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I have a Macbook Pro 13" mid-2012 and I would like to know how to get the best performance out of my laptop. Should I upgrade the memory to 16GB RAM or upgrade the HDD to SSD (or even use both)? The laptop is 3 years old and it’s quite slow. From the 512GB HDD, I use 75GB for Bootcamp, and now I currently have 100GB free in total. I am also still using 4GB RAM. I use my laptop mostly for Adobe Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Lightroom, etc, to edit photos and videos. Sometimes I would also use Sublime Text to code, GarageBand for recording, Microsoft Office to do basic tasks, or even play The Sims 4. So, let’s say I want to upgrade either one, which one should I do first to get the most out of it? And if I happen to upgrade both RAM and SSD, to which capacity? Please share your thoughts with me anyhow! Thank you.
If you can afford it, replace both. Doubling RAM to 8 Gb already makes you feel quite a difference with daily use tasks and increases the amount of Vram available. Going up to 16Gb in my humble opinion gives you a marginal benefit and would mostly make a difference just in case of handling large files with demanding Apps such as photo, music and video editing or gaming. SSD prices have dropped significantly as of late and considering the about 4 times faster read speeds a replacement would be a must for a Mac like yours as it carries along less heat production and lower power consumption as bonuses too. If you replace both at once it would feel like having another Mac from day one. Only make sure your fan and heat sink are always fairly clean to keep temperature under control, that’s very important with demanding tasks such as gaming and editing.
