Building a "Mid-2012" 17-inch MacBook Pro

[@FransvandenBergeMuziekschuur]

My dad has taught soldering to students for 30 years. I sent this movie to him. He will be blown away. He has never seen this I am sure.

[@Psychx_]

One dosn't just casually port CoreBoot. Absolute mad lad. Great job!

[@thorsteinj]

I was so ready for a “sorry guys, this didn’t work” but then you pulled the OpenCore magic out of the hat. Amazing work. Wonder if anyone from Apple watches these videos. Surely they had 2012 17’’ prototypes before they axed them.

[@FixTechStuff]

This is probably the coolest hackintosh ever.

[@HB-Productions]

If only Apple had made an official 17" 2012 MBP! I was an owner of a 15' MBP back in the day and wanted the bigger screen for video editing! You're doing amazing work Colin.

[@megatronskneecap]

Pretty sure this guy could build his own line of machines at this point and people would love em.

[@JacksonPhixesPhones]

LOVE IT!! I still love Ivy Bridge builds (22nm PERFECTION!), and with Sandy Bridge & Ivy Bridge being electrically compatible, I'm really excited you decided to do this specific mod & upgrade!! I MAY give this a shot this weekend; I have everything except for an 3rd gen mobile i7 CPU, but I should be able to pull one from the pile of dead and/or abandoned Windows laptops in my shop. I'll definitely put it up on my channel and post a link here if I'm successful . . or even if I'm unsuccessful! Even if you break everything and/or fail miserably, you still end up learning something! Awesome stuff as usual brother! Thank you for all that you do for the community!

[@dosdude1]

Cool, I'll add a link to my Coreboot port and OpenCore configs in the video description once I work out all the ACPI bugs. So you can use that if you do perform the upgrade.

[@rve_hardware]

hello @@dosdude1! As always, congrats on your amazing work! Any chance of getting the Coreboot port at all? Also wondering if this upgrade would be compatible with the iBoff X-GPU one that you performed on another (820-2914) A1297 MBP?

[@galen__]

Getting Coreboot to work with this board is very impressive and must have taken considerable time to learn 😅

[@jaysondilao2129]

"There's no harm in trying"! You are absolutely correct Collin! You are a legend, your videos are awesome and very informative, can't wait for your next project! 😎

[@gotsn0w]

This is super cool! I've been using my 17" for years-up until a (I suspect) capacitor blew, causing it to sit on a shelf. Huge fan of the unibody 17" and its great 16:10 display

[@Madhawa333]

I used to change the lvsd cable to use 17inch 2011 mbp display with 2012 macbook 15 inch logic board. You choose the hard way as always dude 👍 ❤️

[@dosdude1]

Except the 15" board fits horribly inside the 17" case LOL. This upgrade using the original board is much better.

[@Madhawa333]

@@dosdude1 of course, no doubt about that. Moreover you can swap the 17inch display along with 2012 case. Keep continuing your good works, im sure you will able to find something helpful to the world like 2011 mpb gpu mess solution.

[@Buzzhumma]

I want to put my 2012 13 inch board into a 17 inch . How do I connect the 17 display to 13 inch connection . Is it possible like an adaptor or something ?

[@Madhawa333]

@@Buzzhumma unfortunately, 13 inch flex cable not compatible with 17inch. Only works with 15 inch flex. However, dosdude might be able to find a rabbit hole to resolve your problem.

[@Buzzhumma]

@@Madhawa333 that would be the most fantastic thing if that happened as swapping out the boards is pretty easy . Just make some plastic mounting holes and problem solved !

[@ebisuminoru]

You could now build the fastest Ivy Bridge 17in MBP by using a 3840QM from the Early 2013 15” LB. Now that’s perfection

[@dosdude1]

Yeah, I’ll have to find one of those to upgrade my “ultimate” 17” MBP, that has NVMe and PCIe port in the optical drive slot.

