Building the Ultimate 17-inch MacBook Pro

[@peanutbutterchinaman8678]

This is the best thing I’ve ever seen, long live the 17inch

[@lowrivera]

Exactly. I finally gave mine up because I couldn’t do much. I’m on a 15” MBP 2017 now but I think it’s time for the M1 Pro for me.

[@toweliethetowel8280]

@@lowrivera It's time to not even be able to switch the freaking internal ssd? I'll avoid Apple machines as long as this is the case.

[@lowrivera]

@@toweliethetowel8280 most laptops are like this regardless of manufacturer now. By that logic you should say that you avoiding them all.

[@oggilein1]

@lowrivera i dont know where you got that notion from, but literally no laptop appart from the cheapest of the cheap chromebooks and macbooks have soldered on storage, its ridiculous to just accept this as the norm when there is zero benifit to the user

[@cleengreeny]

The amount of work that you’re putting into a 2011 machine is absurd, and I love it!

[@alexandrucondac9778]

I was thinking this too, a bit too much work and I can't stop looking. so many brilliant minds making solutions to any problem. I'm in aw sometimes.

[@protocetid]

If Apple actually cared about the environment and self repair they’d make their products as serviceable as business laptops, instead they lobby against right to repair. The waste management hierarchy “reduce, reuse, recycle” is ordered from most green to least.

[@willkill1713]

​​@@protocetid apple doesn't care at all to the environment. To them it's just a fancy word that goes nicely in the advertisements. Can you imagine if components wasn't soldered? If they had sockets? How easy life would be... And I bet, most people still would just buy a new computer even if it was possible to upgrade... So the desire to make completely impossible to upgrade just show how greedy they are.

[@protocetid]

@@willkill1713 They wouldn’t be a trillion dollar (yes really) business if they weren’t greedy, in the tech world I think Apple fanboys (and even fans) have the most trouble admitting their favorite faceless megacorp isn’t as good natured as their PR and marketing departments make them seem. No super rich firm has the amiable personality they try to convince us they do. Try to call out Apple for greenwashing and watch the three Rs just bounce right off fans’ heads. Apple fans get a lot of (usually deserved) flak for championing the brand, and I usually don’t bother arguing cus it must be tiresome for them (and it’s not like they’ll change their mind). But I’m looking at these videos and asking myself “what’s the point?” Will give credit for reducing plus reusing instead of buying something new and the ingenuity and skill required to keep unrepairable hardware alive. Is it cheap access to macOS for integration with other Apple products and/or for the exclusive media creation apps? Are they worth using 12 year old laptop? Cus if they want longevity Apple isn’t the way to go, sure the software support and build quality means their stuff lasts kind of long. But you can’t easily service any of their products if you need to, and AFAIK anything outside of their support window gets deprecated really fast.

[@HNedel]

@@protocetidif the users actually cared about upgrades and sustainability, they would be buying enterprise laptops instead of macbooks or any other disposable junk like the surface or razer blade or whatever thin and light with everything soldered is popular these days. But they are not.

[@iBoffRCC]

Great video! Its good to see our Kit works on 17" inch too! Actually we never tested the X-GPU on 17" before(we only tested NVMe). So I guess you're the first one! ;) 1. For the short NVMe cable: I never thought you would actually perform this mod to 17" so I sent the whole Kit for 15". Its okay, i will send you a longer cable for 17" 2. For R9 - RX580 bug - did you tried to boot High Sierra?

[@ewaste9658]

Epic Product! Unreal! Congrats to your team

[@dosdude1]

Yeah, it's no problem at all. I should've specified I was planning to use it on a 17". The R9 bug is just due to Sierra (I believe the RX580 came out a bit later, but is based on the same R9 XXX chipset as other cards of the series), it will detect properly as an RX580 in newer Mac OS versions.

[@ChapitZulkefli]

the kit that you made for my 15" still works well. glad we already reached this far.

