Upgrading RAM on a First Generation MacBook Air

[@thecodeprofessor]

When I started watching this I thought, a video about upgrading ram? Seems easy. But then I thought, ohhh it's dosdude, this must be more complicated than I think to require his skills. Very nice.

[@pastedtomato]

Apple: No! You can't upgrade the ram, it's soldered! Dosdude1: Haha, hot air goes brrrrrr

[@Sparky400]

The weird moment the hot air literally goes brrrr.

[@MrPnew1]

Collin, you are the out of the ordinary software and hardware upgrade Dude. Thanks for the content

[@Bampel25]

This guy represents what I always imagine in job offers where they are looking for someone who has "deep understanding" or "excellent skills" of some problematic. Just wow!

[@burntoutelectronics]

I'm really impressed with your work. Never really considered this stuff as a possibility whatsoever and it breathes new life into old machines

[@julian.morgan]

Brilliant work - love to see old hardware being kept out of landfill, especially as such machines are perfectly capable office/education laptops with a decent amount of RAM.

[@q.s.7296]

You’re a fkng genious. I have the same mba with ssd and new batt. Waiting to see the 8gb version to try at home! 😅 I have to upgrade the wifi card too.

[@_lolucoca_9735]

From my experience, it's a lot quicker to let the RAM chips soak in a bit of IPA after wicking down the residual solder. That flux wipes right off after that. Great work!

[@kmoecub]

2GB of RAM was not good at the time. It was just enough for casual use, which is what the Macbook Air was designed for. It was also the point at which Apple started down the road of non-upgradeable memory for their laptops. I really miss being able to upgrade without having to buy a used motherboard or spending too much time on the workbench. Nice work, but it really should have never been necessary.

[@syncblackberry4972]

Man, you are the king. I stopped trying to ball chips years ago and just stuck my equipment in the attic.Your skillZ have inspired me to start again.

[@mahardaniels]

I’ve only ever seen one other video for this and there was no explanation, just a video with music. Thank you.

[@lanceorventech6129]

I just find this guys videos especially his upgrade type ones fascinating!

[@senpaiskidz4445]

I have been wanting to see something like this for YEARS!! This is so amazing!

[@JoeGoesx]

Woz would be so proud if he watches this. :) specially sharing the SPD code.

[@Wasmachineman]

Absolute madman doing it again, love it!

[@TommyCullen-VacuumConnisour]

respect doing component level repair 4 times in a row and filming it for our enjoyment all for 2 gb extra ram

[@Gabian650]

I wish some day I have these amazing skills, knowledge and patience to do such upgrades.

[@Zebra_Paw]

The Mid 2007 MacBook Pro could be supported by your patcher if the CPU is upgraded to Penryn! This requires soldering skills but you proved it definitely possible! Could you please add this model to the list?

[@petrfila5371]

That’s cool! I’d like to see it upgraded to the maximum of RAM the board can handle. Having 16 or 32 GB of RAM on such a machine would be hilarious.

[@CarthagoMike]

Damn, this was amazing to watch. Looking forward to the 8gb upgrade!

[@zizlog_sound]

32:00 Whoever wrote the SPD guide didn’t really think the dec to hex conversion through for the revision numbers, because 10d, 11d, 12d are Ah,Bh and Ch. Great video! Thinking about it, I could possibly upgrade my MBP 2014 from 16GB to 32GB of RAM. 😀

[@davidgrisez]

This is quite an involved video on upgrading memory on an MacBook Air, which like other Apple Laptops has the memory hard soldered to the mother board and is considered to be not upgradable. The video shows that with all the right knowledge and specialized skills and specialized tools the memory can be upgraded. It is too bad the Apple company went this route of un-upgradable memory. It is so much simpler to have dedicated memory slots where the old memory modules can be replaced with higher capacity memory modules.

[@baconfister]

Quiet a lot of work involved, but I understand that this is a proof of concept that pretty much any hardware can be upgraded and modified with some effort.

[@AnkushNarula]

I've got one of these with a 64GB PATA SSD. And while the RAM limit is frustrating, it's less frustrating than when one of the two cores overheats and the system drags to a crawl. It was a known design flaw within year one -- and Apple had no answer other than the ineffective replacement of the logic board. Still, after a battery swap in 2015, I use it to test out lightweight Linux variants.

[@sssloe]

Tremendous work. I had a similar hobby project for my x280. Pretty clean as always

[@SalemTechsperts]

This is so sick.