[@ebisuminoru]

@@dosdude1 You’re doing gods work

[@oggilein1]

if you somehow upgraded the cooling ie added more heatpipes and faster/more efficient fans, an i7-3920XM i7-3940XM would also be possible

[@alfredbadasu7644]

No matter the final outcome, i always learn something from your videos.

[@bradnelson3595]

The way those chips come off smokin' hot . . . wow. Very interesting video you made of this complex process.

[@GeekmanCA]

This is already so amazing (building the 17" mid-2012 that never was), but I have to ask: do you think you'll customize your final CoreBoot port to show the Apple logo and play the startup chime? 😁

[@dosdude1]

I'll probably try that eventually.

[@samuelolesen3519]

​@@dosdude1 If you finish please do consider posting a write-up about it. As far as I know this is one of the first Mac ports ever, hopefully others will do more in the future. Awesome job!

[@kevinwicks007]

Always a pleasue to view your upgrades, i have upgraded several macbooks to catalina and then upward from that With your instructions for my friends……Excellent Work….. 10/10….

[@andrupka8749]

@@dosdude1 Would it be possible to port Coreboot to the 1,1 and 2,1 Mac Pros to get them to run Harpertown CPUs?

[@JSnakeRepair]

You know what comes next right? Putting an i7 3820QM (or maybe even a 3840QM from a windows donor) on your previously 'ultimate' 2011 17" MBP with X-GPU + Nevbolt. Then we've likely hit the absolute ceiling with upgradeability in regards to compute power (without cramming a new motherboard inside)...but in theory 32GB of RAM across 4 dimms is possible on Ivy Bridge...but surely there wouldn't be any space for that in the chassis (without removing the battery...which at that point we've truly killed the purpose of the macBOOK). On the grounds of non-compute power though, no one has really explored screen/webcam/speaker/microphone upgrades. Maybe not your cup of tea (but there are only so many things left to improve!). Also, have you seen the 'solder paste' they use for reballing? You may find it a tad less tedious then the classic solder balls you are used to. Excellent work as always!

[@blackmoonco]

I’m just grateful I am alive with technology like this around. Just in time to see its birth and how far we’ve come in only a handful of years. You’re videos will inspire a new generation of makers and Techy kids. Excellent!

[@jozsefizsak]

My thoughts exactly. I love having this stuff that seemed quite literally impossible when I was a young man.

[@steveforbes6303]

The 666mhz report is an Ivy Bridge thing, it is dual channel, your actual memory MHZ is 1333. or 2x 666.5

[@M.Kemal_Alam]

You're really genius Macs and Apple's enthusiast Sir.

[@haydn-db8z]

I used his Catalina Patcher on a mid-2009 MBP, so I knew he was a baller. I just didn't know he was a *reballer*. This guy's a John Wick with solder wick.

[@bobfromsoireegames4309]

You are a very cool dude for all the work you do for the Mac community. Thank you, sir.

[@Djfmdotcom]

This is sooooo cool! I've replaced fans/hard drives/DVD drives on my older macs but never anything like this!

[@pcdoodle1]

Thanks for doing what you do. I'm still running a 2011 w/matte screen for daily use running 10.14 thanks to your hard work.

[@Alobster1]

Intake holes for the fans in the bottom case help these run way cooler and quieter.

[@giljesusseraspe9225]

I am not even a technician and your work really inspires me to do something with my imacs and mbps. Great video as always. just subscribed. Take care.

[@Askar_Birmuhammedov]

Your English pronunciation is very clear and smooth!

[@andre-le-bone-aparte]

DosDude is the EWASTE KING! 👑

[@ΓιανναραςΚαπα]

Great work! Just a note, an ivy bridge PCH isnt required. Many H61 P67 Z68 motherboards support ivy bridge after a bios update. I was able to patch in ivy bridge support in an H61 board that dodnt officially support ivy bridge via bios mod

[@dosdude1]

Yeah, H61 supports Ivy Bridge, but the HM65 that these come with does NOT support Ivy Bridge “QM” CPUs. So PCH swap was necessary in this case.