[@mndlessdrwer]

Just wanted to hop down here since you might not see my other comment otherwise: those cables you made are absolutely gorgeous in the best late-90's computer engineering way. You've done some seriously amazing work to make that product.

[@amdintelxsniperx]

hey im wondering if you can break out mxm from the defective amd . using the same idea as this ? im curious

[@julian.morgan]

Writing this on late 2011 15" MBP running Big Sur thanks to you and the OCLP team. Sadly though I'd love to play with this kind of ultimate tinkering I don't have the tools, the skills, the knowledge or the patience. I'm embarrassed I thought I was pretty cool after swapping out the superdrive for an SSD caddy. Even so, incredible to watch - very inspiring :)

[@Sup3rSn1per]

Hey, we all start somewhere, don’t give up! Start with small soldering projects and work your way up.

[@mndlessdrwer]

Those cables are gorgeous and look exactly like something IBM would cook up during their R&D for third party product development to resolve a problem before they designed a more streamlined fix for it. Beautiful work, really.

[@dorinxtg]

Looking at around 9:00 - I see that the board has some screw holes and iBoff can print some cheap 3D plastic housing to hold the PCB at the exact aligning that is needed. Without it, anyone who is not a totally pro with this kind of work - will have lots of issues.

[@emmabentley7945]

This is the single most cool video I have ever seen. I owned one of these and had to sell it due to the 6650 failing on it . This is simply amazing

[@jttasb]

My 6650 failed again. Not going to resurrect. But I love this video!

[@To-mos]

Thinking about dropping an m.2 SATA into my old iPod Classic by using a PATA to SATA adapter. Love giving old tech access to new hardware, keep this up love all your builds!

[@huntermartin4334]

you are such a prodigy, thanks to you I am able to flash 2011 MacBook Pros with failing AMD GPUs, and have done many of them for customers of mine! I'm so looking forward to trying this out too, and I do have a 15 inch 2011 MacBook Pro (already flashed with your DeMux firmware too) - I've never done soldering like this, but I'm ready!

[@9.peanut]

I had no idea this existed before today! Fantastic!!!

[@kennethkrabat]

For about 45 minutes I thought I would revive my beloved 17 inch, its defect card having been disconnected via a ROM reprogramming. (Didn't do it myself, but waited while my military electronics specialist friend ran through the options back THEN in his spare time. Took a while, and it came back and worked for 18 months. Now it shows black artefacts in finder and mail windows, and blinks lines in Finder, when it needs to work a little bit. I really miss the screen real estate.) But I need to be able to travel with it. Too much external gear. Which does not prevent me from LOVING this project, crazy breakout boards and PC power supply and all!! 😀

[@thechannelwithnoname7921]

You should get one of those subtle design 802.11ac cards for unibody MacBooks! And upgrade that 17 inch beast to Monterey using the OCLP! Would love to see a video based on that!

[@aliabdallah102]

You don’t need wifi for a machine that will spend its entire life plugged into an eGPU

[@draggonhedd]

I love the hardcore mods like this. I could never attempt it myself, i just dont have the skill or equipment. I love the dedication to a specific platform. Side note, Love the modified boot chime.

[@JacksonPhixesPhones]

Absolutely fantastic!! Once this is available I'm all over this!! Thanks for demoing and sharing this with us brother; I know a lot of us still have a soft spot for the 17", and now it's time to unleash her full potential! (again, AWESOME PRODUCT IDEA!!) Thanks again!

[@frhwebmaster]

Likewise

[@zaprodk]

Wow. Such an insane modification! - Soo many mods, just one bad solder joint and it would be a nightmare to debug i'm sure. Good job!

[@nikoss450]

Man is a living legend Respect from Greece 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏🇬🇷

[@IntoTheMindlessAbyss]

Thanks to you, I managed to get a few of those 2011 MBP computers working. The GPU disabling programs were like the icing on the cake. I never exactly had the chance to thank you in that regard so thank you either way. You're a god damn genius.

