repair motherboard Apple MacBook Pro model#A1989

Mountain-marimba wrote:

I was in your situation a few years ago. The repair person found a refurbished motherboard for my MacBook Pro and I saved $400 compared to a new part. I decided to fix mine and it lasted another couple of years. A friend referred me to this independent repair person and I have been very happy with him. He was an authorized Apple service business as a one man shop until the Apple Stores rolled out everywhere and Apple pulled the repair business back to their own teams. Maybe you can find someone like this that is fully qualified and experienced, but charges less than out-of-warranty work at Apple.

Yes the Logic Boards on those older Macs were much easier to repair and having an independent shop actually fix the broken Logic Board was possible most of the time. The problem is it is impossible to get any replacement parts to repair a Logic Board on a USB-C Mac because Apple has made it impossible for independent repair shops to perform such repairs. I follow such a guy on YouTube and he has to tell his customers that those systems are unrepairable most times. It all depends on which component on the Logic Board is bad. He can get some parts, but most of them he cannot source even using broken donor Logic Boards (most of his repairs for older Apple laptops involve salvaging used components from broken Logic Boards). Unfortunately having an independent repair shop fix a Logic Board for a 2018+ laptop is probably not an option.

FYI, I never liked getting a different refurbished part with an unknown history to fix any product since I take extremely good care of everything I own. I know the refurbished parts will never be in as good of condition as my original part so I would personally prefer to have my own board repaired instead of replaced with a refurbished one. I also don't trust anyone else to perform such a repair since I have seen the mess some techs make performing these repairs to a Logic Board (it is scary to see some of their work).

I have several friends who have replaced the logic board on their MacBook Pros and they are happy with the outcome. They purchased the logic boards online and replaced them themselves. Based on their experience I am going to do the same. I purchased a logic board online for $220. I am not a power user so I just need the computer for general use. If I am successful with the repair and if I can get another few years out of it, it would be well worth it.

If you are going to have somebody replace it for $1000, then I think it would make more sense to buy a new MacBook Pro.

Consumer Reports Magazine has an interesting suggestion about Appliances. They say if the cost to repair exceeds half the cost of a new one, by a new one.

This can not be used as direct guidance, but it gives you an idea about how to start thinking about it.

It appears you have MBPro 13" (2018 or 2019) model. How much more is a brand new one?

Keep in mind the replacement Logic Board is a refurbished one.

Just this week I found one of our organization's 2017 laptops failed with a bad Logic Board (specifically a failed SSD which is soldered onto the Logic Board). This laptop had the Logic Board replaced a little over 90 days ago. What is more disturbing is that the SSD failed because the SSD ran out of spare blocks and entered into read-only mode. Since the user of this laptop certainly did not write 100's of TeraBytes of data in less than 90 days and the rest of the SSD's health information is good this tells me Apple gave us a Logic Board where the SSD was near death. This is one of the dangers with having an SSD soldered to the Logic Board.

If you do go ahead with the repair I highly recommend you check the health of the SSD using DriveDx and making sure the SSD has a high percentage of Spare Blocks left. Luckily we are getting another replacement Logic Board under the 90 day part warranty (I had to fight with Apple to get this since we were a bit past the 90 days when we realized what had happened -- the failure was confirmed by the user within the 90 day part warranty period as we had a kernel panic log to show the failure, but due to our excessive backlog of repairs we were past the 90 day part warranty period when we contacted Apple --- kudos for Apple for allowing a repair exception to be made for us as this is the first somewhat positive experience I've had with Apple in many years).

I was in your situation a few years ago. The repair person found a refurbished motherboard for my MacBook Pro and I saved $400 compared to a new part. I decided to fix mine and it lasted another couple of years. A friend referred me to this independent repair person and I have been very happy with him. He was an authorized Apple service business as a one man shop until the Apple Stores rolled out everywhere and Apple pulled the repair business back to their own teams. Maybe you can find someone like this that is fully qualified and experienced, but charges less than out-of-warranty work at Apple.

yuko288 Said:

"repair motherboard Apple MacBook Pro model#A1989: Have motherboard problem with Apple MacBook pro. Is it better buy a new one or repair? Estimate to repair is $1048 !"

-------

This is Circumstantial:

If this were me, I would base this on the price I paid for my original MacBook Pro, and if it is highly obsolete, in years. In ration, spending $2,196 or more for a new Mac, is much less, indeed, than $1,048.

Logic boards are expensive. It is your decision if it is worth it or not. I would not if the computer is 5 years old or older.

Depending on the age/model of the device (with some models, they are glued to other parts) it may not even be doable. Hope you got yours from a reputable seller.