Intel Imac with bad logic board.

I am so frustrated with this big Imac that doesn't work...sounds like with all the complaints that have been going on, with the same problems, that Apple would give a very special deal for all of us to get them fixed...They must know what is going on..I am surprised there isn't some kind of class action suit....!

My late 2010 iMac failed to start over the weekend and sounded the SOS beeps upon booting. I took it to my local Apple store who phoned me today to tell me the main logic board needs replacing at a cost of £544. This is outrageous. I am not going to pay that sort of money for something that should last much longer. Does anyone know of the logic board can be replaced by a third party?

Failing that, I'll buy a PC.

Well if you had a Apple care you should have been covered till 2013, and then they just replace it for free... That being said, what OS do you have? I had a 2011 June iMac that started experenicing problems right after Snow Lepoard 10.6.8 from that point on, things started to get worse when I installed Lion. I think all these problems are related to the software not making the hardware work correctly and causing some hardware failers. This is pretty evindent on here and becoming more of an increasing problem. I was so frustated after 3 repairs they wanted to replace the logic board, I asked what are my other options and that was to give me a in-store credit, so I took the credit and I have been using a Mac Mini and a Apple Display ever since. Still mad, because my preformance isn't up to speed, but I will give them one more shot when the new iMac's are released. I have had more PC fail in a 10 year period than I can shake a stick at, so I won't be jumping ship over to a Windows/PC machine as I still have some around I rarely use.

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@Gandalf. My OS is 10.7 (dot something). AppleCare would have been great, but that is a cost option which many users simply don't want to pay (after having paid out a princely sum for the iMac). In retrospect, though, I wish I had......

It is interesting when you say they gave you an option of in-store credit. I will ask my local Apple Store, but since they are asking me to pay £550 for a repair, then i'd expect an in-store credit to the same value!

i've been using my Win7 laptop since Saturday and tbh, it's not that bad! If I could retrieve my back-up files on Time Machine onto the Win7 laptop then i'd be singing and dancing......

In response to third party repair....I have talked to 2 geeks who said that it would cost about the same for them to repair, if not more,being that they would have to buy the parts from Apple...figures....Is Apple listening to all of us?

Please, PLEASE read my article about similar problems. Apple REPLACED my iMac for nothing. Granted, it was hard work and by god I spent ages trying to sort my iMac problem out but you'll find full documentation of the steps I took here: http://shaungarrod.over-blog.com/article-how-i-got-apple-to-utimately-replace-my -faulty-late-2006-imac-for-a-brand-new-i5-27-imac-for-free-98729037.html

This is encouraging news, as we were just told that our BRAND NEW iMac needs a new logic board. After spending several go rounds with Apple Care, telling us we need to adjust our screen saver settings and start-up options, we brought it into the store. Personally, having this fail after only a few months of use (symptoms appeared the first month after and they blamed it on a software install), we feel this is a lemon and have requested a new one. Of course they rejected that and will be repairing it. We will continue our quest, however, as we have lost confidence in this particular machine...we should have just opted for a refurbished one from the start - we paid for a brand new machine, and a refurbished one is what we're ending up with.

This happen to my June 2011 iMac, they would not credit me or replace the unit till after 3 failed attempts. The good news for me is they could not repair it and gave me a $3500 credit. I ended up buying a Mac Mini loaded for now and a Apple Display along with a MacBook Pro for my wife. My Mini experienced some issues with Lion but once I put ML on it, things seem normal now. I been using Macs for 12 years and this is my first issue, so when the new iMac come out in fall I will give them one more shot, because one thing I am missing is the speed of my iMac verses the Mini I am using, Best of Luck to all, as if this keeps up I can see "Class Action Lawsuit as this problem is a lot larger issue.

Well I am not a huge fan of Extended Warr, but Electronics these days in the digital age just don't last, especially all in one computers you are at a much higher risk of some thing going wrong because you are incorporating a large screen with a logic board and creating much more heat. I tell people with Large Screen TVs and All in one computers and or even laptops buy a warr. Peace of mind for at least 3 years. 😉

Just to add my own woes to this rather long thread - my 24" iMac (2008) failed earlier in the year, resulting in a logic board repair. It cost me over 800 New zealand dollars to fix. The repair lasted around 3 weeks before it broke again. A second fix was done free of charge (to repair the repair ?) and just last week, after two months, I now have another problem - black screen, repeating chimes, cannot boot. These models have sufferered from some serious quality issues which I believe Apple have ironed out, but I find it very disappointing that there simply is no way of getting a refund, or credit or anything like this in New Zealand such as has been suggested above.