[@thesunsetchannel9938]

dosdude, I am amazed that you could do such complicated upgrade for the beloved 17' MacBook. I also have one late 2011 17" MacBook too. I do think this this the best MacBook that was ever designed. However, 95% of us don't have the ability to so such difficult mod as you just accomplished. I congratulate you success on this. Best.

[@numerounotg]

Wow you weren't kidding about building the ultimate Macbook Pro 😳 Amazing job 🔥

[@sirseriously]

This is awesome! I just got a mid2012 running raid0 to try to ink all the performance out of it but this looks to be a step further. Can't wait to do this myself!

[@techniqueswithtodd]

It's an antique :) I've still got my old macbook pros as well though. Maxed the ram and put in 1tb ssd.

[@jerrybomcool]

This is probably the best thing I’ve seen all year! Great job to you doing this mod and a huge thank you to the team that made this product in making such an amazing design what clearly works amazingly!

[@SiroccoSeven]

Great to see Iboff getting all the recognition. I upgraded my MacBook Air 2015 i7 maxed out to 16gb ram by Iboff. So far it’s been good.

[@astal5536]

I love this idea and I am definitely going to make an attempt to add one of these on my 2011 15", the Radeon hasn't failed yet but this will be an awesome thing to have. Great work as always! Your BGA soldering videos inspired me to do upgrades to my own BGA systems.

[@Josh.Davidson]

This is an amazingly cool mod. I'd love to try it myself if I ever get a spare 2011. Great job to the team who created this!

[@juzotv317]

Thanks to the white noise and your voice that seem whispering a goodnight story, your videos cured my insomnia

[@DavidSmith-ne1zp]

i was really excited when I first started watching this... then I saw what was involved in swapping the graphic chip for the new one. Beyond my abilities.

[@HarshanaMahathelge]

This channel is underrated. This guy is really talented. Great video

[@ferg6439]

After the install, I noticed the about this mac screen (on this video) shows “Metal” is SUPPORTED what other benefits does this mean for the OS and hardware options to expand or update?

[@6806goats1]

Awesome work. When I joined the Mac universe in 2017, the 17" was a laptop I wanted to buy. But the bad GPU in many units pushed me to a new 2015 15" MBP. This kit gives me the option to revisit buying a 17".

[@gotchou]

I like the little savings of used copper wicks on your pad

[@legado804]

you literally did magic with this device mate, i thought it was going to be an ssd and ram upgrade and maybe overclocking but this is just awesome

[@irepearto]

Really want to try this at some point. The 2012 GOAT can still LIVE...although I do have a 2015 QC R9 now...

[@thejpkotor]

Would be awesome to see a fully custom motherboard replacement PCB for this. What would be actually pretty awesome would be to retrofit a modern MacBook Pro into the enclosure and use the 17” display and as much IO as possible.

[@rve_hardware]

This is a great expansion and I can't wait to perform it to this machine I had in a cupboard for such a long time! Thanks @dosdude and @iboff!

[@202Electrics]

wow.. this is insane. i mean... I love my resurrected early 2011 17" I still use for like 3 years now on Catalina. but this.. this is a sic hack. I always had a thought something like this should be possible through that expresscard slot. But a PCIe 8x slot hacked from a GPU footprint is really next-next level. props to you and iBoff

[@ShirokoCycling]

I think it's likely 12x because there's 4 lanes for the NVMe drive, Colin says the dGPU slot is an 8x PCIe slot, so if I'm thinking right, there's probably 16 lanes going there. Unless that 8x is wired up 4x, then you would likely only have 8 lanes coming into the distribution board. Still a great possibility if a version of this board for SATA M.2 and 2 NVMe drives come out, because I need RAM and Storage for building Android, and I have time to wait for Android to build on an early Intel Core CPU.

[@ShirokoCycling]

Cannot edit: but when he shows the GPU interposer board, he says 8x lanes of PCI-e. So that would mean 2 4x NVMe drives, plus 1 SATA natively.

