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

This is an eight-year-old MacBook Pro, and like many older MacBooks you may have lying around, it has some signs of aging. The hard drive is failing. It takes more than 20 minutes to boot. It has 4 gigabytes of RAM. so it's not very fast once it starts up it has a broken screen the battery is about to die the trackpad doesn't click at all well and it has quite a bit of damage around the outside of the case so it looks like 8 years old, this one MacBook is about to disappear, but today we are going to show that not only by restoring it to new condition but by updating it to the maximum.

Today's video is sponsored by I Fix It With My Go- For repair instructions, upgrade guides, as well as high-quality parts and tools. I fix it. You have generously provided all the parts we will be using for today's repairs and

upgrades

. I'm not kidding when I say all the basics for everyone. Of the repair work I've done on this channel comes from I Fix It, that's literally how I learned to do all of this. They have

complete

, high-quality repair guides for almost any Apple product available and they also stock most parts for them too so you don't have to worry about getting suspicious parts that don't really work on eBay, not that I've done that's before the touch bar doesn't work on this top case.

I opened the machine and looked at the touch bar connector, it is very clearly damaged so we will literally have to do this entire repair again, so with your help today we are going to

complete

ly transform this MacBook into its Home Makeover MacBook edition, but of all anyway you may remember it. In my recent video where we talked about the value of buying a used MacBook Air, I talked about being able to fully max out a 2012 13-inch unibody MacBook Pro, and that's actually why I paid $100 for this unibody MacBook 13 inch from 2012 somewhat beat up. Pro, this one has the custom built 2.9 gigahertz core i7 processor, which was the fastest you could get in this computer, so what we're going to do today is build the best unibody MacBook Pro you can buy and to be able to do it.

We are going to need a lot of parts, are you ready? Well, first of all, and most obviously, the screen is broken, so I fix it. I sent this new screen assembly. Look at this, it's still wrapped and everything, so here we are. I'm going to replace that, but in addition to the screen, we have a number of cosmetic issues around the top case and bottom case, so iFixit went ahead and sent me a set of bottom case and top case, both are in perfect condition, so that's it. It's going to be great, however we still have some minor concerns: the trackpad for example is water damaged and doesn't click properly so we're replacing that too and the battery isn't holding a charge so guess what?

I fixed it and sent you a new battery, which will make a big difference, but all of that will restore this to like-new condition, except for the fact that it will still be very, very slow because we have that slow. 5400 rpm hard drive fails, so don't fear, we'll replace it with this one terabyte Samsung Drive, but you know I was thinking that a terabyte of G isn't much these days, so we should probably have more than that and You know, I fix it. I was thinking the same thing, so they sent this additional one terabyte solid state drive, as well as this cart that 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 maximum this computer can handle, so with all of these

upgrades

we're going to prove that just because you have an old, slow MacBook lying around doesn't mean you have to throw it away, this stuff. They're still pretty good and today we're going to build the best 13-inch unibody MacBook Pro in the world. Let's start to start the repair. We have to gut the internal parts of the MacBook. There are a lot of pieces that we're going to transfer to our new top case, so no. First, you just have to change the logic board.

I will remove the DVD drive and transfer the SATA cable assembly to the new top case. Then we can move on to this set of speakers. This one can be a little tricky since it is glued to the optical drive. so we'll have to take it out under that speaker there's a sneaky little antenna that's very easy to miss, so we'll grab that first, then we'll remove the screen from the old top box and collect the screws that we'll use. To fit the new screen into the new top case there is a small crease, although you need to bend the hinge with pliers to make it fit in the top case, just turn them 90 degrees and we can easily place the screen now we can install the new trackpad with the Screws were obtained from the old top case and placed on the antenna and speaker components, as well as the middle wall we took from the old top case, which acts as a central point for mounting the components.

