MacBook Pro 17" Unibody Repair Help: Learn How to Fix It Yourself.

Tools

These are some common tools used to work on this device. You might not need every tool for every procedure.

Models

A1297 (EMC 2272 MacBookPro5,2) 2.66 GHz (Early 2009), A1297 (EMC 2272 MacBookPro5,2) 2.93 GHz (Early 2009), A1297 (EMC 2329 MacBookPro5,2) 2.8 GHz (Mid 2009), A1297 (EMC 2329 MacBookPro5,2) 3.06 GHz (Mid 2009), A1297 (EMC 2352 MacBookPro6,1) 2.53 GHz (Mid 2010), A1297 (EMC 2352 MacBookPro6,1) 2.66 GHz (Mid 2010), A1297 (EMC 2352 MacBookPro6,1) 2.8 GHz (Mid 2010), A1297 (EMC 2352-1 MacBookPro8,3) 2.2 GHz (Early 2011), A1297 (EMC 2352-1 MacBookPro8,3) 2.3 GHz (Early 2011), A1297 (EMC 2564 MacBookPro8,3) 2.4 GHz Late 2011, A1297 (EMC 2564 MacBookPro8,3) 2.5 GHz Late 2011

There are a number of components in the MacBook Pro 17" Unibody that can be cost-effectively upgraded.

Memory: MacBook Pro 17" Unibodys come with 4 GB standard. If your MacBook Pro 17" Unibody is still running with only the stock RAM, upgrading to 8 GB will provide a performance boost. User tests have proved that installing Mavericks can enable an upgrade to 16 GB when combined with proper downclocking.
Hard Drive: 500 Gigabyte hard drives came standard with the MacBook Pro 17" Unibody. You can easily upgrade the drive to 750 GB.

The MacBook Pro 17" Unibody was announced in January of 2009. The MacBook Pro 17" Unibody looks very distinct from other MacBook laptops, with the exception of the MacBook Unibody and MacBook Pro 15" Unibody. The MacBook Pro 17" Unibody is easily identifiable from the other two models by having a 17" screen, as opposed to a 13" or 15" screen.

Use the laptop identification system to help you identify your machine. MacBooks tend to look very similar, and it's important to know which machine you have before ordering any replacement parts.

The MacBook Pro 17" Unibody's case is composed of aluminum, just like the laptops before it. However, the case is machined out of a single block of aluminum, following the same process of the MacBook Unibody and the MacBook Pro 15" Unibody. The Unibody revision also introduced some features that were never before seen on an Apple laptop: the inclusion of dual video cards (one for regular use, one for graphics intensive applications) the Mini DisplayPort (which replaced the full-size DVI display connector), and larger hard drive and RAM capacities.

Factory specs for each model are available at the following links.