of process parameters, and installation is possible only using a limited number of chips, which do not differ very much from each other in performance. SSDs are already installed in all models with a Retina display, so only the storage capacity can be increased. Now we come close to the topic of this article. Is it possible to replace the RAM of a MacBook Pro Retina 2013? Yes and no, but more on that:

Increasing the RAM of a MacBook Pro Retina is a technically very complex, time-consuming and difficult to achieve process.

• The MacBook Pro Retina RAM in all models, like the MacBook Air, is integrated into the motherboard!

And, although it is officially considered non-removable (for example, in a report on the MacBook Pro 13 Retina system, the RAM is represented by two “non-removable” modules), it is technically possible to replace the RAM chips (modules) with more “volumetric” ones, however, this raises the question of financial feasibility and profitability of such an upgrade. The operation requires a soldering station, and the engineer performing the re-soldering will need unique experience, since memory chips are changed in groups, and such a replacement cannot be compared in complexity even with reinstalling a graphics processor (GPU, video chip) on Apple boards - even a slight deviation of the technological process parameters from the required ones regulations leads to failure of memory chips or the entire motherboard.

Of course, there is always another option - replacing the motherboard. This is an expensive operation and we can only recommend it if you have tried all other ways to increase the performance of your system.

If you still decide to replace the board, entrust this operation to better knowledgeable engineers, who work exclusively with trusted suppliers, since you will hardly be able to check the condition and “source” of components yourself. The issue of board quality is very important and, of course, does not require unnecessary justification.

Now it is urgent to install maximum modifications of boards, since the RAM of the macbook pro retina, even in the minimum configuration, is now 8 GB (the very first samples of the MacBook Retina 13 with 4 GB of RAM have long left the market, and they can only be found on various forums). But at the same time, you need to be prepared for the fact that the cost of such a board will be 50-70% of the cost of a working (not always new) Mac.

So, is the macbook pro retina RAM upgradable?

• Yes, but in practice this means replacing the entire motherboard and you should resort to this option only as a last resort, having assessed all the pros and cons in advance.

If you really need to increase the RAM memory of your macbook pro retina, we, MacBookPro-Fix, are ready to select the appropriate option for you and install the board in the shortest possible period of time. If you need to replace the memory chips themselves, you shouldn’t give up either, each case deserves a separate study, and we can offer our recommendations based on the results of a free diagnosis.

Continuing the topic about increasing RAM in various models of macbook pro and macbook air, this time we will be upgrading macbook pro A1398 late 2013. We have at our disposal several basic macbooks in the simplest and most unenviable configuration:

The configuration is simple, but at the same time it is a reliable macbook pro 15 that can easily cope with any task, and the lack of a discrete accelerator is a plus in some aspects. This is reduced consumption when viewing 4K video and working on two or more monitors, increased reliability of the Intel Iris Pro 6100 graphics subsystem. The disadvantage of the configuration under consideration is the small amount of memory 8GB and we will correct this disadvantage. As they say, there is never enough RAM).

Board improvement 820-3662-A one of the simplest, but at the same time very time-consuming. And all this is due to the fact that 16 gigabytes of RAM are formed by the correct configuration of the motherboard and the installed 32 HYNIX H5TC4G83AFR-PBA chips. Memory chips can be installed from other manufacturers, but most often they are HYNIX and therefore we will consider this particular configuration. The convenience of increasing memory on this motherboard is due to the fact that space for additional chips is provided at the manufacturer, and the body kit and additional elements for all 32 RAM chips are already installed on the board. All we have to do is install the 16 missing chips and configure the board to operate in 16GB mode. That's all it is...)

You can get the necessary chips to increase the RAM of the macbook pro A1398 in several places:
- order new ones from suppliers (sold in a tape with installed ball leads)
- buy new memory sticks from the required manufacturer (you will have to spend time rolling new ball pins)

We chose the second option because it turned out to be one and a half times cheaper, but the huge disadvantage was the waste of time on rolling new ball pins before installing the chips removed from the memory stick onto the macbook pro 820-3662-A board.
HYNIX H5TC4G83AFR-PBA chips are installed one at a time, and for ease of installation and to reduce the impact on the board, we use a temperature-controlled heating table. This allows you to remove unnecessary bending of the board during local heating of the soldering area of ​​the memory chip, and the board remains flat.

After installing all 16 RAM chips, you need to tell the controller how to work with them. Since we changed the configuration of the memory banks from 4GB+4GB to 8GB+8GB, and immediately after soldering, if we turn on the macbook pro A1398 late 2013, we will simply hear 3 beeps indicating a memory parity error.
Having installed the necessary elements for the correct configuration of RAM on the board, we assemble and launch our macbook pro. In the system properties you can see 16GB, but to be safe, we leave this A1398 on the memory test for several hours; if the test passes without errors, you can give the computer to the client.

