I did the same with my 2011 Macbook Pro in 2017, also to similar effect. As another poster points out, the more frequent maintenance task that makes a big diff

I did the same with my 2011 Macbook Pro in 2017, also to similar effect. As another poster points out, the more frequent maintenance task that makes a big difference is removing the fan and pulling the dust out. https://scotchi.net/2017/03/04/considering-reapplying-the-thermal-paste-on-a-2011-macbook-pro/ https://scotchi.net/2017/03/04/considering-reapplying-the-th... With that, my 2011 2.7 GHz i7 Macbook Pro continues to be completely usable even for C++ development (also has a 1 TB SSD and 8 GB of RAM), and hopefully will get me through to a point that Apple releases a laptop that I actually want to buy. If they haven't released a Macbook with a better keyboard by the time this thing dies, it'll be my last Apple laptop.