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I have a 15” mbp 2011 just laying around at home, was wondering if I can soup it up. it has an i7 in it, it’s easy enough to update ram and stick an ssd in it. But all of it would be kind of pointless if I can’t upgrade the screen which is the older 1440x900. I think it’s possible to get a 1080p screen and upgrade the panel? Has anyone done it?
Yes, your machine will surely support the HD screen that was made available for that series in two flavors, the antiglare version with the aluminium bezel and the normal version with Lcd panel+glass. Antiglare will be more expensive and sometimes has some smaller brighter spots; just be careful that it’s spotless when/if you decide to purchase that one..beside that is a great quality screen and takes off most of the eye strain. Connectors will fit properly as they’re just the same, no need to worry.
Don’t bother - the boards on these have known GPU flaws. You are better off finding a 2012 15” that’s significantly better and using this one for parts, unless you can get a cheap 2012 motherboard. If you want to save this and the GPU has failed, it is possible to disable the GPU and make the machine usable, but you will no longer be able to use external monitors.
Although there were a lot of failures of the GPU on this model, it can be a very good machine. There was a class action law suit and subsequent repair program, not all of them failed! You can upgrade the RAM to 16 GB. RAM Type:PC3-10600 DDR3Min. RAM Speed:1333 MHz Details:Supports 1333 MHz PC3-10600 DDR3 SDRAM. Also upgrade to a SSD which will double the speed to the machine. I like the Samsung 860 EVO 500GB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD Install the gfxCardStatus just in case you ever have a problem. I have two of these machines running in my shop which both had GPU failures and they run just fine now.
