A brave YouTuber has tried to upgrade its Apple M1-based MacBook Pro for 2020 to the latest M2 chip. Given that both can be found in the 13-inch MacBook Pro, it shouldn’t be impossible to transplant the M2 into an older version of the MacBook – at least in theory.
Despite the fact that the logic board in the new MacBook Pro is almost identical to its predecessor, the experiment did not go according to plan. In true proof of the complex ability to upgrade laptops, the upgrade attempt has gone nowhere – and there may be several reasons why.
It takes a lot of courage to take any device or hardware worth more than $ 1,000 and then continue to risk destroying it for testing purposes, but that’s what YouTuber Luke Miani did in his latest experiment. He tried to transplant the M2 chip and logic board from the latest 13-inch MacBook Pro to the 2020 M1 MacBook Pro. Needless to say, this will completely void the warranty on both devices, so if you feel adventurous too, be sure to keep that in mind.
The logical first step in performing such an upgrade is simply to replace the M1 chip in the older MacBook Pro with the new M2, but the processor is soldered and cannot be replaced. Miani had to change the entire logic board to try her experiment, so he removed it from the latest MacBook Pro. It wasn’t easy to move it from a newer Mac to an older one – YouTuber had to deal with really small cable connectors. After a lot of confusion, however, Miani managed to install the new logic board in the 13-inch MacBook Pro for 2020.
This brings us to the point of truth – will the older MacBook Pro survive the upgrade to the new M2 chip? Unfortunately no. Despite several attempts, YouTuber failed to load the laptop. The screen remained black and the computer did not respond completely. This caused Miani to replace the Touch ID component, and although he was able to change it, he still couldn’t load the Frankensteined MacBook Pro. He couldn’t even put it in DFU recovery mode.
Apple
According to the bold YouTuber, the reason for the failure of his experiment may be that the 2022 MacBook Pro 13 has a slightly modified interface of the keyboard and touchpad. Although Miani didn’t mention it, there may be other reasons for this, such as the recently discovered solid state drive (SSD) issues in the new MacBook.
As shown by several benchmarks, the new M2 MacBook Pro fails to impress when it comes to multitasking. This is because it resorted to using on-premises 256GB SSD as virtual memory when needed, which is when it used all 8GB of Apple Unified memory. Combined with slower SSDs than its predecessor, it looks like the M2 MacBook may not be the multi-tasking beast some may have hoped for. It is difficult to say whether this played a role in the failed upgrade from M1 to M2, but it could have.
Although the experiment failed, it’s definitely worth watching the experience, so we recommend watching the video above. It’s a pity that laptops these days often don’t have the ability to be upgraded. The fact that replacing the entire logic board from a new MacBook to an older one is not surprising at all, but the ability to support some custom upgrades and repairs would certainly be welcome.
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