Increasing RAM in a macbook pro A1398 late 2013-2015 is not the cheapest thing (we reviewed a new HYNIX RAM stick that costs about 80USD), but it is cheaper than buying a new computer with 16GB of memory.

We have long been accustomed to the fact that the MacBook is the best ultrabook among all competitors! It is the most beautiful, and the most effective, and the most up-to-date, and... the most unsuitable for repair or upgrade (according to iFixit for 2013). Although, in truth, this is compensated by the fact that the Mac is simply very well made, and therefore it breaks relatively infrequently. However, if this does happen, then any Mac breakdown can be characterized by just one, but very capacious and comprehensive word - pain.

In many ways, this characteristic is also true for an upgrade, which is either not provided for at all, or is extremely difficult,... or you have an old man in your hands, from 2012. And that is why today we decided to once again raise a topic on which dozens of articles have already been written and which, however, on the eve of Black Friday is again becoming very relevant. And most importantly, it concerns almost every poppy grower!

Expanding the internal memory capacity of MacBook Air and Pro!

Since independent intervention in the internal structure of their ultrabooks is not welcomed, users who, after purchasing, suddenly discovered that 128 GB of internal memory is not enough for them and the argument “oh well, it’s a Mac, we’ll take the minimum wage, there’s enough space” is no longer so convincing, have to today we cleverly dodge to solve the problem of the missing space. The elegance of solving this problem directly depends on the budget you have. And we have prepared several examples of solutions - from the most clumsy to the completely revolutionary!

As promised, let's start with the clumsy ones.

1. Regular SDXC card. This method has more disadvantages than advantages, so it is used quite rarely.


Firstly, installation requires an appropriate port, which, for example, the MacBook Air 11’ does not have.
Secondly, the card greatly spoils the appearance of the device and constantly tries to get caught on something.
Thirdly, for all its shortcomings, it also costs a lot of money.

In general, this option is suitable, unless you have an unnecessary card of this format lying around somewhere, and you don’t want to buy a normal memory expander.

2. Budget and universal option - miniature drive SanDisk Ultra Fit.


This baby has two main advantages: price and versatility. It fits any laptop equipped with a USB connector and is inexpensive. But one of the disadvantages is that it is quite large in size for everyday use - such an expansion of memory will not go unnoticed. But first of all, it is invisibility that users of such crutches most often want in a top-end laptop.

3. BASEQI- a special aluminum plug for the MacBook SDXC port, into which you can place a microSD card up to 128 GB and enjoy life. This method and this plug in particular are good because they require constant use of the memory expander without discomfort. The plug completely merges with the body and provides you with any additional free space you need.


The price is quite high - $25 for a simple piece of plastic with aluminum. However, if you happen to have an unnecessary microSD card of a suitable size on hand, this plug for a quarter of a hundred dollars will solve your problems. BASEQI is also supported by user reviews on Amazon, which consistently leave the highest ratings. 5 out of 5 is no joke.

4. Transcend JetDrive Lite- perhaps the most popular and optimal way to inexpensively and effectively increase the memory of your Mac. Absolutely everything is good here - from the successful form factor to the price.

The main thing is that this is a ready-made solution - you don’t need to buy anything, just plug it in and use it. Among the advantages, we highlight the fact that this flash drive is completely “recessed” into the body of the device and works very quickly. Among all similar gadgets, Transcend JetDrive Lite is the most popular and widespread format that can be safely recommended to everyone who is faced with the problem of running out of space in a MacBook.


And Transcend JetDrive Lite is inexpensive. This 128 GB flash drive costs only $69.

5. TarDisk. Our top 5 is completed by the most unusual and interesting of all memory expanders. It’s worth starting with at least the fact that this gadget attracted the attention of users long before its release. Following the fashion, the promising company sought funding on Kickstarter and, as happens with successful startups, instead of the planned 32 thousand dollars, it raised almost 130 thousand.


By the way, pay attention to the device’s rating among buyers - 4.9 out of 5.0. This is a rare result even for very high quality and good things! So what is the secret of success?

The main feature of TarDisk and its difference from Transcend JetDrive Lite is that this gadget, when connected to a Mac, does not appear as a separate flash drive, but is integrated into the system and merges with your main system SSD.
There are a lot of advantages to such a gadget. Perhaps this is the first and only method of fully seamless expansion of internal memory for a MacBook!

TarDisk looks good - the aluminum cover is completely invisible when using the laptop. And it works quickly - average read speed up to 90 MB/s.