[@jozsefizsak]

That's very impressive. I hope you the 8GB upgrade on a different one just to not waste this excellent work.

[@rupert3k]

classic dosdude1 domination

[@AngeezFX]

Lay-person here. No idea what language y'all are all speaking in the comments but wow! Impressive! The extent of my memory update experience was adding 8gb to my 2010 imac...and it giving me the 3 beeps...haven't been able to use it since 'cause I don't know what I'm doing. I need you in my life! Lol

[@rhiantaylor3446]

Really neat trick with minimal cost if you already re-ball stuff - just a fair bit of labor to produce the Macbook Air it should always have been !

[@heckintech]

I would LOVE to skill-up to this level. I have an old 2gb Macbook air, and it'd be so much more usable today, with 8gb! 😍Amazing work!

[@EnaBBQ]

This is brilliant, if you actually get it to 8GB then it will actually make this model somewhat usable.

[@mr.e.b.4697]

That would depend on what the processor can actually handle. Whatever the processors max is, that’s it.

[@dgw4049]

I love that he is still using windows 7

[@Josh.Davidson]

Great work Collin, always great to see this stuff.

[@TheSlayerette]

dude, i can do lots of crazy stuffs, but this is AMAZING and next level

[@grantrettke4851]

Thanks that was a lot of fun also inspiring to pursue the possibilities in life in general too.

[@Voidsworn]

I did something similar for a graphics card I purchased from someone, but not as professionally. I carefully took a damaged GDDR5 chip off of the GT740 and off a dead rx550 and just put it on the GT740. No reballing, just careful lift off. Not ideal but it did work.

[@CMJ223]

If it worked thats all that matters 🤷🏾‍♂️

[@AG-pm3tc]

This is some gourmet level upgrade. When you are capable of doing such things, the opportunities are basically endless. Great video my dude

[@rajkom8302]

Very nice job. I have an old MacBook air 1.1, do you have spi 4gig for it?

[@iRevive]

Nicely done. Incredible!

[@no_dissasemble]

I've been waiting years for a video on upgrading "non upgradeable" RAM.

[@ACCOUNTANTB]

This is an amazing job !!!! its so painfull but also challenging !!!!

[@tolumr01]

@dosdude1 - your work is legendary! Would a MBA4,1 (2Gb RAM) be also upgradable in this fashion? Like up to 4 or 8 Gb RAM?

[@maxeatbug]

from what I know all macbooks with soldered ram like this use basic ddr3/4 chips so I'm pretty sure it would

[@RobloxianX]

Thanks for the video! I am using a Mid 2009 upgraded MacBook Air for school, 2GB is working fine but I think to get just a bit more use later down the line I need to get it to 4gb, or else it wont be able to even run a tab of chrome!

[@jabbawok944]

Flip in amazing!. Still I’d like to see this procedure on 2014 Mac Mini, as they’re still supported but a lot of them have base 4GB of ram, which is near to unusable on current Mac OS.

[@dosdude1]

That's actually much easier to do than this machine, as they only have 4 RAM chips, and have strapping resistors to tell it which SPD data to use (so no SPI ROM modifications are needed).

[@sssloe]

@@dosdude1 I've seen the retina boards having resistor configuration as well - true for your upcoming retina video?

[@dosdude1]

It is true, but it only has resistor straps for up to 16GB. 32GB will require the same SPI ROM modifications shown here. They do have 32 chips, so I'm in for a lot of reballing when I do this LOL.

[@sssloe]

@@dosdude1 much obliged for the reply and love for your work ❤

[@Zebra_Paw]

You do BGA soldering very nicely, I wish every repair center had your skills! Can I just ask you though, why you run such an old version of macOS when you can run up to Monterey (although for Core 2 Duo machines your Catalina patcher is better, Big Sur acceleration takes quite a bit of time to properly load in).

[@dosdude1]

I've had that OS installed on this machine for years, this MBA has been sitting unused for like 5 years. It's all I need for testing anyways.

[@asianflex]

@@dosdude1 do you think it would be possible to have 8gb ram on 2011 mba?

[@Zebra_Paw]

@@asianflex Do you think it would really benefit from 8GB with the rest of the hardware and the horrible cooling anyway?