[@chu-icehugehard1820]

@@dosdude1 I think theoretically HM65 can support them. I own a HM65 industrial ITX mainboard with PGA socket, and it supports every Socket G2 CPU.

[@tobyglyn]

Amazing work and your passion for it is inspirational as usual Colin

[@connorknight7202]

Awesome work! I am beyond impressed of your skills!

[@matt2m]

Would love to see an update with the power management working.

[@matthewtymaja3760]

This is amazing; the HD4000 is a huge bonus for Metal compatibility; it could be tempting to convert the USB ports to 3.0 (a seemingly impossible task, but I can imagine you would be able to do it successfully, if there are points to solder the required jump wires 😅). The fact you can swap the PCH and CPU over show that Apple really could have made a mid-2012 MBP 17” (they ran the 2012 Unibody and Retina in parallel for 2012 anyway). It is a shame the 650M GT can’t be used, but the HD4000 makes up for most of that. The 650M GT is a weird chip; Apple seemed to use a ‘lower spec’ chip compared to the rest of the 6xxM chips, but it is a part with higher thermal tolerance, which makes sense (100 degrees C).

[@davewhite7182]

Amazing job. Why do it - because you can! I couldn’t but really enjoyed your video. I admire your skill and thank you for your old OSX patchers that I still use on my Mac Pro 2008.

[@warrenmcclure7819]

Wow, this is nothing less than impressive. Apple should have you work for them. Thanks for the video!

[@JellyLancelot]

The level of effort in this is awesome, love it!

[@andrasszabo7386]

Nice video, Colin :) I have managed to put a Core 2 Extreme Quad CPU into a Macbook Pro A1260 I have replaced earlier with a 15 inch 2010 MBP and I did not need the old one. Needless to say, it only ran for a month or so, since I could not upgrade the heatsink due to limited technical skills and VERY limited space inside the MBP.

[@rve_hardware]

did the machine work with the quad core CPU without any EFI modifications? I am interested in doing such an experiment too

[@andrasszabo7386]

@@rve_hardware it is extremely hard to find a QX9300 laptop CPU with BGA connection. PGA479 is the most common. But since it is the same form factor and same FSB, it did recognize the CPU, just like my 2007 iMac, after the CPU upgrade.

[@rve_hardware]

thanks@@andrasszabo7386 for the info, I'll do some more research but the qx9300 has 45W TDP and the stock 2core CPUs only 25W so I don't see how this swap could have worked. Any clues how?

[@djtribo8925]

As always, excellent work! Regardless of the work around of the OS, you continuously proof that these machines can be upgraded! Love your work dude!

[@shesoyam]

AWESOME! You'd make an in depth video on the process for the software?

[@sonigoku]

Apple must use this Laptop 17 Body as M3 Max instead of the current cases

[@ketlo1234]

You're a madman, this is dope!

[@GuillermoPaulman]

This is amazing. Typing this comment on my 2011 17-inch, I'd really love to have the perks of a 2012 machine. I already updated the Bluetooth card to allow hand-off, but the metal GPU would be even better.

[@vincentv646]

Very nice. I wonder if it would have been easter to replace to 2011 board with the 2012 and mill out the I/O on the side. Maybe 3d print a custom plate for the I/O too. You could maybe upgrade the cpu on the 2012 board if it's the same footprint as something more modern.

[@SunflowerFlowerEmpire]

Super incredible, this is what I'm talking about. Why don't these computer mega companies do this, swap out the internals for every upgrade??????? Save the planet BS they are, manufacturing new parts every update with the same chassis!!! Good on you amazing !

[@4Denwa]

Awesome work!! Hoping that you will also bring a coreboot port to the 2011 iMacs as well, which would be a lot less work which doesn't involve swapping a BGA CPU :)

[@Ground15]

what are the chances at fitting an MXM GPU into into the drive bay with a setup similar to the m.2 SSD you showed a while ago?

