Memory upgrade to 8GB on unibody MacBook

I bought the 13" unibody MacBook one month prior to it's upgrade to become the new improved 13" unibody MacBook Pro (with unopenable battery compartment, extra 3 hours of battery life, more color gammut, SD slot, firewire 800 port, and a new 8Gb memory limit).

My MacBook says it is limited to 4GB of DDR3 1066mhz memory, in 2 SO-DIMMs. But that was written back when you couldn't get 2 4GB SO-DIMMs. Now that you can get them, the very similar MacBook Pro is shipping with 4GB standard, and can be upgraded to 8GB. I've asked (Apple reps), and I'm repeatedly told that my model cannot be upgraded to 8. When I ask for the reason they alway say: "Because that's the published limit at the time your mac was built." I find this unconvincing. If they said: "Because the memory controller in the chipset is limited to 4GB, despite being seemingly identical to the memory controller in the same chipset newest MacBook model," then I'd just take their word for it.

Has anyone tried it, or found any research as to whether two 4GB DDR3 1066mhz SO-DIMMs can be installed in the unibody MacBook without FireWire?

Solution 1:

I just found that there IS a way to get the late 2008 macbooks up to 8GB RAM. Apparently Apple released a firmware upgrade to fix a problem with the optical drive that also expanded the memory limit to 8GB. Check out this posting on 9to5mac.

In case the link is down, here is a summary of what to do. Check the Boot ROM Version in your System Profiler.

• MacBook Pros with a Model ID of MacBookPro5,1 should have a Boot ROM Version of MBP51.007E.B05.
• MacBooks with a Model ID of MacBook5,1 should have a Boot ROM version of MB51.007D.B03

Machines with other Model IDs are not affected and don’t need an update. If your Boot ROM version does not match the numbers above, download the appropriate firmware updater for your model machine and install according to the instructions:

• For MacBook Pros (MacBookPro5,1) MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.8
• For MacBooks (MacBook5,1) MacBook EFI Firmware Update 1.4

Solution 2:

Apple does limit the motherboard on certain models. For example 4GB of RAM was only available on the previous model White Macbook from the 3rd iteration. During each refresh they change the motherboard being used on the base model and this is generally the reason for the restriction.

The series you have definitely does not support 8GB as we went through the exercise at work after upgrading one of the newer models. It will only read the first 4GB of RAM.

Solution 3:

The October 2009 unibody aluminium Macbooks supports 6GB (4+2) of RAM without any problems. 8GB doesn't work, though.