- A Reddit user manually upgraded their MacBook’s stock chips
- The process involved soldering, 12 hours and ‘some nerves’
- The move saved them $2,200 after Apple recently raised its prices
How much is too much to pay for portable storage? After Apple’s shocking price hikes, things may feel so bad that you’re tempted to roll up your sleeves and do an emergency upgrade job on your MacBook. That’s exactly what one Apple fan did — and they saved themselves a cool $2,200 in the process.
Posting on Reddit, user arduinoRPi4 explained how they took their MacBook Pro with 2TB of storage and boosted it all the way to 8TB, quadrupling their available storage with a serious improvement that means they can “store anything I want.” They spent “about $800” on parts, saving them $2,200 (about £1,650 / AU$3,170) compared to the exorbitant $3,000 (about £2,240 / AU$4,320) it would have cost to pay Apple for a similar upgrade.
It’s Apple, of course, and it’s far from straightforward to open up a MacBook Pro and increase its storage yourself. The post revealed that it took them 12 hours “and some nerve” to make the change – and no wonder, since it requires removing the existing storage modules from the MacBook Pro’s motherboard and soldering alternative chips in their place.
In addition to that, the poster indicated that they needed to “fill in the power components on the other side as well” to complete the upgrade. “It really was hell,” they admitted, adding that these parts “are Small Packages.”
All the work was done while on vacation in Shenzhen, China, where they “borrowed a lab from a friend who does component-level repair.” They used a hot air station and microscope soldering and stencils to do the job, which involved soldering power management integrated circuits into place, followed by 4TB of NAND storage chips on each side of the laptop for a total of 8TB.
‘Looks like excellent work’
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If you have the will, patience and skill for a portable surgery location like this, the savings can be huge. A 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M5 Max chip and 2TB of storage will set you back $4,099 / £4,099 / AU$6,399 at Apple’s inflated prices. Switch the storage to 8TB and that tweak will add a hefty $3,000 to your bill, bringing the total up to an eye-watering $7,099 / £7,099 / AU$10,899.
The difference is even greater when you apply this change to Apple’s entry-level MacBook Pro. A 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M5 chip and 2TB of storage currently costs $2,499 / £2,499 / AU$3,949. Add 8 TB of storage and the total jumps to a whopping $4,600. This is partly due to the expensive storage addition and partly because it requires changing the M5 chip to an M5 Max, which is the only chip that can be configured with 8TB of storage space.
A $3,000 upgrade is well out of reach for most MacBook buyers (much less a $4,600 one), so perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that an enterprising user with plenty of experience and a little time on their hands felt motivated to manually upgrade their storage.
Most posters in the thread were very impressed with their work, with comments like “very impressive, I could never do that” being typical. One user was particularly effusive in their praise, saying “This kind of work blows my mind.”
That said, other users weren’t happy that a task like this is even necessary. “Crazy that you have to go to this level of change just to upgrade your stock,” said one, indicating that Apple’s increased stock prices aren’t exactly the most popular move it’s ever made.
But with the artificial intelligence (AI) goldrush pushing up component prices worldwide and Apple unwilling to compromise its famously high margins, increased costs are here to stay, at least for now. And even if that’s still the case, there will likely be many more willing to take on the considerable task of upgrading their laptop’s stock with a few off-the-shelf components and a soldering iron handy.
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