[@Andreas_Gludsted]

This would be really awesome!

[@SilentShadow-ss5xp]

The only real hackintosh.

[@danandrei96]

amazing work, I will never get tired of these crazy experiments! I do wonder, since you ended up porting coreboot anyway, if the PCH upgrade was necessary? I know on **20 thinkpads the community was able to enable ivy bridge support using the sandy bridge chipset, so I would assume the same could be done with macbooks, making this process only half as much work

[@dosdude1]

It was, as the original HM65 cannot work with Ivy Bridge CPUs.

[@danandrei96]

@@dosdude1 hmm I think the hardware is capable, but most laptop manufacturers didn't release bios updates with the needed microcode etc. People were able to coreboot ivy bridge CPUs on the thinkpad T420 with QM67 chipset, and all the sources I can find (which I admit aren't many) suggest that the HM65 and QM67 should both equally support Ivy Bridge CPUs. If you're sure the HM65 can't work with Ivy Bridge I'll believe you, I know you have a crazy amount of knowledge when it comes to this stuff and have most likely done more research than I have, but I was under the impression that it can work under coreboot with the right changes

[@thorsteinj]

I guess the idea was to have it boot natively and for that I think there would be no way around the PCH swap.

[@iXmerof]

Hi, congratulations on stamina with this project. Could you please have some more for us to show us the changes and way how you work with uboot? I am super cutios to see the practical use case on this. Thanks!

[@VIsTheMusic]

Thank you !!!!!!!!! You're brilliant genius !!!!!

[@CodeProfessor]

As always dosdude1, this was worth the effort! Keep it up! 🎉

[@micflynn1]

I got a tip for you they make silver sharpies with find tips on them you can once you remove the glue off of the chip you can take the fine tip silver sharpie and mark the edges of the chip before you desorder from the board that will help you realign the chip when you sorder it back on.

[@Levent_Ergun]

Nice punctuation.

[@prodbydanai]

Good idea!

[@FransvandenBergeMuziekschuur]

Incredible accomplishment.

[@DavidOlivarez08]

omg ive been asking this for years ! my 17 inch macbook pro is still hoping to see this upgrade one day she is used eveery day for youtube lol

[@jraulc]

Next level of hackintosh for mac...

[@luizpaulopozatto9037]

Congratz man, excelent video. This is the kind of thing that i love to do.....awesome.

[@Epiceditz735]

ngl this man should start doing this for money or give people the files to it

[@giacomofontanive4977]

Hello, I have a 2015 MBP running El Capitan, and I need some help installing a newer macOS on an external SSD drive, like Big Sur or Catalina. I found online a .pkg installation file of Big Sur, but I don't know how to install it on the SSD. I have also some questions: 1)Do I need to create a bootable USB with the version of macOS for the installation on the SSD? How can I do it? 2)I suspect that the original system cannot read and write files that are in the external drive, due to the new file system APFS, but I hope that Big Sur can read and write in the internal SSD of the mac. 3)Then if El Capitan cannot see the APFS volume, how can I switch the disk to boot into? Does the method of changing boot disk "hold opt key at the boot sound" always work? 4)In case I needed to erase the whole external SSD, how can I do it if El Capitan cannot see him? 5) Would be better to have a third disk formatted in HFS+ in which store files that both OS use, like documents? Thanks a lot if you can help me :)

[@aliariai7656]

I have missed some pads on CPU on board when cleaning the cpu soldering pads. is that possible to repair it?

[@hbarcellos76]

With (maybe) the exception of Wozniak itself, you're probably the best "hacker" HW&SW engineer for apple products out there. Congratz. Quick question: do you think it should be possible to upgrade Mac Pro 6,1 (Trashcan): GPUs & CPUs to above their original HW requirements? I mean... GPUs, for instance, are regular PCI cards, just in a different format, right?