And it integrates completely seamlessly - one intuitive setting, and your Mac's SSD is full of free space thanks to TarDisk.

So if you were looking for a way to expand the internal memory of your MacBook as quietly and comfortably as possible, TarDisk may be the ideal solution. Technical details of its work can be found out from company representatives on the official website; there is also a Live Chat where you can contact with any question.

Afterword

We have compiled this selection right now, since Black Friday is approaching - a time of huge sales. As you can easily see, all the links from this article lead to Amazon - a store that every holiday organizes cool promotions with discounts, allowing you to buy the desired goods much cheaper than on ordinary days. The fact is that Amazon really likes to reduce the price of flash drives, SD cards, SSDs and memory expanders. Yes, at least now make sure of this! So if you order these goods from America, then it is on the eve of Black Friday or on the holiday itself.

And it will help to deliver these small gadgets! Just please do not send just a memory card from the USA. Pack yourself a full-fledged package, Black Friday discounts will help with this! And as part of such a combined parcel, send TarDisk or Transcend JetDrive Lite, or even the most ordinary flash drive. This way, sending a parcel from America will be the most profitable.

P.S. In this article, we specifically did not mention various external SSDs and HDDs, since they can hardly be called comfortable memory expanders.

In this article we will touch on a very “dark” and little-known topic (the lack of solution to this issue can be observed by simply googling it). The question goes like this: Is it possible to install 16 GB of RAM onMacBookPro and how to do it? After talking with experts in the field of repairing and reflashing Apple equipment, we found a very accurate answer. We are happy to provide you with an extensive interview, in which Evgeny Belyaev (helpmymac.ru), Denis Shcheglov (deepapple.com) and Ivan Mereshchenko (macfix.ru) kindly agreed to give us their comments.

A little background. The 2011 MacBook Pro 13'', 15'' and 17'' line with i5 and i7 processors are equipped with 4 GB and 8 GB of RAM by default. Support for 16 GB is not declared by Apple, but on the Intel website you can find information that i5 and i7 processors work well and successfully cope with 16 GB of RAM. In March 2011, OWC allowed Apple technology users to install up to 16 GB of memory inclusive on their laptops, Mac Mini and iMac. At that time, this procedure cost $1,600, that is, one hundred bucks per 1 GB. Not bad, right? Now, of course, prices have dropped, so it's time to upgrade your laptops. Now let's take a closer look.


Experts answer questions

1. So,MacBookPro.Is it possible to put 16 GB of RAM on this laptop?

Denis Shcheglov: “Since 2011, all MacBook Pros support 16 GB of RAM. Simply put: if your beech has DDR3-1333 RAM (PC-10600), then you can put two 8 GB sticks there.”

Ivan Mereshchenko: “In previous [models], it either doesn’t work because the memory frequency is reduced, or only 8 gigabytes out of 16 will work. And most likely, there will be glitches due to switching to another frequency.”

Evgeniy Belyaev: “On the Apple website for all models it is written that they support a maximum of 8 GB. In general, you can, for example, buy it.”

2. What laptop models can be installed on? It seems that support for 16 GB of RAM is declared for i7 processors, but not i5. What type of RAM will it be, two 8 GB each? A year ago, OWC offered all MacBook Pro users 16 GB of RAM for $1,600. Isn't it too expensive? How much will it cost to install 16 GB on a laptop now?

D.Shch.: “At the time of the release of these MacBook Pro models, dies of such a large volume did not yet exist. Of course, this refers to Apple-certified memory, and not the results of experiments by Asian craftsmen. Around the winter of 2011/12, the necessary memory appeared. It’s hard to remember the starting price for the 16 GB kit now, but it was clearly exorbitant. Prices have fallen and continue to fall every week. Although now, of course, the progression has greatly decreased. And when discussing the issue of the price of original Apple spare parts, we should not forget about branding. Officially, only original RAM can be installed in Apple beeches, which according to the Apple catalog today (04/24/2012) costs 16 thousand rubles for one 8 GB memory stick. True, it is important to remember one circumstance here: Apple itself does not make RAM. If you know which memory is compatible (and there are very few such types), you can save a lot on the upgrade.”

E.B.: “Models on which this memory can be installed:

MacBook Pro 13″ 2.3GHz dual-core Intel Core i5

MacBook Pro 13″ 2.4GHz dual-core Intel Core i5

MacBook Pro 13″ 2.7GHz dual-core Intel Core i7

MacBook Pro 13″ 2.8GHz dual-core Intel Core i7

MacBook Pro 15″ 2.0GHz quad-core Intel Core i7

MacBook Pro 15″ 2.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7

MacBook Pro 15″ 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7

MacBook Pro 15″ 2.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i7

MacBook Pro 15″ 2.5GHz quad-core Intel Core i7

MacBook Pro 17″ 2.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7

MacBook Pro 17″ 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7

MacBook Pro 17″ 2.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i7

MacBook Pro 17″ 2.5GHz quad-core Intel Core i7

Yes, in any case, you need to install two 8 GB sticks. In principle, any memory with the same characteristics will do. That is, you need to look for 1333 MHz memory. But there is a possibility of running into incompatibility.

