Q: MacBook Pro 2011 17" hard freeze

Just in case anyone here is curious what may be causing the heat issues with the new Macbooks, see this tear-down sequence - http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Pro-15-Inch-Unibody-Early-2011-Teardown/4 990/1. You want to pay specific attention to this pic - http://guide-images.ifixit.net/igi/xjEFKC4TRB6NEiqS.huge - Showing the excessive application of thermal paste to the CPU and GPU. When excess thermal paste is used, it acts as an insulator and negates heat dissipation. The heatpipe setup is attempting to dissipate 55w to 60w of heat and something like this will pay a serious role in preventing success.

I sincerely doubt it's a thermal paste issue considering the real world freeze ups people experience can happen when the mbp isn't even under load (ie isn't even hot)

jeffles,

Apple does not read this forum. If you want them to hear you, I would suggest you call them.

I'd like to just add that I am NOT having these problems on a 17" 2011 standard model. I HAVE however replaced the hard drive with a Seagate Momentus XT. I actually did max out the cpu using the yes terminal command before I knew about this thread and didnt experience any problems on the AMD GPU. So it is either not universal or a hard drive based problem. I'd imagine it is the former. This post isn't probably that useful but hope it ads to the overall picture!

Tom

I received my MacBook Pro on Wednesday and used it very heavily over the next few days, and got my first lock up yesterday. Then this morning I see the article on MacRumors and sure enough, my machine locks-up under the PhotoBooth and yes > /dev/null test. I phoned AppleCare, they went through the usual steps and they advised that since it was under two weeks since I placed the order, I should probably return it, and it's being collected some time in the next few days.

I asked whether it would be fixed in software but they didn't have an answer and just said I should return it. I've elected for a refund rather than a replacement and will follow this issue closely.

I had two 2010 MacBook Pros which I returned due to white spots on the screen, and after that I decided to stick with my 2008 Mac Pro a bit longer and wait until the 2011 MacBook Pro. I'm completely disillusioned with Apple right now.

"Report of the machines freezing using the INTEL graphics chip:

"
Using google chrome (extend the window to take up the whole screen), go to their webGL demo at

http://www.chromeexperiments.com/det...arium/?f=webgl

Set the fish count to 1000, wait for 1 min.

Please Note: Your Macbook could freeze completely, so save any opened documents!

On my macbook Pro 2011 2.2Ghz hiRes the issue is reproducible every time after about 30 sec using Intel GPU. I have not tried ATI graphics yet."

From http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=12212522&postcount=52 "

===============

First of all, NO the Intel Graphics don't crash during the test because Intel Graphics don't support WebGL. Attempting to use Intel Graphics causes an error when attempting to load the test. So no, there are no crashes using Intel Graphics in this "fish" test.

Anyway, this crashed my rig once. the first time I tried it. after rebooting, I ran the "test" 3 times more for 5-10 minutes. No effect. CPU temp even dropped into the low 80s during the test. GPU and diode never hotter than 74C.

idk what's going on. I hate when things aren't consistently reproducible. I absolutely hate it.

Message was edited by: Adrian J.

If I use smcFanControl to force the fans to operate at maximum speeds, I couldn't get a single freeze. If the fans are left in their default settings, several "yes > /dev/null" works 100% of the time, and every time within seconds.

So it could well be a problem with the firmware controlling the fans.

Greg-
Plenty of us around here are Unix-savvy, and have actually been paying attention to the nature of the problem. If you'd read as many posts as you claim, you'd understand that your suggested debugging techniques won't do anything but waste time and electricity.

Consider:

The AMD/ATI GPU is clearly implicated, so letting the display sleep will either avoid the problem entirely, or make the failure invisible: It's the display that freezes.

There are numerous reports in this thread that confirm my experience: You can ssh into the machine after the freeze. Your abusive invocation of top will show you, well, top. It won't show you a snapshot of the freeze, since the system is still running.

There are no crash dumps, because there are no crashes. Finding the answer to this will probably eventually require connecting a debugger to the graphics driver, but that's way beyond anything I'd expect in this forum.

I'm having the same exact issue with my Macbook Pro 2011 15". I thought it was VMWare, but I've observed it happen even when I'm not using VMWare. I went to Apple and had it checked, they said fan is working fine. My 14-day return policy already expired, so I don't know what other options I have. There's a post below from someone who said he got his replaced with another 2011 MBP, but the same problem is still there, so I don't know if it's even worth it to get it replaced.

"If people want to keep submitting the wiki to Gizmodo/Engagdet/Andandtech we might get some more coverage.

Up to 5 people who have had the Windows 7 shutdown freeze in bootcamp now. "

============

My 2010 used to do this on occasion. I wouldn't assume it's related to the graphics issues we're having. I think that has more to do with BootCamp/EFI.

My 2011 2.3 GHz 15" Macbook pro also freezes up...

To see if it's GPU related, a test could be to unload/reload GPU kext (using kextload), and restarting the UI server, on command line using SSH, after the freeze.

If that gets the UI back, then, it'd confirm that the GPU crashed or its driver.

freeze only 15-17 inch model or also 13 inch i7?

Too many posts to this thread - I cancelled my order.

I think I'll wait awhile.

There are no reports of 13"ers having trouble.


Anyway, I got it to crash again, but it took a lot more work. I had to open and run all of the following:

1.) Dev/Null (x8)

2.) Fish Aquarium http://www.chromeexperiments.com/detail/webgl-aquarium/?f=webgl

3.) Upsampling music via Audirvana

eventually, that took it down. but there was nothing special to note about the temperatures. idk, guys.