2011 15" MacBook Pro Motherboard Replacement

[in my opinion]

at a price (US$867) -- that is nearly equivalent to the starting price of a Apple-Silicon M1 MacBook Air 13-in (US$999) you are making a SERIOUS error in judgement.

In addition, the reason the price is so high is that we have seen a large number of failures in the Discrete graphics chips on those Macs, and spare mainboards are in extremely short supply. That model is not necessarily the rock solid Icon you yearn for.

PeteB12 wrote:

I found a new replacement Motherboard for my 2011 15' MB Pro. Here is the info from Newegg: Laptop Motherboard for Macbook Pro 15.4" A1286 2.6 GHZ i7 logic board 820-3330-B 2012

Sold by Electronic new century a vendor at Newegg. It is supposed to be for a 2011 and 2012 model MB Pro. Has anyone ever bought one or used one? If anyone knows anything about it I would much appreciate it.

Sorry I don't know anything about this company or the quality of their products.

I feel I must say though that I would not spend any money on an obsolete/vintage computer that is not compatible with current or new apps/MacOS.

PeteB12 wrote:

I found a new replacement Motherboard for my 2011 15' MB Pro. Here is the info from Newegg: Laptop Motherboard for Macbook Pro 15.4" A1286 2.6 GHZ i7 logic board 820-3330-B 2012

Sold by Electronic new century a vendor at Newegg. It is supposed to be for a 2011 and 2012 model MB Pro. Has anyone ever bought one or used one? If anyone knows anything about it I would much appreciate it.

I wouldn't do this.

(a) You can get a brand new Mac for nearly the cost of that one part (see Grant's post)

(b) that 2011 Macbook Pro has outdated ports -- Thunderbolt 1, Firewire, USB 2. These are either very slow, or you can't find modern external devices to connect to them

(c) the WiFi is also outmoded, 802.11n

(d) maximum MacOS is only Sierra, also out of date. You can't run modern software on it.

Caveat emptor. Purchasing that would be a leap of faith and in no way any guarantee that it would not simply destroy your 2011 MBP, or accept any macOS installation without errors. Apple isn't making new parts for 2011 hardware and thus, this used logic board is as old as your 2011 Mac and could fail a day after installation.

There may be other, less expensive sellers. but they may or may not be the correct part for your computer. a search for that part number brings up dozens of listings on eBay for just under US$300.

If the part can be had for under US$300, the repair, complete, should be obtainable from third-party MacBook Repair places for less than the price of that part alone. But that computer is graphic-chip failure prone, so they may have to inflate the price to cover having to repair some samples again.

The whole idea of making this repair is a Bad Idea™. Buy a more resilient used computer instead.

The Logic Boards and Top Case Assemblies for the 2011 model and 2012 models are not compatible. While the mounting points are nearly identical, one of the mount points may only differ by 1 mm. Plus the Display Assemblies between the 2011 & 2012 models are not compatible. The product information appears to only reference 2012 as well which confirms my suspicions as well.

Plus like the others have said, the price is way too expensive. You can probably buy a whole 2011 laptop for that price. Or have the old Logic Board repaired...usually will cost about $300 US unless it has a GPU failure. You must be careful who you get to repair it since there are many people who don't really know what they are doing so make sure to find a reputable repair vendor.

You also need to be careful to make sure a firmware password lock is not enabled and to make sure the Logic Board is still being managed by a previous owner. You won't be able to fix either issue. Plus many 15" models are known to have GPU issues. I would never risk spending money for a 15" model laptop.

Personally I would not spend any money on this laptop even though I do like to keep older hardware working.