[@KuntalGhosh]

The pcie slot in that cd slot looks like it was made to be there from the factory! . Only if u can make a proper enclosure this can be a very useful mac.

[@1kreature]

I think you confuse decoupling capacitors for pcie ac coupling capacitors. Decoupling capacitors could never have been replaced by inductors to pass on signal to extended peripheral location.

[@TheMactrix]

Hey buddy, excellent video ... your skills are awesome.... and it was a pleasure to watch ;-) Keep up the good work.

[@arranmc182]

Should remove the thunderbolt port and get a 3D Printed blanker made that you can install inside the case to fill the hole

[@TechnologyNToys]

Dude I’m not smart enough to be here right now lmao

[@forbiddenera]

neat.. we just need a better internal gpu though! but still awesome considering that original idgpu was probably dead and a way to prevent underclocking when using the "wrong" or no battery might be nice but meh thats my issue (13" battery hacked into a 15" lol)..

[@frankjay6533]

maybe we should be sending you our old macs for upgrade...you are doing a great job out there and i love it...

[@skip741x3]

Off the charts insane work creating a "Frankenmac". wow bro!

[@floridahummer]

this is absolutely fantastic, still have my 17" and not selling it.

[@oatiko3065]

Great work! I love my 2011 17" and I wish it was still working.

[@thechannelwithnoname7921]

Would it be possible to replace the display panel in one of these old unibody MacBook Pros with an aftermarket panel that has a higher resolution but the same aspect ratio as the stock apple panel?

[@varmaTrini]

I use a Hackintosh on my LG UltraPC 17" and everything works well and absolutely no problems. The boot loader is OPEN CORE. I use an USB adapter/Stub for WIFI & a BT adapter to make those functions active. The AirDrop function is not active as expected. The built in NVIDIA graphics will not work. The battery life is not as best as it is when on the Windows 11 platform. The Hackintosh is awesome when implemented on the LG Gram PC & LG UltraPC.

[@RutwikGulakala]

Great video mate. I would love to make a thunderbolt 2 to thunderbolt 3 connector for my 2015 MBP. Maybe if its in your list of videos to do, I would be very glad to learn from you.

[@maikkaune]

OMG!!! Is there any chance to get a kit like this (especially the eGPU solution) for the 27" iMac 2011? I am dreaming of an INTERNAL solution. IMHO, the case might have enough space and technical possibilities. Doesn't have to be a huge graphics card monster like in the video. Maybe a PCIe card in the smallest form factor. Not to mention full compatibility and driver support for newer OSX versions.

[@dosdude1]

The iMac already has an MXM slot, so you can simply upgrade the GPU to many more modern MXM GPUs. In theory an adapter could be made to connect a standard PCIe card, but there's not enough room in the iMac to put in a PCIe GPU of any kind.

[@tubularmonkeymaniac]

Lots of MXM to PCIE adapters on AliExpress for your situation. They're not that cheap, but they're essentially plug and play, so probably worth it.

[@W1ldTangent]

It amazes me that people are still working on hacks for an 11-year old line of computers. Truly epic work. If I ever get my hands on a 2011 17", I plan to throw everything you and others have come up with at it if I can.

[@spicyandoriginal280]

The form factor to replace the optical drive in an iMac and convert the MXM to Pcie would be amazing. The existing mxm to pcie adapters would be so janky in comparison.

[@adziak]

Some knowledge and skills needed but definitely worth it. Really cool project. I would love to see full motherboard swap to achieve even more peformance from such an upgrade like m1 17 inch macbook pro or even pc laptop motherboard swap in this enclosure.

[@sssloe]

I've been on my own project of just adding usb-c on my '11 15", but damn, the iboff crew outdid all of the things I had on my mind. Props for them, also, meticulous work as always! Btw, I dislike 0201 as well, always have them disperse with the nozzle

[@alexandratin1602]

This is so satisfying. It hits differently..

