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Early 2011 Model: A1278 / 2.3 GHz i5 or 2.7 GHz i7 processor

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Increased temperature after upgrading RAM memory, is it bad?

I’ve upgraded the RAM in my early 2011 13” MacBook Pro. I checked out the RAM to buy and got 2x8gb 1333MHz SODIMM CL9 from Crucial.

So they should be fine. It used to run on 1 x 4GB. Done this to run better when working on photography & editing, but it’s running really hot on the first and second use…is that normal, or should I be concerned?

Is it possible that upping the memory 4-fold could do damage to other elements on an old system?

Answered! View the answer I have this problem too

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This is tricky! Your action of adding the RAM was a good thing! Running with 16GB is much better than 4GB or 8GB of RAM. You’re not going to hurt your system doing this.

OK we need to dig a bit deeper into your thermals to get a handle on what is pushing things. I would install a good thermal monitoring app like TG Pro and when you feel things are getting too warm take a snapshot of the TG Pro’s main window so we can see the temps fo all of the sensors. You will likely need to either adjust the window side and de-zoom it a bit to get them all in one snap or you’ll need to slide down and take a second quickly. Post it here for us to see! Adding images to an existing question

You may also be facing a know issue with your drives SATA cable! Your Hard Drive Cable Is A Ticking Time Bomb. While that is more on the wear factor, Apple also sold the system with a SATA II (3.0Gb/s) drive and cable. If you upgrade your drive to a SATA III (6.0 Gb/s) you’ll want to replace the cable!

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Thank you for the answer...it was really helpful.

Not sure how this all works so accepted both answers as they're both useful. Hope that doesn't cause confusion.

Will get hold of TG Pro and post some images here as and when it happens.

It's been much better today. So hopefully not going to be an issue.

Have already swapped out the hdd for 500gb ssd and the cable got swapped then. Am now about to jump again to a 2tb ssd so hopefully it'll all be ok.

Thanks for the help. Really appreciated.

C

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The ram upgrade should not create more heat in the computer but maybe with this large amount of ram you tried intensives jobs that sollicitate the CPU and the GPU. Use compressed air to dust off the internals. Remove/clean the fan and the heatsink. Replace the thermal paste with fresh one. You could also remove and clean the logic board cause after 10 years there must be a lot of dust under it.

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Thank you for the answer...very helpful.

Not sure how this all works so accepted both answers as they're both useful. Hope that doesn't cause confusion.

Will give it all a clean with compressed air.

Thanks for the help. Really appreciated.

C

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