Intel Imac with bad logic board.

Add me as well.

Early 2008 iMac 24", 8800gs. Started with a freeze in Windows 7 (Boot camp) then it continually will go to a black screen when warmed up, in either OS X, Windows 7 or booting from Leopard disk.

Keeping the fans at 2k+ RPMs allows longer periods of use, but after a crash, it needs to be off for an hour or so to reach the OS.

I bought my imac 24" in late 2008. May of this year it started freezing on me every time I turned it on. It now won't do anything. My mom saved forever and bought it for me for christmas and didn't know any better but bought it from best buy... therefore, I do not have the three year extended apple care. I took it to the apple store and the logic board apparently went out... $745 to fix. I am a graphic design student and do not have the money to get it fixed. Wish I had been warned about the constant failure of this computer. I work on macs everyday at school and have never had a problem until I decided to own one. Of course I fell in love with the awesome software and the user friendliness of the computer at school. But now I can't use it. Awesome.

My imac 27 i5 logic board is being replaced. It will not recognize memory in one of its modules. I am worried about apple hardware quality. Here is a list of failed apple products on my history of being an apple owner.

g4 mac pro died with a logic board failure 2 years after purchase (no warranty)
cinema display 17 inch backlight died 2 years after purchase (no warranty)
Mac pro intel died after 3 years one month of extended warranty (no warranty)
30 inch monitor died after two years (replaced by warranty)
23 inches monitor 5 years old, has horrible problems, it has pink hue everywhere (no warranty)
27 imac pro i5 logic board failure (is being replaced by warranty)
15 inch macbook pro battery dead after two years (no warranty)

My only machines that have been problem free

are

G5 MAC PRO 2005 years still running
IMAC MINI 2009 still running
G4 MAC PRO 2004 still running.

Its sad, but I had a failure well above 50% of all my mac products. You might wonder why i keep buying them. I just love the OS, but their hardware has much to improve. !

Same thing happened to me!! I am in tears 😟 This is very rediculous for a computer to stop working 18 months. It never turned off, never had any problems. Went to turn it on the other day and nothing. The price i was quoted was 800 and that doesnt include labor!!!! I really need this thing fixed but I might as well buy another one for 1300 with the freaking apple care, but that is going to set me back a lot!!!! Apple has got to do better!!!

My iMac 24" was 2yrs, 3 mons old, used VERY litte due to my traveling 6 months of the year. No problems at all, then suddenly, it wouldn't boot. Nothing, no errors, just nothing. Logic board was gone. Apple wants $1100 to replace it, since its out of warranty. Isn't that nice? I paid $1800 for it, added RAM, and not I get to pay another $1100 plus tax.
I'll never buy another Apple product. That was a hard lesson... but I will stick with PC's. Steve Jobs, wake up and read dissatisfaction reviews!

Add me to the list.

Early 08 iMac, 24", 3.06 processor and 8800gs vid card. Windows XP SP3. Playing COD4. Blue Screen of death. Tried to restart, no gray screen, just a fan noise and then nothing. Couldn't detect the optical drive or HDD.

Luckily had Apple Care and they came to the house and replaced the dead mother board, and threw in a replacement video card they'd sent as well just in case.

According to tech spt - "this is unusual"

Obviously hasn't read this thread...

I don't want to be added to the list... yet my replacement 2.4 ghz alum. 24" imac is diagnosed as a failed logic board and failing video card, etc. this imac replaced our 24" white imac back in 9/1/2007 - bought applecare for 3 years and 11/23/2010 diagnosed failed logic board - after i scrubbed the hard-drive running disc genius 3 - no error found, reinstalled snow leopard, ilife 2011, ms office 2010 - kids programs - still failure, over $2000 grand invested plus programs, memory, hassle, and an expired extended warranty - yet the machine looks brand new - controlled environment, babied - keyboard protection, we are a mac family, laptops, iphones, ipads, time machines, yet our family computer keeps going down. I have a old dell 8800 that has literally been thrown around and it keeps running? yet i hate windows! love mac os!!!! please apple hear us and keep us and help remedy this situation with all your billions in profit!!!!

Add me to the list.


Got a iMac 24" 3.06 ghz geforce 8800 GS from 08.
Two days ago I got my first freeze in Win7 playing MW2. Tried reinstalling drivers and the game but gave up. Same night safari froze entire screen in osx. Mouse still moving but purple and green squares all over the desktop. After a hard reboot the computer managed to boot osx but as soon as I logged in and started doing things it froze again. This have now escalated to not being able to boot either os or the install DVD. Haven't spoken to my Apple retailer yet but I guess it's a failed graphics card and/or logic board.

I had really hoped to get a lot more years out of it as it's mostly used for photo editing and watching movies.

As a trainer of photographers I became aware of 3 client imacs with the strange lines on the screen more than a year ago

In that period I only had a few clients, so the number of faulty iMacs I have seen is high

In addition I have experienced the problem with my own 20" iMac and my wife is experiencing a similar, not identical, issue with her late model G4 powerbook

One client solved his problem by simply buying 2 new aluminium iMacs
Another by just ceasing use of his machine in favour of his lower powered macbook

I have mentioned this problem to my local authorised repairer several times and he is not aware of any repair program, however Apple have replaced the top cover on my white macbook 4 times for a design flaw despite me not having applecare on it and it being more than 3 years old

To Summarise, the problem of lines on the screen occurs on 4 iMacs, 3 of which currently reside in my iMac graveyard.
The problem is lines on the screen and crashing or freezing
Screenshots are available, but I don't have any to hand right now (they're in the graveyard)
The problem worsens as the temperature of the machine increases

The 4 iMacs are

24" white intel iMac
24" white intel iMac
24" white intel iMac
20" white intel iMac

In addition 1x G4 Powerbook with similar graphical issues.
These are represented more as a pinkish low bit image that plagues the light areas of the screen
Performance does not seem to be affected

My plan is to ring apple and escalate this up the chain and spend as many hours as it takes to get resolution for these four machines

Due to the amount of time I expect this to

They should repair or replace. It is not fair to consumers to bear the cost Apple selling faulty machines
It may not be Apple's fault that this happened, but it is their responsibility to do something about it.

