Building the ultimate sleeper MacBook Pro! Complete restoration and max upgrades

this is an eight-year-old MacBook Pro and like a lot of older MacBooks that you might have sitting around it has some signs of age the hard drive is failing it takes like more than 20 minutes to boot up it's got 4 gigabytes of RAM so it's not very fast once it is booted up it's got a cracked screen the battery is on its way out the trackpad doesn't click quite right and it's got quite a bit of damage around the outside of the case so it seems like at 8 years old this MacBook is on its way out but today we're going to prove that it isn't by not only restoring it to brand-new condition but by upgrading it to the max [Music] today's video is sponsored by I fix it my go-to for repair instructions upgrade guides as well as high quality parts and tools I fix it has generously provided all of the parts we're going to be using for today's repair and upgrades I'm not joking when I say that the entire foundation for all of the repair work that I have done on this channel comes from I fix it that is literally how I learned to do all of this stuff they have thorough and high-quality repair guides for almost any Apple product out there and they also stock most of the parts for them as well so you don't have to worry about getting shady parts that don't really work on eBay not that I've done that before the touch bar does not work on this top case I opened up the machine and I looked at the touch bar connector it's very clearly damaged so we're gonna have to literally do this entire repair again so with I fix its help today we are going to be completely transforming this MacBook its Home Makeover MacBook edition but anyway you may remember in my recent video where we talked about the value of buying a used MacBook Air I discussed the possibility of completely maxing out a 2012 13 inch unibody MacBook Pro and in fact that's the reason why I paid $100 for this somewhat dilapidated 2012 unibody 13 inch MacBook Pro this has the build to order 2.9 gigahertz core i7 processor which was the fastest one that you could get in this computer so what we're going to do today is build the best unibody MacBook Pro that you can buy and in order to do that we're going to need a lot of parts are you ready well first of all and most obviously the screen is cracked so I fix it has sent over this brand new display assembly look at this thing it's still wrapped up and everything so we're gonna be replacing that but in addition to the display we do have a number of cosmetic issues around the top case and bottom case so iFixit has gone ahead and sent me a bottom case and a top case assembly both of these are in perfect condition so that's going to be great however we do still have a few they're minor concerns the trackpad for example is water damaged and doesn't click properly so we're gonna replace that as well and the battery doesn't hold a charge so guess what I fix it sent over a brand new battery which is going to make a huge difference but all of that stuff is gonna restore this thing to like-new condition except for the fact that it's still going to be really really slow because we have that slow failing 5400 rpm hard drive so fear not we're gonna replace that with this one terabyte Samsung Drive but you know I was thinking a G's terabyte is really not a lot these days so we should probably have more than that and you know I fix it was thinking the same thing so they sent over this additional one terabyte solid-state drive as well as this caddy which will allow us to replace the optical drive with a second SSD we're also putting in 16 gigabytes of 1600 megahertz ddr3 which is the max that this computer can support so with all of these upgrades we're gonna demonstrate that just because you have an old slow MacBook lying around doesn't mean that you need to throw it away these things are still plenty good and today we're going to build the best unibody 13-inch MacBook Pro in the world let's get started [Music] to start the repair we have to gut the internals of the MacBook there are a lot of parts we're going to transfer into our new top case so it's not just a simple logic board swap first I'll remove the DVD drive and transfer the SATA cable assembly into the new top case then we can move on to this speaker assembly this one can be a little bit tricky as its glued in by the optical drive so we'll need to pry it out [Music] underneath that speaker is a sneaky little antenna that's very easy to miss so we'll grab that first then we'll take our display off the old top case and harvest the screws which we'll use to attach the new display to the new top case one small wrinkle though the hinge needs to be bent with pliers so it can fit into the top case simply turn them 90 degrees and we can easily attach the display [Music] [Music] now we can install the new trackpad with the screws harvested from the old top case and put in the antenna and speaker components as well as the mid wall that we took from the old top case which acts as a center point for mounting components [Music] now it's time to install our secondary SSD into the iFixit dual drive kit transfer the data cable and mounting bracket from the optical drive and install it into the MacBook [Music] and now comes the tricky task of wiring the antenna connectors to the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth module this can take a little bit of time we're