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Dead Logic Board

One morning I woke up to my 2016 MacBook Pro 15" with its fans running at 100%. The computer was not hot in any way, in fact it was quite cold. I assumed it was an SMC failure, however, upon opening the lid the computer did not want to boot. The apple logo would appear but the bar would only go about a third way before resetting. I force shut down the computer with ctrl+alt+shift+power and attempted to reset the SMC and NVRAM multiple times; however, nothing appeared to work. I got on a chat with Apple Support where they tried the same thing with no results. I was able to get into the recovery menu, where I was instructed to do a drive erase and a reinstallation of MacOS. The reinstallation failed and instead we restarted the computer and went into the Internet Recovery section. We wiped the drives again and tried, but failed, a reinstallation of MacOS. I was instructed to restart my computer again, but into recovery instead of internet recovery. I was unable to get into recovery and instead I could only get into internet recovery. I force shut down the computer again to try to get into recovery mode, but the computer started acting really weird. It was able to turn on and get into the initial internet recovery screen, but it would turn off as I was entering my internet password in. I kept trying to boot into recovery but the computer was staying on for a shorter and shorter amount of time after every power-on. Eventually the computer was turning on and off so quickly and I had no control over it. It was not responding to anything and its fans, which were still at 100%, kept powering on and off. Eventually everything stopped and the computer did not turn on at all. I took it to my local Apple Store which said it was a logic board failure and I payed the repair fee for a new one.


However, I'm wondering where anything could have gone wrong. I have always taken extremely good care of my electronics and I'm almost disheartened knowing that one died in my hands. I am wondering if it was one of my external devices as well. I recently bought a 100w four port usb-c charger, it wasn't a name brand or anything but it had great reviews and seemed to work well. I also use a 32" 4K monitor through a usb-c to hdmi cable, as well as an Amazon Renewed VAVA usb-c hub with 100w passthrough charging, two usb-a devices and an additional 27" 1080p device hooked up. The device gets kind of hot when both monitors are connected and every now and then I accidentally leave it plugged in overnight, but usually the device sleeps after around 15 minutes of inactivity. Any help with what could have gone wrong is greatly appreciated, thank you in advance.

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 11.3

Posted on Mar 2, 2021 6:29 AM

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Posted on Mar 4, 2021 6:39 PM

I've never heard of either brand. I try to stay with respected brands that have a long history as it is so hard to figure out which other brands may be respectable and of good quality since so many customer reviews can unfortunately no longer be trusted as real. Even many tech sites reviewing hardware accessories don't really give an in depth review of the quality or reliability of the reviewed hardware these days.


It is hard to say what caused the problem. I do know that I've seen a lot of similar issues with our organization's USB-C Macs. I'm not blaming the Macs per se since I do know our organization's Mac users do tend to use cheap (inexpensive & poor quality) accessories and have liquid accidents (doesn't always leave any indicators or residue behind). One of the downsides of having a universal port for both data and power is sharing the circuitry so these issues are more common than on older Macs with separate ports for power & data.


Just try to do your best to find good quality brands & products by researching the best you can. I know it isn't easy. I dread searching for products to buy these days. I used to enjoy searching & researching for products to purchase, but not anymore.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Mar 4, 2021 6:39 PM in response to marka4554

I've never heard of either brand. I try to stay with respected brands that have a long history as it is so hard to figure out which other brands may be respectable and of good quality since so many customer reviews can unfortunately no longer be trusted as real. Even many tech sites reviewing hardware accessories don't really give an in depth review of the quality or reliability of the reviewed hardware these days.


It is hard to say what caused the problem. I do know that I've seen a lot of similar issues with our organization's USB-C Macs. I'm not blaming the Macs per se since I do know our organization's Mac users do tend to use cheap (inexpensive & poor quality) accessories and have liquid accidents (doesn't always leave any indicators or residue behind). One of the downsides of having a universal port for both data and power is sharing the circuitry so these issues are more common than on older Macs with separate ports for power & data.


Just try to do your best to find good quality brands & products by researching the best you can. I know it isn't easy. I dread searching for products to buy these days. I used to enjoy searching & researching for products to purchase, but not anymore.

Mar 2, 2021 8:30 PM in response to marka4554

You have to be extremely careful with no-name brand devices as they may not have proper safety electronics built into them. Plus you have to be extremely careful buying anything from Amazon (or anywhere for that matter) since their marketplace is full of cheap products and knock-off items and plain junk. Some of these products can be dangerous both to you, your house, and your electronics plus some of them will break quite easily. Even their reviews cannot be trusted anymore as so many of them have been "bought" and are fake. Stay with respected well known brands and check professional reviewers as well (you still need to be careful even with respected professional reviewers as they don't always provide a full review of all aspects of a product). OWC is usually a good vendor for all things Mac related (I dislike some of their products though), but there are certainly other well respected vendors and products out there although it can be very difficult finding them these days.


You paid good money for an Apple laptop so don't be afraid to pay good money for accessories as well. Also good products do not have to be really expensive.


FYI, damaging one USB-C port on an Apple laptop may affect the ability of all the other USB-C ports to charge the laptop even those ports on the other side of the laptop.

Mar 3, 2021 5:43 AM in response to HWTech

Hi! Thanks for the reply! I use a 4-port UTechSmart 100w usb-c charger for the computer, as well as many of my other devices. From all I’ve seen it seems to be a good company, I am concerned with that renewed usb-c hub I bought though. It was from a company named VAVA and I’ve never heard of them before. Which do you think could have been the instigator of the problem?

Dead Logic Board

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