[@flamingkillermc2806]

@@Zebra_Paw Yep, 2011 will support 16GB. Just needs new thermal paste and manual fan control at medium speed, you can even max the fan speed to max if you don’t mind the fan noise, but it will definitely be cool thermally. I would not aspect a “Zebra” dude to understand

[@Zebra_Paw]

@@flamingkillermc2806 what do you mean? Yes it can support 16GB, and? It’s not useful, except if you do something that only requires a lot of RAM but no actual CPU power!

[@djdjukic]

A pleasure as always to watch and learn. Good to know that UEFITool also works on Macs!

[@ebisuminoru]

I have the same MacBook Air with C2D SL9600@2.13GHz and 2GB RAM.

[@MrLukealbanese]

Incredible work

[@henry55430]

Your hot air rework station vibrates the camera

[@kgerakopoulos]

This is crazy "dude" go back to your planet .. 😅 Excellent approach as always

[@Dariexraptor]

I would love to have my Macbook air to have 4gb of ram too, just for the sake of pushing this old gem to the limit. if only I was good enough at soldering

[@interrobangings]

hey are you a wizard???

[@ottf24]

Nice work dosdude

[@Digithaiz]

Awesome work as always man

[@billymania11]

Actually these early Air's could be made fully functional with 8GB of memory. My 2009 air is a brick currently.

[@ToniSkit]

Wow that’s amazing 😮- I won’t do it but it’s cool regardless

[@lm_dccxl4078]

wonder if its possible on the awful N4050 laptops that hp made and have also soldered ram (2gb too)

[@AndroidFan238]

Thank you for video and idea! You are amazing

[@alirezasarshar8144]

you are a geniusssss ... nice job !!!

[@JoaoVitor-cw2vg]

What about 8gb on a 2010 MacBook Air?

[@atomrayday]

You are amazing Men!!! Thanks

[@danandrei96]

wow absolute madlad. I've done RAM swaps before by changing the strap resistors, didn't even think you could change the SPD in the bios directly like this. wonder if this could be done on more modern machine, like the 2015 range, to upgrade the ram to higher capacity than possible by just changing straps

[@dosdude1]

Yes, it definitely could.

[@Madhawa333]

Dos dude please tell me what is your board pre heater ??

[@dgw4049]

In 10 years you will need to make this video for everyone who bought the 8gb M1 air or mini. 8gb is just not enough in 2022.

[@oledcrt]

That might actually be easier because you just swap the whole SOC

[@eileenlucynakurosawa7421]

Totally agree, someday will be possible, make no mistake about it.

[@19TheJohn93]

@@oledcrt easier? with no replacement parts available then the SOCs from 16 GB M1s... I think you're out of luck

[@oledcrt]

@@19TheJohn93 yeah I just meant the process of making it work

[@the.real.ipatch]

really awesome stuff, thanks so much for sharing

[@Cmdrbzrd]

Still needs an undervolt and a CPU on a smaller fab size.

[@joeyounan55]

I’ve upgraded the ram on a 2011 MacBook and it had an issue where 8GB wouldn’t work and I got it to work with 6GB. It was unstable with 8GB

[@Dyverse090]

Yo bro you deserve every like share and subscribe you get beacuse you are hitting them points.

[@АндрейНикитенко-ь7с]

You are the best 💯

[@mystic316]

i have been waiting so long or something like this! Does this also mean the older Retina MacBook Pro's would be possible to be upgraded to 32GB of Ram or the newer Airs to 16GB of Ram even if they were never offered with them?

[@stepanovps]

+1 was about to ask the same here.

[@dosdude1]

If the correct chips exist, then yes, it is.

[@falidsyndrom]

if you can increase the ram of the macbook air and it works, you can also add ram that exceeds the maximum limit of ram on the macbook or macbook pro. for example, a maximum of 8GB you add up to 16GB because you can change or edit the spd. Am i right?

[@dosdude1]

On soldered-RAM boards, yes, but you are still limited by the chipset and the kind of memory chips (pinout wise) used on the board.

[@АндрейСмыслов-ш8ш]

Bro will this work with Mac Air 2008?

[@pcman1239]

MAGNIFIQUE :)

[@zerocks88]

How come not upgrading to more than 4GB ? that today still seems super lack luster :( SUPER awesome process and execution! congrats and I hope to see more (*writing before seeing the very end of the video)

[@zerocks88]

hah awesome- suggested next video is doing exactly what I wanted!

[@cleanycloth]

That is awesome! Wonder if it would be possible to squeeze 8GB out of this thing as well? Unless you're EFI limited...