in the homestretch now we can reinsert the logic board being careful not to trap any connectors beneath the board I always recommend plugging everything in before screwing the logic board down that way it's easier to catch anything you might have missed [Music] and now we can transfer the mounting screws and install our primary solid-state drive insert 16 gigabytes of RAM connect our new battery and screw down the bottom plate and now our ultimate unibody MacBook Pro is ready [Music] so here it is the best 13-inch unibody MacBook Pro in the world and by best I mean like pretty much the best cuz I guess you could put in as much storage as you wanted to and that's kind of up to you but we're gonna call it the best this thing right now it's packin a 2.9 gigahertz core i7 16 gigabytes of RAM 2 terabytes of solid-state storage and Intel HD graphics 4000 yeah that last one kind of kind of lets it down doesn't it setting aside all the specs and the performance and value and all that stuff I love seeing one of these 13 inch unibody --zz in new condition it's a thing of beauty it kind of makes you appreciate how good this design is given that it's 12 years old and it still looks really good especially when it's in absolutely flawless pristine condition all right sure I know a couple of you guys are probably thinking right about now yeah hang on a minute you replaced every single component except for the logic board you might as well just bought a new MacBook what was the point of this and I'll grant you that this was an extreme situation this isn't exactly something that you would be doing at home with an old MacBook that you have lying around because the sum total of all of these brand new parts was much more than this computer is actually worth let's be very clear about that if this was a renovation we pretty much tore the whole house down and then built it up again but yeah the point is to actually build the best unibody and this is the best unibody I mean it's absolutely beautiful but it is worth noting that this might be a huge improvement over the dilapidated MacBook that it once was but it's not exactly the modern MacBook killer like you're not going to replace a new quad core retina with one of these granted yes it has a ton of storage and you would have to spend a lot of money to get two terabytes in a newer MacBook but this is still an 8-year old MacBook Pro even though it's the core i7 model it's not exactly powerful why don't we do a Cinebench test to see what I'm on about so this might take a little while uh let's go ahead and speed it up a little bit come on come on now hurry up we don't have all day oh that's it yikes so it's not exactly a pro notebook anymore considering that it's beaten pretty noticeably by a dual core i3 and a 20/20 MacBook Air and let's be honest with the cost of all of these upgrades it it actually might cost a little bit more than a 20/20 MacBook Air I never said this was a practical project but the larger moral here is don't give up on your old and slightly broken unibody MacBook Pros you can still breathe life into these things whether you're buying one and upgrading it or you're upgrading one that you already have laying around and you want to have a secondary computer this is a great starting point a lot of people actually throw away these unibody x' because the hard drives die they get really slow they think the computer is useless but all you have to do is upgrade the RAM upgrade the storage maybe repair any broken components and you've got yourself a really nifty little laptop now this particular one this 2012 still runs catallena it's still currently supported probably not gonna get Mac OS 10.16 that's probably unlikely but it does run katalina a lot of these unibody x' can be upgraded to Catalina with patchers and they don't have dedicated graphics so it's pretty easy to get that done you don't really have to deal with some of the issues that older Mac's with dedicated graphics will get and you can use even stuff like 2009 2008 unibody x' even you can still use those in 2020 so don't give up hope on your old tech it is really incredible how long laptops and desktops are lasting nowadays could you imagine eight years ago when this was a brand-new computer using a 2004 PowerPC Mac even then that was a bit of a stretch but for basic use this thing absolutely crushes it so that's gonna do it for this video I hope you guys have enjoyed this sort of rags to riches tale of a decrepit MacBook being given a new lease on life if you found this video enjoyable or helpful make sure to leave a like and comment down below also let me know what you think I should name this computer I kind of want to canonize this in the Luca me on île or so I want to come up with a fun name for it leave any name suggestions in the comments below or feel free to follow me on twitter at lucca me on e and tweet the map mate and of course don't forget to check out my subreddit which is linked in the description below and I will see you all in the next video [Music]

Channel: Luke Miani

Views: 435,013

Keywords: restoration, macbook restoration, complete restoration, tech restoration, MacBook Pro restoration, building the ultimate MacBook pro, ultimate macbook, ultimate macbook pro, building the best MacBook, max upgrade MacBook pro, unibody MacBook Pro upgrades

Id: 8xXeHMI6sJ8

Length: 13min 48sec (828 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 09 2020