I might as well chime in on this post as well. I have already stated my case elsewhere. My 2007 MBP started playing up earlier this year so it was outside the 4 year period then. Of course, like most others, I did not know about the NVIDIA problem until I started looking on the boards. I live in the UK but was working in the Mediterranean for three months. The MBP died the first week away. So for three months no MBP (I used the company PC instead). On my return home I contacted Apple in California by email and received a telephone call from Ireland soon after. No go - they simply did not want to know. I took it to my local Apple reseller and ran a test in store. The logic board came up as OK. It went for a more intrusive test with their engineers, for £66, who confirmed the logic board had failed. The cost of replacement (if we can get one) was quoted at £536. I found an independent guy who did it for £450. He also fitted smcFanControl to preclude it happening again. The fans now run at 2900 RPM. I am using it now. Interesting that Apple are only charging $300+ in the US. Another example of the UK exchange rate going wrong. Harsha UB - good luck with the iMac - the hard drive failed on my iMac 27 in May this year. I am presently waiting for my reimbursement after the recent recall. Before that recall, I was £800 out of pocket on Apple hardware failures this year.
The following from Wikipedia explains the failure quite well:
Some chips of the GeForce 8 series (concretely those from the G84 and G86 series) may suffer from an overheating problem. NVIDIA states this issue should not affect many chips,[40] whereas others assert that all of the chips in these series are potentially affected.[40] NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang and CFO Marvin Burkett were involved in a lawsuit filed on 9 September 2008 alleging that their knowledge of the flaw, and their intent to hide it. [41]
One reason for the high failure rate was because of improper selection of the underfill material for the chip. Underfill materials are a type of glue that keeps the silicon die firmly attached to the packaging material, which is where the connection to the actual pins takes place. On the affected chips, the working temperature of the underfill material was too low and allowed the chip to move slightly if the temperature was raised above a certain level, weakening the solder joints by which the die is attached. This eventually leads to a catastrophic failure, although the way the chip fails is quite random. The primary reason for the failures listed above, that allowed the solder joints to literally melt, is an overlooked software problem[citation needed]. NVIDIA's drivers assume that every card is based on a set reference design and the software controls the fan speed, as it should, based on that reference design. However, many 3rd party NVIDIA based video cards and especially laptops (where most of the failures occur[citation needed]) deviate from this reference design and the drivers often set the fan speed far too low, or even shut the fan off entirely. This in turn causes the overheating issues mentioned above, and leads to failure of the chip. The solution is to switch the fan control from "automatic" to "manual" in the NVIDIA control panel, and select a fan speed that can adequately cool the video card, preventing failure.
The result of these failures was a class action lawsuit and subsequent settlement to address problems with Dell, HP and Apple computers.[42] Unfortunately, Toshiba did not participate in the recall process although some Toshiba Forum posters [43] report that Toshiba has assisted them in resolving the issue.
TY
Keith Walsh
Level 1
(16 points)
Keith Walsh