[@cocobrujo264]

amazing work!!! i have a 2011 15 inch macbook pro with the infamous GPU fault. do you still recomend to disable the original GPU and use with the intel support?

[@michvod]

Next episode: designing a custom mainboard for 17-inch chassis with 3rd gen i7 and 750M GT GPU :)

[@nicholasblaze3092]

Someone built a 2012 17" with the GT 650M kzbin.info/www/bejne/aIvOlmSEYtKLZ5I

[@dosdude1]

@@nicholasblaze3092 Well... That's just shoving a 2012 board into a 2011 case. Doesn't fit correctly, doesn't line up with the port holes, and overall is not worth doing.

[@nicholasblaze3092]

@@dosdude1 True not worth doing. In the video the case was modified. He did a good job making it line up. Plus having the GT 650M and USB 3.0 is pretty cool!

[@prodbydanai]

It's not impossible, but it's highly difficult.

[@jru5064]

Amazing what you did with this 🤯. What would be the max cpu possible for a mac pro 3.1? Would it be noticeable to go from 2.8ghz to the 3.2ghz?or is it possible to stretch it further? Thank you

[@ssavva2027]

Wow amount of work!

[@shanefelgate]

Someone else made this work recently I saw it just a few days ago they had to write code for the OS or something like that

[@Josh.Davidson]

Nice job!

[@djrenault]

my dude, you're nuts, and i like it

[@Levent_Ergun]

Casually mentions that he ported coreboot to a MacBook😂

[@drboom2]

That was my reaction, just casually dropping a coreboot port is something only dosdude could do 😂

[@DuyNguyenYT]

Next Custom Matte OLED display. NVME Support with external GPU. Though it may be slowed down because of the USB 2.0 Support.

[@tomallen2650]

Hey I was wondering if you wanted to sell or exchange macbooks i've got macbook air M1

[@loona5530]

I have a question about your high sierra patcher as my 13 inch 2008 MacBook unibody stayed on the loading screen for 16 hours before I shut it down

[@jptrainor]

I just installed the patched Catalina on my late 2008 aluminum MacBook. Worked perfectly. Maybe give that a try.

[@mr.iot-tech278]

Amazing bro can you share in one video how you able to port coreboot for this ?

[@Zebra_Paw]

NOOOO WAY!! FREE Monterey capable (via OCLP) Metal 17" MacBook! Not to mention Ivy Bridge CPUs run a lot less hot allowing for less noise.

[@AlekseyK86]

This is cool, but i’m wondering can you just re-design a 2012 15” board to fit in a 17”.

[@cybereffect5403]

Is it possible to make it on Macbook Pro 2010 17?

[@Duffloop]

Incredible! Whoda thought you could do this. Solder balls! Is this how they do it in the first place?

[@Andreas_Gludsted]

This is amazing. wish i had the skills to perform this. Also seeing stuff like this and the ibuff pcie adapter gives me hope that it eventually would be possible to change the 6770 gpu. Either by making a custom adapter and installing a newer gpu chip (maybe an adapter board to move it to the cd drive for more space?) or by making an adapter board like the pcie but to an mxm slot in the cd drive comparment (if enough space). Question: How much do you charge for this cpu upgrade?

[@Andreas_Gludsted]

Also: Does this enable metal acceleration?

[@jozsefizsak]

Great stuff. Very impressive!

[@Miguel-fm8xh]

Technically you could replace the USB 2 ports with USB 3 ones and route the extra pins with cables somewhere right?

[@dosdude1]

Would be very difficult, as you'd have to run individual bodge wires to the pads underneath the PCH. I'd rather just pop a USB3 controller in the ExpressCard slot.

[@cristianmaldonado452]

what about the dedicated GPU?, will be posible to get the Nvidia GT650M on the 17 MBP?

[@nicholasblaze3092]

Probably not I saw another one who has a 2012 17" with the GT 650M kzbin.info/www/bejne/aIvOlmSEYtKLZ5I

[@hansgerd8069]

If only this was „plug & play“ without having to use external software….