[@TighelanderII]

This reminds me of a an upgrade for the Powerbook 180. It added RAM and a monitor port. I did this upgrade around 1999.

[@dosdude1]

I have a PowerBook 170 with that exact upgrade. I even have a (very old) video showing it on this channel.

[@TighelanderII]

@@dosdude1 That must have made users Powerbook Jedi when that came out.

[@TradieTrev]

You such a cool dos dude! I've got one of these old bad boys and would love to see it live again!

[@MightyRob1]

There are people who brag about "building" their own PC.... And then there is THIS.

[@hansmroch3214]

An interesting occurrence on my MacBook Pro 2012. I tried to use your patch software to install Catalina on my 2012 17" MacBook Pro which was limited to High Sierra. It didn’t install and just kind of bawked by stalling out. Adobe Suite and Office365 would say they couldnt be used in High Sierra. But interestingly enough when I went to Adobe Suite and Office365 after trying to install a newer Mac OSX it now lets me use them on my 2012 machine! It wouldn’t let me use them before - a victory. It was a major PIA before.

[@ZEMRALEX]

Wow, thats cool, i had a question, if gpu uses pci lines, can you use then with adaptor to normal miniPCIe, never thougt that its real

[@yeknommonkey]

Got one on the shelf but it's going to remain ewaste by the look of the complexity of this adaptation! Dosdude is a legend.

[@Jack-qj2pr]

I don't understand why they decided to use SATA for the PCI-E power. PCI-E slots are meant to handle up to 75W of power, whereas SATA isn't designed for that sort of current and can cause the connector to melt under extended workloads. IMO I would've used molex or PCI-E aux connector as at least they can handle more and they're less fragile.

[@CB-kt7qd]

Is there any solution to make MacBooks work at normal speed when battery is not connected?

[@Retroman8077]

Id love to see better close ups. U need another dslr ill send one your way with the boom tripod and i got almost any size macro or zoom lenses....my contribution if u want em

[@tronixfix]

Watching this on 17" MacBook Pro... mid 2010 model with 2.66Ghz i7 and the GT330M, 8GB Ram and 512GB SSD. Got a new original battery and replaced the speakers with 2018 model MacBook Air 13" speakers. The original speakers like to blow and will scratch and the graphics card of the 2011 model likes to die. That's why this is my ultimate 17" Macbook Pro.

[@ohyou_6599]

damn hot air makes 0201 decoupling caps look easy. I did four by hand for a eDP connector to enable 4 lane, and it was terrible and took forever.

[@Handskemager]

And I thought 1206 smds were small, hand soldering 0201 is impressive

[@carbongrip2108]

Wow, awesome job. You just made yourself a new prototype machine like your in the lab at Apple.

[@thenerdling1]

I'd love to see this paired with one of your CPU and ram upgrades

[@FR4M3Sharma]

I wonder if those VRam chips would still be usable if used on/for a different machine.

[@screensavers7942]

Amazing. Wish I had the microsoldering skills to do this on my early 2011 17".

[@jhdmusic8d82]

I love watching this modes specially the installation

[@carvman217]

You are so talented and this upgrade is so fantastic, great work! (could you maybe dust the logic board off tho?)

[@thebeeamberheardsdogsteppe6368]

Your Skills are OG. Perfect soldering chips without making marks on the logicboard

[@RetroRepair]

That's nuts, the nvme looks hella useful, at the expense of an external monitor, but the gfx card looks.. not super portable lol. I'd probably just grab their nvme kit I think

[@zacharyschwanke7160]

would itt be possible to add a 6 core cpu to this mac? maybe someone whos crazy enough can desinge a core chip for this mac book pro?

[@felixVanDiemen]

Far out! Mindblowing stuff, nice one Mr Dosdude1 😁 Wow!!!

[@werehyenataur]

thunderbolt gpus dont work?

[@tekxoid]

This is a far more useful purpose of the SuperDrive space than the SuperDrive ever was. Brilliant.

