Mid-2012 15" MBP Running beautifully on Monterey

Took some time upgrading through Mavericks, then Catalina, then finally Monterey with OCLP. Turns out I needed to plug the new SSD into the internal SATA for it to do its firmware update from mavericks to Catalina, not sure what that's about.

So far, my experience has been absolutely astounding. This computer absolutely flies on Mavericks, but I wasn't expecting near the same performance on Monterey. The biggest issue has been battery, which has 445 cycles and seems to not be lasting very well. I got this computer for free from a friend who found it in their basement with a dead HDD.

I've already spent about $50 on getting the thing working, and as such I probably won't spend more to get a replacement battery. I don't plan to use it very heavily, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Anyone with the same machine have any questions or recommendations?