Touchbar MacBook Pro NVMe SSD Upgrade
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- Опубликовано: 6 дек 2023
- In this video, I go over the process of upgrading a 2016-2017 Touchbar MacBook Pro soldered SSD, by converting it to support removable NVMe SSDs. This modification was designed by iBoff, and essentially involves soldering a custom PCB on the board in place of the original onboard SSD controller, utilizing its PCIe I/O to connect a standard NVMe SSD.
All info can be found on iBoff's webpage here: iboffrcc.com/pages/-guide-sol...
You can purchase the kit for this mod here (for 15"): www.tindie.com/products/iboff...
Or here (for 13"): www.tindie.com/products/iboff...
#macbook #ssd #upgrade 
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I'm really happy that there is a future out there where instead of buying a whole new mac for a storage upgrade we can just upgrade our mac's storage again!
It’s more the SSD’s dying more than anything else
same, I take it there isn't anything like this for M1 MBP yet.
@@davidkrocksSadly there won't be, as the M-series Macs have the SSD controller integrated into the SoC, so there's no PCIe lanes routed to where the flash chips are mounted, making a mod like this impossible (unless you can source your PCIe lanes from somewhere else on the board, which AFAIK isn't possible either). The best we can hope for is someone figuring out how to trick the system into accepting higher capacity NAND chips swapped in for the stock ones.
@@Kraaketaer Yep, this mod can't be done on Apple Silicon systems. But it is possible to upgrade the soldered storage on them; see my previous video about that.
The newer Studios supposedly use the replaceable storage SSD’s that the old trash can pro’s use. I think it’s only on the ones above the base configuration, which screws me. External storage is just as easy.
Beautiful work, clean, functional and can add extra useful life to those dead SSD MacBooks also having the storage upgrade in a still working one is excellent.
Love how u remind me of my electronic teacher when he taught us soldering. He always repeated what he was explaining and showing like a surgeon teaching the pre meds.... awesome to see u doing things they say u can't do thanks for the 25 years old memory. RIP Mr Green
iBoff guys made some really nice boards, exquisite work as always!
1:09 as soon as you said removable SSD you got all my attention! i absolutely love these kinds of mods!
I came for the "alright" but I stayed for the talent of this boy. He makes everything look simple, great engineer.
pretty cool to know that even if the ssd is dead on these macbooks, you can still give them an nvme slot to further increase its longevity. i like maximizing the lifespan of my computers tbh.
Im always so impressed to see your upgrades. "Non user servicable" parts removed and replaced with expertise. You're one heck of a solder artist.
Dosdude, your videos have inspired me to really get into this level of Mac repairs. For Christmas I have asked for a soldering iron and solder! Hoping to replace the NVIDIA 8300 chip on my Early 2008 MacBook Pro. Just for the fun of it!
Just remember, 60/40 leaded solder and some good flux is your best friend when doing micro soldering ;)
@@Syntappi thanks for the tips man 🙂
& contact cleaner removes the white haze left by isopropyl
@@SyntappiDon’t forget to do this in a well ventilated area. Led is baaaaaaaad
@@daveymac722 lead isn't so much the problem as the flux vapours which are a known carcinogen. so yes, use a well-ventilated space, but the lead isn't really evaporating to be breathed in, for that just use gloves if you have them AND wash hands afterwards
Protect this man at all costs!
This could be the revival of dead macbooks which SSD controller gets fried? Woa man, you are awesome
I have a stock 2017 MBP, 1TB SSD. Its performance (using AJA) is 2087 write & 1532 read. I'd say your upgrade is worth it!
Another mad video! Love your workmanship brother!!
Beautifully orchestrated. Very proud
I really want to attempt this on my 2017 15" touchbar MBP that has been sitting on a shelf for two years since the battery bloated and had to be removed. I bought it with 256GB storage at the time because I couldn't afford the extra storage upgrade, but I'm glad we're now at an inflection point where these devices are becoming easier to work on and upgrade, even with soldered components. Thank you for the upgrade video, I hope to take this on soon as I continue to hone my soldering skills and remove chips off donor boards for practice.
Louis Rossmann's Discord brought me here!
Great work :) It's nice to see how the community continues to improve upon designs where Apple couldn't.
Wouldn't. Not couldn't.
@@treacletree Apple doesn't have enough care in them for wouldn't. :( We don't wanna give them too much credit.
@@SGCSmith Exactly. The COULD improve, but they won't.
Outstanding stuff as usual!