Perhaps I will setup some sort of video recorded destruction of these 5 machines while they are running and see what sort of attention that receives

Any suggestions?

my mums 17" imac, 3 years old, now has lines down half the screen. 500+ pounds to fix it... crazy..

what can we do to complain - get some resolution here? obviously theres a problem, apple need to step up and resolve it. Otherwise, I'm going to recomend the she gets a cheap windows machine as a replacement. 😟

Egg

A cheap Windows machine is the worst kind of replacement (ever hear the phrase 'cut off your nose to spite your face')

The best way for someone like your mum to own Macs is;
1. Buy a Mac with Applecare where Applecare is cheap (not laptops)
2. Use the Mac for 18-24 months
3. Buy a replacement (with Applecare)
4. Turn on the replacement
5. spend 5 minutes typing in some basic info
6. choose to copy setting files and apps from existing machine (firewire cable required)
7. Proceed with the 'migration' and go away for an hour or two
8. Sell the original machine (macs with applecare sell easily for reasonable money-make sure to jump on to the forum and get some advice on wiping the old machine before selling it)
9. repeat step 2

You will get better ongoing performance, updated versions of iLife and OSX and most importantly ongoing warranty (many people spend about 20-50% of the value of a new machine on iLife and OSX in a 2-3 year period)

It is trivial* to get a mac mini and a 20" screen and clone your mum's old mac to it as described above (*since the old Mac is probably not able to stay alive long enough you might need someone to remove the drive and put it in an enclosure for this purpose - you might be able to get the local Mac Store to do this for you for free if you buy from them and you mum will be able to continue as if nothing happened)

If you get your mum windows, even the much less troublesome windows 7, she will have to deal with migrating emails, migrating files etc. and viruses on top of that (is your mum comfortable with a wholesale changeover - I don't believe Microsoft have dedicated sites to help Mac users come across to Windows like Apple do)

If you get a cheap windows machine and it suffers a design flaw you will not find any forum for that machine to get advice or even find out that your issue is common (I agree that Apple don't care enough about this issue, we need to raise it's visibility, but at least they provide a forum for us to do so)

Isn't it fairly likely that a cheap Windows machine will have been built with cost savings getting priority over reliability or performance

Does she use iPhoto?
If so she will spend a lot of time learning and reimporting into Picasa (the easiest windows alternative)

What about backup?
If she is not using time-machine or similar to backup you might choose to view this as a valuable lesson. ie. What would she lose if it had been the hard drive rather than the logic board?

If you can run to it I would recommend that she gets

1x Mac Mini (consider a genuine Apple refurb, but be certain to get applecare)
1x Reasonable Quality Screen - 20"-24" (this will probably last at least 5 years depending how fussy she is about brightness and colour drift)
2x 1TB backup drives for time machine (these should NEVER be used for anything but time machine and ALWAYS rotated (swapped) off site on a REGULAR cycle)
1x Applecare
No Ram upgrades or anything else are necessary, but if you are happy to spend more it can't hurt

And keep complaining about the old Mac :-P

In addition to the 4 iMacs listed earlier I have just become aware of another client of mine with the same issue
24" iMac with horizontal lines

thats the 6th machine (5th iMac) with these kind of issues

My advice to her was to buy a replacement so she can get on with her work

Incidentally, I haven't heard of many 20" iMacs with this issue - my own was a 20" model with the upgraded graphics
Perhaps I would have had a more reliable unit if I had spent less on the standard unit

If I get the time I am going to try and acquire the two macs which are not currently in my possession and video them all failing together to see if we can gain some visibility

so, and update from my parents.. they sent me a photo of the problem here:

[IMG] http://i53.tinypic.com/nejdzl.jpg[/IMG]

so, in fact, they are big thick grey bars - they block a large portion of the screen.

My parents (one of whom is very sick) use this device to do ichat with the grandchildren. It really makes the option of the mac hard - when they cant seen windows and popups on the right of the screen...

will call apple and see what they say...

I removed my 8800gs from the iMac and baked the GPU in the oven for 10 minutes at 400F.. Used Shin Etsu x23 thermal paste on the heat sync for GPU(and RAM) and CPU. My iMac now runs like new and is 15F cooler than before.

Mine was doing strange video things before and locking up whenever it hit 140F.. I stressed the GPU to 160 and let it sit there for 10 minutes and it didn't even hickup. Reflowing the solder will fill in the cracks that were caused by the board warping. If mine ever breaks again, I'm going to use some bushings to replace the springs on the GPU so the board can no longer warp.

I also did this with my XBox 360 and it worked as well. It may sound silly but it really did the trick.

replaced my paperweight (late 2006 imac 20"/2.1ghz) first with old macbook pro then later with mac mini (when I gave the old MBP to my niece). still frustrating to this day that the beautiful machine died so soon after warranty period and no recourse except to buy a new PC (or pay 3/4's the cost of a new imac to replace logic board). have hung onto it even tho class action suit has never gone thru and still start it up occasionally and contemplate using it as a server (mine does continue to run even tho screen eventually freezes), but doesn't seem worth it for that purpose only. maybe I can think of a modding project for it someday ... get some use from it.