- Feb 22, 2001
- 3,044
- 544
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The company I've been at the last 2.5 years has a yearly auction for old hardware.
We're a laptop based company, so there are always a dozen Dell's and about as many MBP's.
Two years ago, I took a chance and bought two, Late-2011 MBP's with "bad video" for $40 a piece.
Turns out, Apple had a program that would replace the logic boards.
A year ago, another 2011 showed up, same issue. $25 later, I got it repaired as well.
This year, two Early-2011 MBP's showed up - same issues. Minimum bid, $10/each. I bought both knowing Apples program had ended.
However, I had heard that the community had figured out how to disable the dGPU and run solely on the i7's internal GPU.
Both machines are i7's, 2ghz and 8GB of ram.
Both machines were missing their harddisks.
Both machines had about 1/2 of their case screws missing.
Both machines did not come with their chargers.
Still, I have a couple spare laptop disks, the screws are replaceable, and I have a charger that I can at least see if they live.
Long story short - it took me the better part of last night and today to get them both running (not having a working OS on either made the process a little more trying ), but they both are up and running!
I threw a 1TB disk in one machine and a 500GB disk in the other.
For "normal" stuffs, the iGPU seems to be just fine.
I also discovered that both machines have "ugpraded" 1680x1050 displays... WHEE !
There are downsides to the process
1) You lose the dGPU obviously. This means gaming suffers and Photoshops GPU acceleration won't be as tight.
2) You lose the external display capability. The external display is evidently hardwired to the dGPU.
3) Upgrading the OS, you have to repeat some of the steps that disables the dGPU.
Not really sure what value these machines have right now, but I'm considering putting them up on Craigslist for cheap, fully explaining all the downsides.... hoping maybe a high school student who wants a fat Macbook Pro might benefit.
I was telling my daughter - "You spend $20 on art supplies for the weekend, I spend $20 to craft half-working computers."
We're a laptop based company, so there are always a dozen Dell's and about as many MBP's.
Two years ago, I took a chance and bought two, Late-2011 MBP's with "bad video" for $40 a piece.
Turns out, Apple had a program that would replace the logic boards.
A year ago, another 2011 showed up, same issue. $25 later, I got it repaired as well.
This year, two Early-2011 MBP's showed up - same issues. Minimum bid, $10/each. I bought both knowing Apples program had ended.
However, I had heard that the community had figured out how to disable the dGPU and run solely on the i7's internal GPU.
Both machines are i7's, 2ghz and 8GB of ram.
Both machines were missing their harddisks.
Both machines had about 1/2 of their case screws missing.
Both machines did not come with their chargers.
Still, I have a couple spare laptop disks, the screws are replaceable, and I have a charger that I can at least see if they live.
Long story short - it took me the better part of last night and today to get them both running (not having a working OS on either made the process a little more trying ), but they both are up and running!
I threw a 1TB disk in one machine and a 500GB disk in the other.
For "normal" stuffs, the iGPU seems to be just fine.
I also discovered that both machines have "ugpraded" 1680x1050 displays... WHEE !
There are downsides to the process
1) You lose the dGPU obviously. This means gaming suffers and Photoshops GPU acceleration won't be as tight.
2) You lose the external display capability. The external display is evidently hardwired to the dGPU.
3) Upgrading the OS, you have to repeat some of the steps that disables the dGPU.
Not really sure what value these machines have right now, but I'm considering putting them up on Craigslist for cheap, fully explaining all the downsides.... hoping maybe a high school student who wants a fat Macbook Pro might benefit.
I was telling my daughter - "You spend $20 on art supplies for the weekend, I spend $20 to craft half-working computers."
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