Strangely enough, I have a 15” Mac book pro, 2017, Touch Bar and have never had a problem with it. Must have just been lucky. Nice to know there is an upgrade, if I want to bother with it. Good work!
This is a great idea, and will help me and hopefully many, MANY others keep these MacBook out of landfills! Seriously, thanks for these videos brother! Some of these small run parts are really well thought out, and this little board seems to be no exception. Thanks for telling us about it. I'm all over this one.
BTW, did you ever hear any news about the NVMe upgrade kit for the 2011 (I think it was the 2011, maybe 2010) 17" MacBook Pro that you demo'd a little while back? It's the kit that replaces the dGPU with an interposer/BGA reroute PCB, freeing up several PCIe 2.0 lanes, then there's a caddy that hooks to the slimSATA port for power (I think) and that's where you install the M.2 (2280). It worked, but there was a ribbon or connector that ran from the interposer to the M.2 slot that was kinda short. I hope I'm not misremembering too badly. I think you said they hadn't decided if they were gonna make more kits or not. THAT upgrade was very cool, and on the last 17" MBP too, not to mention removing the probably dead dGPU and installing an NVMe in its place.
Great video as always! Thank you for all that you do for the community. Seriously bro, I used your Mojave and Catalina patcher for years on my machines and to give clients of mine with older Macs the ability to have dark mode (yes, dark mode is THAT important to me). I'm an OpenCore user these days, but I did see that you were in the acknowledgement, with you and your patchers being cited as providing a map of where and how to start. You're very much beloved in this community, and we are so incredibly grateful for your work!
Thanks again!
🙂👍🐧🙂
Yep, iBoff has updated the kit with the appropriately-sized cable for the 17”. The kit for both the 15” and 17” models can be purchased from the iBoff Tindie store.
Nice! The SSD is now the best part of this laptop.
You are doing a really good job, I don't understand people who buy Apple equipment, where this company is a master at milking customers' pockets, and when the owner wants to add an NVMe drive, he has to perform such operations.
Very cool. I saw the video of the guy who developed it. Great stuff, I have the same MacBook and I might do this just for fun ;.) keep up the great work
No joke, PC DVD drives are one of the best tools for soldering :D
You're doing a good job for being Apple's sleep paralysis demon! Keep up the good work on making newer MacBooks actually usable and upgradable!
really amazing work and you must have the patience of a saint
First 2 minutes of this video has better MBP review and information quality over any other reviewer out there.
Dude you are legendary. These are exactly the types of shenanigans that Apple hates because it completely satisfies the Right to Repair advocates and, for many people, negates the need to upgrade your computer! Obviously for people doing any heavy work, you’d want to bump up to a new Apple silicon machine, but for someone who does basic things with their computer - probably MOST people - this breathes new life into their perfectly working machine.
Knowledge, skills and courage to DIY are not 'Shenanigans'. Also have you wanted thinner, lighter laptops?
Apple gave you what you asked for. Do you think they give a fuck about your mods?
In 5, 7, 10 years you will be forced to buy a newer Mac anyway.
@@user-hx9gu5nh9pif someone gets a few more years out of an old upgraded laptop instead of buying a new apple silicon model, then yes, apple would give a fuck. And if by waiting some years the user then sees that ARM on windows is finally a thing, as is supposed to happen soon, and doesn’t buy a new mac at all, then they would give two fucks, yes
@@user-hx9gu5nh9p I'm buying a framework 16 because I care about repairability and upgradeability. it's hardly any thicker than the thin-at-all-cost macbook pro 16 but has hot swappable keyboard/trackpad and IO modules. The screen and the screen bezel come out super easily. The rest of the computer can be disassembled with a single included screwdriver. And importantly, you will actually be able to buy the parts necessary for repairing the device. Unlike apple that does not sell any of the parts to the users.
Also, nobody ever asked for thinner computers, maybe lighter but not thinner. I have yet to meet someone that has walked into any computer store and asked, "What is the thinnest computer that you have". Often the most restricting part about a laptop's profile is the length and width, not the minuscule height. It was the corporations that changed laptops without giving us a choice, they marketed it as if it was a good thing and gaslit the consumers into believing thin-and-light was good and that upgradeability and repairability was necessary to be sacrificed in order to achieve this thinness.
You are amazing. Really enjoy your videos.
Congratulations! Awesome job 👍🏼
Glad I'm not the only one who struggled to get this thing to make a good connection to the PCIe pads.