[@MLGPRO-dx8fg]

I have a Mid 2009 Macbook unibody and it did not officially support 8gb, but unofficially it worked fine. I used it for years until I got a new machine.

[@cleanycloth]

@@MLGPRO-dx8fg interesting! Maybe it'll work then. I was thinking this air was the OG 1,1 model which has a 32bit EFI but this is a 2,1, which has a 64bit one. So in theory, it might be possible!

[@zehsoares]

Wow. Great and informative work! I have a Mac Mini 2009 with 8GB ram, which is the unofficial maximum this machine supports. Do you know if there is any workaround to make this Mini support 16Gb, 2x8Gb 1067mhz modules?

[@zaihFor17]

thanks for info how to modify a bios chip i guess i will try to modify the fake gt730 that i got it should be a gt 705 1gb but I cant find a working one and tha ram brand is not listed on on any gt 705 bios available online.

[@dosdude1]

RAM brand doesn't matter as long as the size is correct.

[@zaihFor17]

@@dosdude1 yes you're correct

[@Moonrakerd]

ram upgrade is cool, but how to keep the cpu cool ? this machine is stupidly limited by its cooling, throttling happening on any youtube video

[@Timothy-mz5bd]

How is a mac book of this age working ?

[@dudugb11]

it's possible in mac book air early 2008? DDR2

[@joshhhab]

Is it possible to upgrade A1398 2012 to 32gb same way?

[@OstapMaliczyn]

Hello!!! Which temperatures You are using for soldering in this video(preheat and air)???thank You!!!!!!!

[@vasstev]

Why don´t you upgrade to 8 GB RAM ?

[@ArturasOmni]

Wow. Maybe you can't install more gigabyte in PlayStation Vita slim?

[@darrenstrathdee7425]

Brilliant.

[@Sparky400]

I have wanted to get a good condition one of these for a while because it is able to drive my apple 30". With 4gb this just makes it perfect. I am guessing 8gb would be too far? Not sure I have seen and 4gb sodimms with only 8 chips.

[@no-vo1em]

i want to do this, where do i buy the tools to do this with?

[@ashirkkkk]

I had macbook air mid 2009. can i upgrade it? Why should i buy? hellpppp

[@Quicksilveraus]

Love your work Collin do you ever use solder paste with the stencils? i am thinking your method with the flux and right diameter solder balls better way :) , btw i have a titanium g4 1.47 ghz g4 replaced the lcd on it tho when re-assembling i snapped off the keyboard ribbon connector (dry solder joints) wondering if can send it to for a fix, i am to scared to reflow it plastic melty thing >< :)

[@DrCarmona]

Dude, you're in another upgrade league !!!!. Question, what is the largest processor that supports a MB Pro Late 2012? Thanks !!!!!

[@tquad8699]

Since it looks like the ram config similar to a 7,1 MacBook pro, could this machine actually go up to 8 or maybe even 12gb of ram in this machine?

[@tarzankingofthejungle1040]

hello, and Very interesting!! how much do you charge to do this, or, the 8gig upgrade??...Also, i have an original 10.7.5 mba,,am i able to upgrade the software Os, and how high can i go up to??and come to think of it, swap out that hookie hard drive thats in it too~~ thanks

[@radius4914]

Will this work for retina MacBook Pro 13” Late 2013 Model?

[@Madhawa333]

Where are you dude….😢 People needs your new patcher for new mac os. Please save the world with your macos patchers✊🏻✊🏻✊🏻🙏🙏

[@krisbankai1368]

I don't understand why you didn;t just download more RAM.

[@laban.pldk24]

I fuckt up on upgrading my iMac 2010 and MacBook pro 2009 when I was trying the upgrade skill you talked about in the video you explaining how to upgrade to Catalina and I accedentaly deleted a lot and I just don't now what to do now. I just want to install MacOs high sierra again and then try it again. Cause i think I deleted it. Has someone a good tip for me?

[@RetroRadioTube]

I have MacBook Air 2011 with original 2Gb RAM. I would like to update it to 8 GB. What is the most suitable RAM DIMM from a laptop, DIMM model I could buy? Thanks in advance, and love your channel!

Fantastic!

[@smilesurga8886]

mantap bang gas kan

[@reza9720]

bro could you please make detailed giude for Air mid 2011 13inch please ... I am in need of your help please !! or may be just an guide on your website link please ! keep up the good work bro ... respect and peace 👍👍