[@digitalbilly]

now i want a 17" macbook pro

[@fhoeg8076]

Such a cool project! I wonder: would a similar process be applicable to the mid 2011 iMac? Those with an ivy bridge Xeon would be awesome

[@Himegw]

I have the 17 incher. Wonder how fast is the intel 4000 compared to the radeon 6000 series discrete gpu here. Its a great upgrade. Whish i could get it done on mine.

[@dosdude1]

I can already tell the HD4000 is much faster than that Radeon HD 6xxx garbage.

[@Miguel-fm8xh]

@@dosdude1 wait since you got no discrete GPU on the 17“ MacBook Pro with the 2012 Intel thing on it, does this mean the CPU gets amazing cooling with this dual fan cooling setup? How are the result? Can you use 100% of the CPU/iGPU performance now? I remember playing minecraft windows 10 edition with low settings on my A1278 2012 with the integrated GPU and it actually worked very good, only issue I had was that the cooler ran at 100% all the time, curious if you‘d get better results with this

[@jacobdavidcunningham1440]

19:46 ooh that was nice

[@theosexpertdaymon2774]

Wish I could upgrade my MacBook Pro 8,1 from a sandy bridge chip to an ivy bridge but atlas I have not the programming experience to do something as mad lad as porting libreboot to my MacBook.

[@zacharyschwanke7160]

would be cooler if you where able to get the haswell cpus working on this board. if there compatble

[@gavinendsley]

I always wondered if building a mid-2012 17 inch MBP was possible by using a 2012 15" board. Now I know!

[@capndavey1]

You are the man!

[@Jerrylbee]

You are a smart guy!

[@roilef]

Say hi to Luke

[@onederment]

emmm.... that old 17inch downstairs, might get resurrected after all

[@Microang]

Would this work with the Radeon graphics still enabled? My late 2011 still has its 6770m working perfectly and for the odd old game I run in bootcamp works far better than a HD 4000. I actually completed fallout 4 on this machine back in the day... 🤣

[@dosdude1]

Technically yes, but you wouldn’t want to if you run later OS X versions, as you cannot mix Metal and non-Metal video cards.

[@SterkeYerke5555]

@@dosdude1 What a shame! Then you'd have to upgrade the dgpu to something metal-compatible as well! ;P Are there any GCN gpu's which are pin-compatible?

[@cgi2173]

Love the fact DosDude says 'as you can see, this is the core i7 2.6ghz CPU'. Nope, I couldn't tell. 😂😂😂😂😂

[@stpworld]

Theres even a trick that you can get unsupported mac machines signed back onto icloud to.

[@supercrazymario404]

Hey do you think you could see if it’s possible to reprogram the battery IC on MacBook Pro batteries (the bq20z451) and reset warning messages and also allow the battery to work again after it has been discharged below a certain voltage and it seems to break any functionality of the battery even after the cells have been manually recharged or replaced? I have quite a few of these batteries that have become basically useless even though the cells are nowhere near “bad” and they hold a charge after being recharged manually but the machine refuses to treat it as a working battery. And this IC seems to be the primary controller in pretty much all machines I’ve opened since the unibody MBPs. I’ve found a little information regarding some people reprogramming it with an aurdino but nothing really comprehensive. If you could make a video about this it would be really helpful for a lot of people!

[@allehooop]

A lot of fun 😊💪🏼

[@jamesyoung6878]

Nice video dosdude, can you make one on creating custom coreboot ports using autoport please!

[@gabrielbarquero8545]

Hi man, first of all how are you? Second I wanted to ask you if you sell or perform this type of upgrades, as already the computer with all these aspects. Regards

[@robinrai4973]

always amazed by your stuff haha

[@joltdude]

My extent of soldiering skills are thru-hole… slightly envious of those with the eyesight and skill to reball/paste and smd level repair