The only thing I've done like this was hacking in an 2280 nvme drive into an 2013 era Precision M6800 and didn't have to sacrifice the mxm slot. Kinda neat when something that old can have up to three nvme drives granted at pci-e 2.0 speeds, an msata, and three 2.5 sata drives while everything modern is stuck with either a single SSD or sometimes two. All and all I got 13.5TB (six drives) installed in this antique.
this is an awesome upgrade you rock
Amazing as always !
Great work as usual.
Nice work.
Makes me wonder if anyone can add removable ram sockets somehow on the models that don’t have it 😮🤯👏🏻👏🏻 fantastic work here!
this is very cool.😀 iBoff should supply membrain cables for the wires .like the ipad solder flex cables
Collin, together you and iBoff mat could take over the world 😂 Thanks for the video
Very interesting mate. I'm a novice at soldering so I'd be mighty nervous doing it.
Truly impressive, and proves that Apple mislead about their reasons for removing the slot.
Great work dude dos❤
This is amazing work
Amazing work! The next mod for these TouchBar MacBooks should be getting rid of the defective butterfly keyboards in favor of the keyboards found on the a1398/a1502 Retinas.
That's the exact same SSD as the one I put into my Steam Deck. The SN740 is a great little 2TB 2230 SSD.
Those 2230 models from wd, kioxia, transcend etc were kind of expensive and hard to find when the steam deck got in the hands of enough hobbyists, but now the prices have come down a bit. Still not as cheap as the ubiquitous 2280 models but a lot cheaper than the ridiculous prices apple is charging per GB when ordering
I first saw this done on a different channel and I’m glade you have figured this out too! Will help save many of these with dead NVME drives due to high swapping. I wonder if Apple Silicon is able to be modded like this.
Not in the same way, SSD controller is integrated into the SoC so can't tap into the actual PCIe lines of the controller. iBoff claims they have *something* coming for Apple Silicon but haven't said what it is. Maybe an M.2 slot that hijacks the Thunderbolt? You'd lose a port though so I doubt that'd be how they go about it. Whatever it is will be cool and probably involve PCIe fuckery of some kind based on all of their previous products.
Wowza! As usual fantastic work. Too bad I own a 2018.
What a Great Job!
All my Macs are from 2013 or earlier and still work good enough. It's just crazy how we have to upgrade disk space nowadays. I want the good old "it just works" times back.
YOure a G-d damn genius Colin.
thats awesome!
i love iboff rcc
The best of this mod is that we can replace the SSD any time，whit ease
Legendary Legend 😎
Alex uses solder mask and UV to tie down those wires. Might be a good idea here as well!
that's a cool mod
dosdude is true king!
I wish I could do this. My hands are enormous and its hard enough working on my old Unibody Macs which I learned from Luke Miani who is also dope like you Colin. Learned so much from you two
I was wondering if your 0.1mm copper wires were enameled for isolation or you would need to UV resin them to avoid any shorts? Beautiful work. MBP2017 is no longer the worst apple product with this upgrade.
even if enameled, usually the coating burns easily off.
I learned the gummy underfill consequence the hard way... I wish I had watched your vids before that day!
I may hate Apple, but I love seeing DD1 work on them. Imagine how many would've been saved from the landfill if Apple had just put a connector on in the first place?
I'm not seeing how, but is this a cost effective mod, or is it really only for the enthusiast who can't bear to part with their favorite machine?
It could be cost effective if you already had the tools to do the mod. The pcb+connector+stencil are only 20 dollars. You could probably shell out some money to get the gear to do it but I'd only go for that if you plan to do other things with them, otherwise your buying a hot air gun, soldering iron, solder, flux and solder wick all for only a single project.
Nice and you could also use a 2030 sata ssd if it’s compatible
Please retrofit the longer eDP cable to fix Flexgate on this model too.
Never owned an Apple anything, but thank you for sharing this extraordinary mod.
why not?
@@adredy Because you can do a lot more on Windows. I love what Apple has done to AI coding on their products and are producing their own APU's. However, you better not break your Apple product by accident, otherwise they will not allow 3rd party repair, let alone the costs associated with the repair centre. And your phone gets one or two version updates then you're on your own, unlike Windows OS on laptops & desktops which is a lot more generous with their extensions. Have you noticed the cost difference of Apple products lately ?
@@Matlockization Apple products are bad quality they are the same level as cheap acer or no name chinese brands. I fixed laptops for about 15 years and i was shocked how bad apple products are.
@@robbirobson7330 And to make things worse, they are locking more of their hardware & software down, as I'm sure you're aware.
@@Matlockization yes fortunately i was able to leave the repair field and don't have to deal with this crap anymore
I really wish people would boycott products that are anti-consumer like this. The industry needs to be more in support for Right to Repair! Great Job by the Technician in this video!
