Touchbar MacBook Pro NVMe SSD Upgrade
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- čas přidán 6. 12. 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 - Věda a technologie
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.
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
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.
iBoff guys made some really nice boards, exquisite work as always!
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.
1:09 as soon as you said removable SSD you got all my attention! i absolutely love these kinds of mods!
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.
I came for the "alright" but I stayed for the talent of this boy. He makes everything look simple, great engineer.
Another mad video! Love your workmanship brother!!
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.
Beautifully orchestrated. Very proud
This could be the revival of dead macbooks which SSD controller gets fried? Woa man, you are awesome
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.
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!
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!
Protect this man at all costs!
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
Outstanding stuff as usual!
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!
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.
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
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.
First 2 minutes of this video has better MBP review and information quality over any other reviewer out there.
Glad I'm not the only one who struggled to get this thing to make a good connection to the PCIe pads.
No joke, PC DVD drives are one of the best tools for soldering :D
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.
Nice! The SSD is now the best part of this laptop.
Collin, together you and iBoff mat could take over the world 😂 Thanks for the video
Congratulations! Awesome job 👍🏼
really amazing work and you must have the patience of a saint
this is very cool.😀 iBoff should supply membrain cables for the wires .like the ipad solder flex cables
Makes me wonder if anyone can add removable ram sockets somehow on the models that don’t have it 😮🤯👏🏻👏🏻 fantastic work here!
You are amazing. Really enjoy your videos.
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.
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.
Amazing as always !
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.
this is an awesome upgrade you rock
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?
Great work as usual.
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.
Nice work.
Alex uses solder mask and UV to tie down those wires. Might be a good idea here as well!
The best of this mod is that we can replace the SSD any time，whit ease
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.
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
Great work dude dos❤
I learned the gummy underfill consequence the hard way... I wish I had watched your vids before that day!
YOure a G-d damn genius Colin.
This is amazing work
Great work! BTW, does this also work for a 2019 MBP 16"?
Nice and you could also use a 2030 sata ssd if it’s compatible
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
Wowza! As usual fantastic work. Too bad I own a 2018.
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 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.
Please retrofit the longer eDP cable to fix Flexgate on this model too.
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!
What a Great Job!
Incredible job!! Now all you gotta do is figure out how to retrofit the 2015 keyboard into this thing😂
i love iboff rcc
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
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..
This is amazing, how much would this upgrade roughly 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?
dosdude is true king!
Legendary Legend 😎
incredible speed for such a tiny ssd
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!
존나 쩌는 작업입니다. 어서 이 PCB의 apple silicon용 변종이 나왔으면 좋겠네요.
Woowww, how incredible! You should be able to do this modification for MAC Mini M1 or M2! It will be possible?
I did this upgrade and bought a 2TB WD Black SN 770M for about 190 bucks which works perfectly.
'Pro'
Great mod though, actually makes the machine worthy of its name :)
that's a cool mod
I smell a new Luke Miani collab coming soon
wow inspirering can you do the replacement for people who does know or have skills set to do it
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.
2015 was the last decent MBP pre Silicon. I don’t have a new MBP to judge against but I’m not hearing any major complaints.
That is correct. If you want to buy a MacBook these days, you either buy a 2015 (or older) if you want Intel, or an Apple Silicon machine. Nothing in between.
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,
thats awesome!
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.
dude what made you want to get into modding macbooks like reballing and what wouldve made the older macbook gpus fail
If you don't have solder mask, you can also use non-metallic nail polish. Helps against shorts.
Should send you my 2020 iMac 27" to add back the nvme SSD mount.
This community is bonkers ❤
Probably over-simplifying things, but is there a way to hack the T2 Security chip (or circuit) so it says any hardware is valid?
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 have a 2017 15" macbook pro and this is an awesome upgrade! i was told a long time ago that the onboard ssds were keyed to the system some how and that they couldnt be replaced, is this still true and if so how did you get around that? if not why would people think that?
I think he mentioned the next model with T2 chip is keyed and cannot be upgraded
@@HNedel so strange, when i was having issues with my mbp which is the same in the video, people were telling me the issue could be the ssd and that it is keyed to the laptop itself, thankfully the ssd wasnt the issue
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
12:25 the hardest working optical drive 💿 in the biz
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.
Love to see it ♥
Is it worth upgrading those machines? With so many problems, a new SSD might not do much.
Is there also maybe a possibility to upgrade the CPU from an i7 to an i9?🤔 that would be awesome😎
great work @dosdude1 . Love your videos
Quite impressive
How much does this procedure cost?
I love the butterfly keyboards on these macbooks
I wonder how mechanically stable this will be considering it contains a connector and is mounted without major solder connections to for instance the ground plane.
Yeah, that’s probably the weakest point of this mod, but most of the pads on this board are ground, so that should provide a good amount of mechanical robustness to keep it in place unless you really pull on it.
Some glue would be nice as part of the kit
i really want to do this to my A1707