[A year ago it was] expensive. In general, OWC office is not cheap. Now a 16 GB kit can be purchased on OWC for $200.”

THEM.: “On the 2011 model [you can put it] exactly, and all the previous ones are of a kind of experimentation. The last time we made such an upgrade, an 8 GB memory stick cost 4,500 rubles. And in Moscow there were only 5 of them.”

3. Does the laptop recognize all the memory?

D.Shch.: “Yes, cases of partial “capitalization” of installed RAM are a thing of the past.”

THEM.: "Yes".

E.B.: « No, not all. This can only be understood once purchased and installed.”

4. Does productivity increase significantly? Do you have a practical example? One of the blogs wrote that with 16 GB of RAM on were able to run 218 applications simultaneously.

D.Shch.: « Macintoshes are very grateful for increased RAM. Mac OS makes excellent use of all memory. This is especially noticeable in applications with “heavy mathematics”. For example, video editors. It is difficult to give specific examples. This is usually seen with a stopwatch in hand.

However, we should not forget that the hard drive is a strong limiting factor in the performance of the entire system as a whole. So, with an increase in the amount of RAM, the loading speed of applications will hardly change.”

THEM.: “The performance issue is debatable. When memory becomes full, the Mac swaps it to the hard drive. Accordingly, if the memory is not completely filled, then there will be no brakes. Again, it all depends on the programs and what they do in them.

From practical examples in Logic, plugins stopped asking how much RAM they should use.”

E.B.: “Performance, of course, increases, but not as noticeably as if you install an SSD drive. A regular hard drive is like a “bottleneck”, i.e. the only mechanical part in the laptop that is much inferior in speed to all the internals.”

6. Do they occur after or during installation?

THEM.: “There were cases when customers, changing RAM, killed motherboards with static or simply shortened them with a screwdriver 😉 There are also a lot of defects. Out of 10 bars, two will not work».

E.B.: “If installed correctly, problems can only arise due to memory incompatibility. It’s worth putting back compatible memory and everything will work perfectly again.”

D.Shch.: “Problems during or after installing RAM are rare, but they do happen. Even though the procedure is described in the user manual. Firstly, when choosing RAM yourself, you simply won’t guess with the model. As a result, we get the result from a drop in performance to the inability of the laptop to boot with new memory. Secondly, you can simply damage the RAM slots and eventually need to repair the motherboard. Thirdly, we must not forget that you need to install either one memory stick or two completely identical memory sticks. Otherwise, the duality mode will not work and overall performance will drop by at least 5%. Other rarer problems are also possible.

I would especially like to highlight a problem that has existed in our country in recent years: the installation of Kingston KVR series memory in Macintoshes. Let's start with the fact that Apple generally has a very low opinion of this company and does not use their products at all. Kingston itself recommends using only the KTA series from its entire line of RAM. However, many companies sell Kingston KVR as memory for Macs. Often for the sake of profit: the price of this memory is extremely low. Often out of ignorance.”

7. How much memory do you think the next generation MacBook Pro, which is expected to come with a Retina display, will have? What volume can be installed optionally?

D.Shch.: “I’m used to not speculating about future Apple products” :o)

THEM.: “Judging by the trend, if Apple decides to make boards, then relying on the MacBook Air experience, the RAM will be soldered on the motherboard. I think it will be a 4 GB junior model, an 8 GB senior model and perhaps 16 on order (after all, this is a “pro”).”

E.B.: “I think that the next generation will come out without a Retina display, but the next one after that, i.e. The New MacBook will already have a Retina display and an 8 MP camera 😉 In fact, I don’t really follow new products from Apple. I work on a MacBook Pro 17″ 2007. I think between 16 and 32 GB.”

By the way, here is a “professional” who works on a MacBook Pro 17’’, albeit from 2007. And we are already with them.

As you can see, 16 GB of RAM can be installed on the MacBook Pro, and on any model of 2011. The only thing left to do is find the right bracket, don’t go cheap and don’t give away too much, find a straight-talking technician or try to do everything right yourself, and perhaps the next generation of MacBook Pro will have the above-mentioned amount of RAM or optionally offer the ability to install it.

Many thanks to Denis Shcheglov, Evgeniy Belyaev and Ivan Mereshchenko for detailed answers to questions.