Great work! BTW, does this also work for a 2019 MBP 16"?
Thank you for your work, great video once again. Do you think we could expect anything similar with apple silicon devices in future? Are all of the T2 devices doomed to resoldering?
Probably over-simplifying things, but is there a way to hack the T2 Security chip (or circuit) so it says any hardware is valid?
'Pro'
Great mod though, actually makes the machine worthy of its name :)
Love to see it ♥
Incredible job!! Now all you gotta do is figure out how to retrofit the 2015 keyboard into this thing😂
is the 3a pad used for power in different places for different models? The circuit could have been made to fit it rather than use an oddly short thick wire
Quite impressive
How much does this procedure cost?
For the highest technical level videos, the host of the video will frequently and repeatedly speak from both corners of their mouths or speak in a way where they doubt themselves. It's fascinating. To be clear, I think this might be a way of speaking for filler or internal dialogue leaking out. What is most curious though is how one acquires the knowledge of keeping vs removing capacitors. Excellent work as usual. What are you working on next, Colin?
Awesome!👍
dude what made you want to get into modding macbooks like reballing and what wouldve made the older macbook gpus fail
This is amazing, how much would this upgrade roughly cost?
To be honest this is a very eco-friendly Upgrade many Touchbar Macbooks end up in trash because of dead SSD-S and some because of short to ground because apple refusing to make the SSD User Replaceable..
What happens if the T2 chip is removed? Can it be bypassed for newer models.
incredible speed for such a tiny ssd
awesome!!!
hi dosdude. I was wondering, I own a retina pro 15" from 2013 with 8 gigs of RAM. is there anyway to upgrade to 16?
This community is bonkers ❤
gotten
a past participle form of get, showing vestiges of the Old English form of the verb. With adverbs, "obtained or acquired" (in some specified manner) from mid-14c.
I did this upgrade and bought a 2TB WD Black SN 770M for about 190 bucks which works perfectly.
wow inspirering can you do the replacement for people who does know or have skills set to do it
Is it just a bad angle or does it seem crooked?
Woowww, how incredible! You should be able to do this modification for MAC Mini M1 or M2! It will be possible?
Not only are these machines bad but they're so fragile. I was trying to fix one of these with a suspected camera issue and ended up ripping the good ol' flexgate backlight connector. So stupid but they're really beautiful.
I smell a new Luke Miani collab coming soon
damn this is super
It’s a shame the 2018 MBP got the T2 chip cause they did slightly improve the design to try mitigate some of the total flops of the 2016/17’s longer display cables, a keyboard revision to attempt to mitigate the failures, and a few other updates,
Would you be able to upgrade the SSD on a 13" M2 MacBook Pro not for a replaceable SSD but even just replace the chips with higher storage ones, Or the ram But I think it would be easier to upgrade the SSD I've seen it being don't on the M2 Air the new model but I thought it would be an issue with the T2 Chip
Wow, didn't know that the touchbar 2016-2017 macbooks have soldered ssd.
Also. I have a 2016 13 inch (non-touchbar) macbook pro and I managed to install El Capitan on it, despite it not being officially supported, but i got every driver working out of the box, including graphics acceleration. The weird thing is that it shown Intel HD Graphics SKL instead of Intel Iris Graphics 540, but I also fixed that with software update.
Now here's my question. Basically there's a new bug (...?) going on. OS X El Capitan and older now show Unarchived instead of the OS name in About this mac. And it also won't show model. I'm thinking that it's server-side but I'm not sure. Maybe you know better. Do you know any fix for that?
Hey there, I've seen your videos, you do incredible work. I was wondering how much a process like this would cost? I have a 15" 2016 TouchBar MacBook Pro 1TB. I think the onboard SSD is on its way out, and would be nice if I could get the upgrade at some point in the future. Also I know the battery is in poor shape too, despite macOS reporting it's condition as Normal. Thank you!
well we got the eu to demand replaceable batteries. seems like it's only a matter of time from this point...
in phones they first did away with removable batteries, then went expandable storage, then the headphone jack. let's hope they are all restored in the same order.
존나 쩌는 작업입니다. 어서 이 PCB의 apple silicon용 변종이 나왔으면 좋겠네요.
I wonder what the level of impossibility it is to try to upgrade the on-package RAM in the newer Apple silicon chipsets. I suspect it would be extremely annoying even if you could find the supplier of the chips to order them.
is it possible for macbook pro 13 inch M1?
great work @dosdude1 . Love your videos
Can the same be done to the RAM?