Now it's time to install our secondary SSD into the iFixit. The dual drive kit transfers the data cable and optical drive mounting bracket and installs it into the MacBook and now comes the complicated task of wiring the antenna connectors to the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth module. This may take a little time. In the final stretch we can now reinsert the logic board being careful not to trap any connectors under the board. I always recommend plugging everything in before screwing on the logic board, that way it's easier to catch anything that's missed and now we can transfer the assembly.

Screw and install our main solid state drive, insert 16 gigabytes of RAM, connect our new battery and screw on the bottom plate and now our

ultimate

unibody MacBook Pro is ready, so here is the best 13-inch unibody MacBook Pro in the world and By Best, I mean pretty much the best, because I guess you could put in all the storage you wanted and that's up to you, but we'll call it the best right now. It includes a 2.9 gigahertz i7 16 core. gigabytes of RAM 2 terabytes of solid state storage and Intel HD 4000 graphics yes, that last one disappoints, doesn't it leaving aside all the specs, performance, value and all that stuff?

I love seeing one of these. 13 inch unibody - zz in new condition, it's a beautiful thing, it somehow makes you appreciate how good this design is given that it's 12 years old and still looks great, especially when it's in perfect condition, pristine, of course, I know. A couple of you are probably thinking right now. Yes, wait a minute. They replaced all components except the logic board. They could also buy a new MacBook. What was the point of this? I grant you that it was like that. In an extreme situation, this isn't exactly something you would do at home with an old MacBook you have lying around because the sum total of all these new parts was much more than what this computer is actually worth.

Let's be very clear. that if this was a renovation, we pretty much tore down the entire house and then rebuilt it, but yeah, the point is to build the best unibody and this is the best unibody. I mean, it's absolutely gorgeous, but it's worth noting that this might be a big improvement over the beat-up MacBook it once was, but it's not exactly the modern MacBook killer, like you're not going to replace a new retina quad nuclei with one of these. Yes, it has a ton of storage and you would have to. I spend a lot of money to get two terabytes on a newer MacBook, but it's 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 up to?

Come on, come on, hurry up, we don't have all day, oh that's it, so it's not exactly a pro laptop anymore considering it's expired. Quite notably for a dual core i3 and a MacBook Air 20/20 and let's be honest with the cost of all these upgrades, it might actually cost a little more than a MacBook Air 20/20. I never said this was a practical project. but the most important takeaway here is don't give up your old, slightly broken unibody MacBook Pros; You can still bring these things to life, whether you buy one and upgrade it or you upgrade one you already have lying around and want to have a secondary computer, this is a great starting point, a lot of people throw away these unibody x' because the drives Hard drives die, they become very slow, they think the computer is useless, but all you have to do is upgrade the RAM. the storage maybe repairs any broken components and you have a really nifty little laptop.

Now this one in particular, this 2012, it still runs Catallena, it's still supported, it probably won't get Mac OS 10.16, that's probably unlikely, but it runs Katalina a lot of these. unibody x' can be upgraded to Catalina with patches and they don't have dedicated graphics so it's pretty easy to do; You don't really have to deal with some of the issues that older Macs with dedicated graphics will have and you can even use things like the 2009 2008 unibody x' and you can still use them in 2020, so don't lose hope on your old technology. It's truly amazing how long laptops and desktops last these days.

Could you imagine eight years ago when this was a new computer using a 2004 PowerPC Mac, even then that was a bit of a stretch, but for basic use this thing is absolutely crushing, so that'll do it for this video. I hope you enjoyed this kind of rags to riches story. Decrepit MacBook gets a new life if you found this video enjoyable or helpful, be sure to leave a like and comment below. Also let me know what you think I should name this computer. I want to canonize this in Luca me. at île more or less i want to think of a fun name for him, leave any name suggestions in the comments below or feel free to follow me on twitter at lucca, me at e and tweet the map mate and of course don't forget to check it out.

Check out my subreddit linked in the description below and I'll see you all in the next video.