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A1707 Motherboard Board Upgrade/Replacement

Hello everyone! I hope you're doing well!


I have an A1707, MacBook Pro "Core i7" 2.6 15" Touch/Late 2016 2.6 GHz Core i7 (I7-6700HQ)

with 2.6 GHz, 256 GB.

I had a problem with the motherboard and it stopped working.


Considering that I need to change the motherboard, would it be possible for me to buy a new/used motherboard with a higher configuration to install in my MacBook case?


For example, buy a motherboard of the same model, A1707 with 1 TB SSD and 3.1 GHz processor?

I have seen that the motherboard design for the A1707 is the same, what changes is only the processor and SSD configuration.


Would it be possible to perform this upgrade?


Thank you for your support!

MacBook Pro 15″

Posted on Jan 19, 2024 7:53 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jan 19, 2024 8:11 AM

As long as the Logic Board is for the exact same model, then yes as only the memory, SSD, and CPU are different. Just make sure it is still an A1707 Logic Board.


However, there are a lot of risks with acquiring an unknown used Logic Board (or Mac). The Logic Board could be locked with a firmware password lock, or the board may still be managed by a previous owner. If either is the case, then there is nothing you can do about it and you will end up with a brick or a system where someone else can control everything respectively. Plus these 2016+ Logic Boards tend to have a lot of quirkiness and may have hidden faults where maybe some of the USB-C ports may not be fully functional plus I would be concerned about the health of the SSD since SSDs have a limited number of writes available to them....you could receive a board where someone had an excessive amount of data written to the SSD.


There is a lot of risk involved here. Plus this doesn't even consider the known issues with the Display Assembly cable, the butterfly keyboard, and also the very likely possibility that the battery is worn out or about to fail. Plus the 2017 model is now "Vintage" and only supports up to macOS 13.x Ventura which will stop receiving security updates at the end of 2025. At that time many third party apps will also stop receiving new updates so any online apps may start to stop working correctly anytime after that point.


Be careful.



2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 19, 2024 8:11 AM in response to Lencioni

As long as the Logic Board is for the exact same model, then yes as only the memory, SSD, and CPU are different. Just make sure it is still an A1707 Logic Board.


However, there are a lot of risks with acquiring an unknown used Logic Board (or Mac). The Logic Board could be locked with a firmware password lock, or the board may still be managed by a previous owner. If either is the case, then there is nothing you can do about it and you will end up with a brick or a system where someone else can control everything respectively. Plus these 2016+ Logic Boards tend to have a lot of quirkiness and may have hidden faults where maybe some of the USB-C ports may not be fully functional plus I would be concerned about the health of the SSD since SSDs have a limited number of writes available to them....you could receive a board where someone had an excessive amount of data written to the SSD.


There is a lot of risk involved here. Plus this doesn't even consider the known issues with the Display Assembly cable, the butterfly keyboard, and also the very likely possibility that the battery is worn out or about to fail. Plus the 2017 model is now "Vintage" and only supports up to macOS 13.x Ventura which will stop receiving security updates at the end of 2025. At that time many third party apps will also stop receiving new updates so any online apps may start to stop working correctly anytime after that point.


Be careful.



Jan 19, 2024 9:47 AM in response to HWTech

Thank you very much for your response and warnings about the OS discontinuation.


I was not aware about it, and also, about the SSD write limitation!


I will consider this information to make my decision on buying a new one, or replacing and continue until I lost support

(The price of a new Macbook is a little bit high in my country!)


Thank you very much!

A1707 Motherboard Board Upgrade/Replacement

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