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Macbook Air - upgradable?

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  1. #1

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    Macbook Air - upgradable?

    I cant figure out the answer easily so I'm hoping someone here can point me to the right place to get the answer to the question : Is this MacBookAir upgradable? The specs/info is below.

    Its not that old, it works well enough and fast enough but some of the programs I run on it get bloaty over time and I run out of ram ---> and get faced with the circle of hell (paging) on a regular basis.

    Can I add/update the ram on this thing? Is it something relatively inexpensive todo?

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  2. #2

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    You should be able to add some extra RAM, that's about it. It depends how many slots you have, you might only have 1 or 2 slots, then need to buy 8GB RAM cards which can be a little costly. Over to SSP.


  3. #3

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    Pretty sure the RAM is soldered on in the Mac Book air and can't be upgraded.

    imparanoic and shri like this.

  4. #4

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    The ram is soldered and can not be easily modified.

    You can get some 3rd party upgrades for the internal hard drive (SSD).

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  5. #5

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    Quote Originally Posted by emx:
    The ram is soldered and can not be easily modified.
    How hard is "not easy"? More importantly, is it expensive?
    You can get some 3rd party upgrades for the internal hard drive (SSD).
    I dont think thats going to help much. I'm definitely paging and need to free up some ram on a regular basis.

    I can currently do it by shutting down and restarting stuff regularly - but its annoying. If I can make it go away for a few hundred $$$, i'll pay to get rid of the annoyance.
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  6. #6

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    Quote Originally Posted by HowardCoombs:
    How hard is "not easy"? More importantly, is it expensive?

    I dont think thats going to help much. I'm definitely paging and need to free up some ram on a regular basis.

    I can currently do it by shutting down and restarting stuff regularly - but its annoying. If I can make it go away for a few hundred $$$, i'll pay to get rid of the annoyance.
    not impossible, but very very hard to do, even if you could with a master modder, it cost thousands due to the high precision work, it's noted that someone has successfully modified and updated nexus 5x with 4gb ram,
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  7. #7
    https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/...rom+4gb+to+8gb

    Only option I see recommended is swapping the logic board with one that has 8 GB for your mid 2013 MacBook Air. Seems a lot of trouble quite frankly.
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  8. #8

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    Quote Originally Posted by Edwardstorm:
    Only option I see recommended is swapping the logic board with one that has 8 GB for your mid 2013 MacBook Air. Seems a lot of trouble quite frankly.
    Interesting - so around 2K to replace the board and then hopefully sell the old one.

    I'm assuming this operation means no data loss and no need to reinstall stuff, right ?

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by HowardCoombs:
    I'm assuming this operation means no data loss and no need to reinstall stuff, right ?
    Correct, make sure you get the right logic board and (needless to say) have a full back up just in case. If all goes well you should be up and running again without data loss / reinstalling stuff.
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  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by HowardCoombs:
    I'm assuming this operation means no data loss and no need to reinstall stuff, right ?
    I think with help of Disk Utility, you can clone your current drive to another drive. Once done with swapping boards, you need to restore from that drive. I am not sure about boot drive/partition backup/clone-restore though.

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