[@alynicholls3230]

if i could get one of these for a t410 thinkpad i would buy one in a heartbeat, really cool.

[@ahsanhaque6089]

Man! I love your videos. Learn so much. Keep up the good work. 5 stars

[@joshuamaxwell3638]

One of my favourite mac videos!

[@Fakeman]

wouldnt it make sense for an MXM module instead of the pcie slot? probably issues with cooling and clearance but still a cool mod

[@ibmpc]

Hey, quick question, do MacBook Airs get slower without a battery installed? I’ve got a 2011 11” air that can’t even watch KZbin.

[@dosdude1]

Absolutely, you need a good working battery installed for it to run properly.

[@peterwhite9546]

Now I wonder if you could do something like the xg mobile connector, or something like that so you don't need the power supply as well, since that has the power supply built into it. Or just a way to take the xg mobile and modify the connection to work with this.

[@felixVanDiemen]

I would love to see this done on a 2011 27" iMac

[@cgi2173]

YES!! I have one of these. 😃

[@manuelelliotortizsepulveda1657]

Howdy sir, ¿To have a better coolest option/solution, the peltier pad instead of fan to fix the heat in cpu?

[@Brucel86]

@dosdude1 I really enjoyed this video, but I would recommend you get an iphone 13/14 just for those macro shots. One the 14 you can get close as 1mm and it's crystal clear

[@amdintelxsniperx]

thee might be a way to add a mxm break out from the pcie lane and provided you can cool the gpu it can run it .

[@marcviej.5635]

lining up the breakout pcb looks so sketchy, its like guessing where it should be and pray for the best, there should be some markings so you can be sure it's aligned correctly, awesome product tho

[@dosdude1]

These boards don't have silkscreen markings unfortunately, but you can mark the board with like an exacto knife or something before removing the original chip... I just don't like to do that.

[@marcviej.5635]

@@dosdude1 thanks for replying, very cool product tho, impossible for me to do, but I'd buy one premade though. btw thanks so much for your patchers dude you're a legend, you made my old macbooks useable again!

[@markconger8049]

Seems like a ton of work for a computer that is not going to work with macOS much longer due to Apple Silicon. Or am I wrong? We do have two 2011 17” MBP that have had the demux performed on them. It would be nice to have this mod if the machines are going to be able to run macOS indefinitely. I’ve been planning to retire them and get M1 or M2 machines.

[@LaczPro]

Insane! I don't think I can do that myself, but boy, if I knew how these parts are incredible for making a really crazy MacBook Pro

[@Moonrakerd]

wait wasnt there an express card with pcie ?

[@markdjdeenix6846]

Unbelievable ! what a amazing way to upgrade a 17” and get more gpu and less hardrive latency

[@idgamingfederation202]

you said all I need to know. I've got a late 2011 Unibody 15" that I swapped out the logic board with that of a mid 2012 (faulty GPU on the late 2011 and all) so looks like I'll be Frankensteining this baby even more. ^_^ bless you.

[@martinkucera3124]

Great video. I have a Macbook Pro Mid 2010, which I upgraded to 8 GB RAM a few years ago thanks to a similar video. I would like to ask you if there is a way to further upgrade the RAM and possibly other related components so that we can still use this ancient Mac? It's such a typewriter now...

[@CB-od5dy]

Watching on a Nvidia K610M powered 2011 iMac running Monterey ;) These 2nd gen chips are worth the fight, even now!

[@pk3776]

Anything for a 17” MBP 2010

[@Yhapetsz]

I guess you can fix and upgrade everything maan.. Nice work impressive skills Subscribed!!

[@net30hosting]

Was really hoping to see you put in a 2012 15” logic board.

[@dosdude1]

Why would I? The board doesn’t even come close to fitting properly in the 17” chassis, ports won’t line up, etc... Instead I upgraded an actual 17” board with Ivy Bridge hardware, effectively making it a “2012”, which I have another video about.

[@tjmbv8680]

Damn I need to get one of those kits, what a great idea and implementation.