YouTuber tries to upgrade his old M1 MacBook Pro 13 to the brand-new Apple M2 processor

In the current era of soldered hardware components, upgrading notebooks has become practically impossible for most regular consumers. Although many laptop owners would already be content with upgrading the SSD mass storage or the memory of their beloved machine, a tech-savvy YouTuber has now taken on the seemingly impossible task of upgrading the processor of his M1 MacBook Pro 13.

To be more precise, popular YouTuber Luke Miani attempted to upgrade to the better performing Apple M2 CPU by putting it inside his older MacBook Pro 13 from 2020. Since the processor is soldered and therefore not user-replaceable, he swapped the entire logic board of his notebook after pulling it out of a brand-new 2022 MacBook Pro 13. This turned out to be a relatively fiddly task due to the tiny cable connectors, but in the end, the visually almost identical logic board including the Apple M2 processor found its place in the MacBook Pro 13 that was originally equipped with the Apple M1 CPU.

Unfortunately, the upgrade ended in disappointment because the MacBook Pro 13 refused to boot after the Apple M2 transplant. The screen stayed black and the laptop did not respond to any inputs. Miani first suspected Touch ID to be the culprit, as the fingerprint reader may not be compatible with an unfamiliar motherboard for security reasons. But even after replacing this component, the Apple MacBook Pro remained unresponsive, and it was not even possible to put the notebook into the DFU recovery mode.

The tinkerer assumes that the culprit may have been the slightly modified keyboard and touchpad interfaces of the new 2022 MacBook Pro 13, but unfortunately, there is no technical certainty as to why the M2 CPU upgrade failed. Nevertheless, Luke Miani’s endeavor is still admirable and definitely worth watching, which is why we have embedded the aforementioned Apple M2 processor upgrade video below this article.  

The 2022 Apple MacBook Pro laptop with M2 chip is available from US$1,299 at Amazon