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I have an "Early 2011" 15 inch Macbook Pro that came with 4GB of RAM and I upgraded to 8GB a week after buying.

I bought these RAM Modules: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002YUF8ZG/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I want to upgrade to 16GB, how do I know if this is supported?

(I'm running windows 8 with bootcamp, since I do a lot of work on Visual Studio)

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  • You would have to check the manual andor the specifications on the motherboard used.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Apr 3, 2013 at 16:25
  • @ahmed In conjunction with ForeverWintr's answer below this is the exact RAM modules required crucial.com/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=89FD7305A5CA7304
    – Simon
    Commented Apr 3, 2013 at 17:21
  • I had a 6,2 that did not support 16gb - it wouldn't even boot (the ram worked fine in my lenovot t530), so take it for what it's worth.
    – nerdwaller
    Commented Apr 3, 2013 at 17:34
  • @ahmed It maybe true to say that whilst you can definitely upgrade to 16GB of RAM, it probably won't give you the performance boost you may think it will or require, than you already achieve with 8GBs. For that you probably be looking at an SSD upgrade for your Macbook Pro.
    – Simon
    Commented Apr 3, 2013 at 17:43

3 Answers 3

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You can use Crucial's Memory Advisor tool to judge what your Macbook can handle. Here's it's result for an early 2011 15 inch Macbook Pro. As you can see, a 16GiB upgrade is listed as "Guaranteed-compatible".

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  • 1
    Likewise, Other World Computing tests Apple models for maximum memory expansion and guarantees their memory up to that amount. Start here: eshop.macsales.com/shop/apple/memory
    – JRobert
    Commented Apr 3, 2013 at 17:13
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I've upgraded my friend's 2011 MacBook Pro with 16GB of RAM, and it works great. OS X recognizes it and everything. I'm not sure why Apple decided to say it only supports up to 8GB, possibly they didn't want to sell the 16GB upgrade.

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  • They probably did that for the same reason most PC laptop makers do. When the spec was written it was only tested with soDIMMS up to 8iB (cq largest on the market at the time of testing).
    – Hennes
    Commented Jan 7, 2016 at 17:19
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If you upgrade your Mac to 16GB ( I have an early 2011 5inch MBP) you may have to reset the SIM and NVRAM to get it to show up as 16 instead of 4 or 8 ( or whatever you had installed).

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