Building the Ultimate 17-inch MacBook Pro

In this video, I perform some very in-depth upgrades to a Late-2011 17" MacBook Pro, making it the ultimate, most upgradeable MacBook Pro possible. I utilize two products designed by iBoff, "NevBolt" and "X-GPU", adding both native NVMe support, as well as full native PCIe x8 eGPU support to the machine.

[cleengreeny]

The amount of work that you’re putting into a 2011 machine is absurd, and I love it!

[peanutbutterchinaman]

This is the best thing I’ve ever seen, long live the 17inch

[iBoffRCC]

Great video! Its good to see our Kit works on 17" inch too! Actually we never tested the X-GPU on 17" before(we only tested NVMe). So I guess you're the first one! ;)

1. For the short NVMe cable: I never thought you would actually perform this mod to 17" so I sent the whole Kit for 15". Its okay, i will send you a longer cable for 17"
2. For R9 - RX580 bug - did you tried to boot High Sierra?

[mndlessdrwer]

Those cables are gorgeous and look exactly like something IBM would cook up during their R&D for third party product development to resolve a problem before they designed a more streamlined fix for it. Beautiful work, really.

[julian.morgan]

Writing this on late 2011 15" MBP running Big Sur thanks to you and the OCLP team. Sadly though I'd love to play with this kind of ultimate tinkering I don't have the tools, the skills, the knowledge or the patience. I'm embarrassed I thought I was pretty cool after swapping out the superdrive for an SSD caddy. Even so, incredible to watch - very inspiring :)

[emmabentley]

This is the single most cool video I have ever seen. I owned one of these and had to sell it due to the 6650 failing on it . This is simply amazing

[jacksonsneed]

Absolutely fantastic!! Once this is available I'm all over this!! Thanks for demoing and sharing this with us brother; I know a lot of us still have a soft spot for the 17", and now it's time to unleash her full potential! (again, AWESOME PRODUCT IDEA!!) Thanks again!

[dorinxtg]

Looking at around 9:00 - I see that the board has some screw holes and iBoff can print some cheap 3D plastic housing to hold the PCB at the exact aligning that is needed. Without it, anyone who is not a totally pro with this kind of work - will have lots of issues.

[huntermartin]

you are such a prodigy, thanks to you I am able to flash 2011 MacBook Pros with failing AMD GPUs, and have done many of them for customers of mine! I'm so looking forward to trying this out too, and I do have a 15 inch 2011 MacBook Pro (already flashed with your DeMux firmware too) - I've never done soldering like this, but I'm ready!

[thechannelwithnoname]

You should get one of those subtle design 802.11ac cards for unibody MacBooks! And upgrade that 17 inch beast to Monterey using the OCLP! Would love to see a video based on that!

[draggonhedd]

I love the hardcore mods like this. I could never attempt it myself, i just dont have the skill or equipment. I love the dedication to a specific platform. Side note, Love the modified boot chime.

[To-mos]

Thinking about dropping an m.2 SATA into my old iPod Classic by using a PATA to SATA adapter. Love giving old tech access to new hardware, keep this up love all your builds!

[kennethkrabat]

For about 45 minutes I thought I would revive my beloved 17 inch, its defect card having been disconnected via a ROM reprogramming. (Didn't do it myself, but waited while my military electronics specialist friend ran through the options back THEN in his spare time. Took a while, and it came back and worked for 18 months. Now it shows black artefacts in finder and mail windows, and blinks lines in Finder, when it needs to work a little bit. 

I really miss the screen real estate.) But I need to be able to travel with it. Too much external gear. Which does not prevent me from LOVING this project, crazy breakout boards and PC power supply and all!! 😀

[zaprodk]

Wow. Such an insane modification! - Soo many mods, just one bad solder joint and it would be a nightmare to debug i'm sure. Good job!

[numerounotg]

Wow you weren't kidding about building the ultimate Macbook Pro 😳 Amazing job 🔥

[SiroccoSeven]

Great to see Iboff getting all the recognition. I upgraded my MacBook Air 2015 i7 maxed out to 16gb ram by Iboff. So far it’s been good.

[thesunsetchannel]

dosdude, I am amazed that you could do such complicated upgrade for the beloved 17' MacBook. I also have one late 2011 17" MacBook too. I do think this this the best MacBook that was ever designed. However, 95% of us don't have the ability to so such difficult mod as you just accomplished. I congratulate you success on this. Best.

[nikoss]

Man is a living legend Respect from Greece
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏🇬🇷

[jerrybomcool]

This is probably the best thing I’ve seen all year! Great job to you doing this mod and a huge thank you to the team that made this product in making such an amazing design what clearly works amazingly!

[IntoTheMindlessAbyss]

Thanks to you, I managed to get a few of those 2011 MBP computers working. The GPU disabling programs were like the icing on the cake.

I never exactly had the chance to thank you in that regard so thank you either way. You're a god damn genius.