From my perspective, if you have a 2008 model, stop torturing yourself. It will cost you more in the long run to try and get it repaired (unsuccessfully) than if you buy a new iMac or another brand. The annoying thing about the way the iMac is built is that it isn't even possible to re-use the screen. So you also end up having to pay to recycle the **** thing. I'm going to put mine up for sale for $1 on Trade Me (which is the New Zealand equivalent of eBay) and hopefully it will be of some use to anyone who wants it.

Hey Nigel before you give up hope give the consumer garantees act a once over then give apple a call a have a rant about your rights under the CGA namely: Acceptable quality - which it is not:

http://www.consumeraffairs.govt.nz/for-consumers/law/consumer-guarantees-act/you r-rights-under-the-consumer-guarantees-act

and this under "how long you can expect the goods to last"

http://www.consumeraffairs.govt.nz/for-consumers/goods/warranties

my 2009 imac had a similar issue as yours and i got $1500 worth of repars done on apple - i only had to pay for the services at Yoobee, about 200.

Good luck hope it helps.

I wanted to pile on here... my 27" iMac logic board just went bad. Frankly I am shocked at the quantity of folks having this issue... and apple doesn't do anything about it. I can tell you I have purchased 2 iMacs, a Mac Book and a MacMini... at a premium price and I expect quality when I pay for it. The replacement cost is high... but it wouldn't be for a PC. This iMac is only two years old. When I bought a dell XPS, it had an overheating problem after two years and Dell repaired a lot of parts - all of it for less than half they want to charge me to fix the iMac.

I think my 'Apple Loyalty' has been broken.

Well, I had written out a post about my troubles, but it was deleted by apple....so i will try again my early 2008 imac with 3.06 CPU and fully loaded died on me. Seems to be a logic board issues as well. There is something definitly wrong here with the products produced in the last 5 years. My macs from before that are still running fine, but can't do much with them since the OS from then is so archaiac. Wish Apple would step up and offer some real and affordable support to us.

UPDATE: Previously I bemoaned the failure of the logic board on my late 2010 iMac. Well, after telling me the logic board needed replacing, the Apple Store rang me (about 5 days after I had dropped it off) to say they had discovered it was a faulty memory card. A £55 cost to replace and my iMac is running smoothly.

NOW, the moral of this tale. The triage, performed by the Apple Store, tested the memory cards and deemed them to be ok - hence the prognosis that the logic board had failed. Had the bright technician not spotted the failed memory card, during a second test, then I would have had to have replaced the logic board at considerable cost and for no reason. SO, please please if you have symptons that suggest logic board problems you MUST get the memory cards tested, re-tested and re-re-tested first.

I hope this helps!

J.

My '06 iMac has finally died on me, and the Genuis Bartender told me yesterday that I need a logic board replacement. I did have Apple Care for 3 years, and when my hard-drive crashed in 2009, Apple replaced it without questions, so I highly recommend purchasing the maximum available Apple protection plans with your new products. Our household is entirely outfitted with Apple equipment (iMac, 2 MacBook Pro, 4 iPads, 3 iPhones, Apple Airport Extreme, Apple TV, yadayadayada). Now that my iMac is out of warranty, I'm thinking of opening it and playing around with its hardware. Has anyone replaced the Logic Board on their Intel Apple with a later model? Refurbished Logic Boards are available on the market at a lot cheaper pricing than that offered at the Apple Store, and I'd love to get another year out of the otherwise working desktop, or sell it for a reasonable premium in a fairly working condition. I'd love some feedback. I was also looking forward to another iMac in the house but the lenght of this thread and its age is making me reconsider further iMac investments.

Thank you!

George

My mid-2010 21.5" iMac also experienced the same problem, and the diagnostic by Apple Store came down to a dead logic board. This was just 1 year and 8 months into the computer ownership, which I consider unacceptable. The replacement cost of the logic board is $737 - extremely high given that they will only warrant the replacement for another 90 days after the replacement.

Key behavior of the broken iMac was constant kernel panic, both at startup and during normal use. From a cold start, the computer would last about 10-15 minutes before experiencing a kernel panic, while the timeframe was on the order of < 1 minute if the computer was already hot to the touch.

Definitely feels like this is a quality control issue or an issue of the computer overheating internally. Computer logic boards should not last this short.