$50 Mid 2010 Macbook

[Jon183]

Found a very unspecific listing on gumtree for a late 2009 macbook with no photo, I decided to go for it, after the seller said it was 2.4ghz, 2gb ram and white, I believed the only possible macbook it could be was a mid 2010. I was right and all my parts to fix its battery and trackpad were from a late 2009, but they were compatible. It now runs sierra and is pretty fast. It has a 256mb geforce 320m. Doesnt look the nicest but is quite ok, especially for $50, thats $37.90 USD and it came with a dodgy looking but working charger. My plans are to glue the cracks, get a new trackpad that works 100% and upgrade the ram.

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

I'm guessing it's got the usual cracks on the top lid near the hinges? 

They're nice machines - I ran one as my daily for several months, and it's still around as my media management Mac.

 

[olePigeon]

They usually crack along the hinges, but seems to not affect it.  Slap an SSD on there and you're good to go.

 

[Jon183]

I don't see any cracks near the hinges, only near the area of the old swollen battery. Also I would like to install an SSD in it not too far from now. 8GB RAM too.

Im very surprised at its photoshop performance, does a good job. 

 

[Byrd]

That's a good buy - one of the nicer looking Apple portables made I reckon.  The Geforce 320M is also good enough for running Kodi/Plex to make for a handy video streamer that'll play back anything you throw at it.

 

[Jon183]

It also supports windows 7 64 bit and apparently can run windows 10 unofficially (to apple anyway) through some sort of upgrade method. 

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

It'll actually handle up to 16GB of RAM, but the chipset is picky - at least one of the pair has to be DDR3-1066, and it has to be installed in Slot 0. The older white MacBooks were similarly picky with their DDR2 speeds.

 

[olePigeon]

Samsung 750 EVO works well if you're looking for an SSD.

 

[Daniël]

Samsung 750 EVO works well if you're looking for an SSD.

Right now you're better off with the 850 EVO. Slightly higher generation and specification, and at most places it's the same price for an 850 as it is for an 750. Heck, last I checked the 750's on the rise more than the 850 is, probably due to dwindling stock.

 

[Jon183]

Got rid of it to fund my whopping car repair bill, don't even know how much it is yet, but I know its going to be pretty big.

 

[olePigeon]

Last time I used an 850, the SATA controller wouldn't run at full speed.  The 750 did, though.  Maybe they've since fixed that.

 

[Cory5412]

This is a bit moot now, but this machine only supports 3 gigabit SATA. Was there an issue with some SSDs dropping down to 1.5 gigabit SATA? If so, it probably still felt faster than the original spinning hard disk anyway, but depending on what you're doing (multimedia work, mainly, but also swap with low RAM situations) that additional performance is important.

The 850 isn't newer than the 750, the difference between them (they are both of the same "generation") is that the 750 is a lower ("budget") grade drive.

960 is the higher grade (PCIe NVME) drive, and is a generation newer than both the 850 and the 750.

They're all good SSDs, if the price is the same, I'd probably pick an 850 over a 750, but the benefits of an 850 over a 750 will almost certainly not show unless you have a more modern computer with a faster 6-gigabit SATA connection.

Ultimately, what I do with older machines I want SSDs for is go to my local office supply chain or big box electronics retailer and pick up whatever reasonable capacity I can find that's cheapest. I don't think (on a system this old) you'd notice the difference between any of these Samsung drives and a less expensive one from WD/Sandisk. I'm using a Sandisk 240 gig disk in my Mac mini (which has 6-gigabit SATA) and it's fine.

 

[EvieSigma]

Yeah, my 2010 MacBook has a 240 gig SanDisk SSD as well. Runs great.

 

[Daniël]

They're all good SSDs, if the price is the same, I'd probably pick an 850 over a 750, but the benefits of an 850 over a 750 will almost certainly not show unless you have a more modern computer with a faster 6-gigabit SATA connection.

Just checked, the average price of a 250GB 750 EVO is $200. The average price of a 250GB 850 EVO is $90. I think it's safe to say that buying a 750 over an 850 now is a waste of money.

 

[olePigeon]

The issue I ran into with the 850 is that it'd run at 1/2 the port speed.  I don't know why.  750 worked fine.  The easiest solution would be to not buy a Samsung.