Thunderbolt Display turns off randomly

I took my TBD back and got a new one yesterday. I just set it up today, and so far so good. I also bought Apple care. I figure it's a good bit of insurance, since it seems like the quality of manufacturing on TBDs isn't up to same level as the rest of Apple's products.

You know, I did the same thing with apple care on this guy.

Tomorrow or Thursday we are buying the 2nd TBD for our NYC office. I'll see how my guy there likes it.

Nice! I'm thinking about buying a second TBD and using it as a second TBD on a MacMini. Have you had any experience using two TBDs on a single computer?

I'm curious if there are any "gotchas" to watch out for there.

I've never used two, I can't imagine it would be an issue as I've had a TBD, VGA via the other thunderbold port, and my laptop screen working before. That worked without issue.

We picked up the TBD for the NY office Friday. Will see how it holds up.

Thanks and good luck with the new TBD.

I plugged in a second 19" display via HDMI to DVI. It's working nicely. But it doesn't have near the clarity of the TBD. It's really evident when they are side by side. I'll upgrade to a 2nd TBD soon, but gonna save my nickels and dimes first.

Update:

2 weeks later it started happening again! Grrr.

This time it happened twice in 5 minutes. The third reboot, it started flashing almost straight away. I turned the brightness down and suddenly it's stable again!?!?! Go figure.

I'm coming to this discussion late, but I've just set up a late 2012 mini with a TBD and a second monitor on the HDMI. The mini came with 4GB of Apple memory. I upgraded to 16GB of OWC memory and the blackouts started almost immediately. I put the Apple modules back in, RMA'd the OWC and got a second set. Same issue. Back to the Apple chips and - based on what I'd been reading - orderd just 8GB from OWC. No joy. I have to say that their tech folks were excellent about this issue and we all scratched our heads together. At one point - to prove a point - I bought a 16GB kit from Apple. No problems. Ran almost four days without a blackout. Switched int the 8GB OWC and I was back to problems.

So with that I RMA'd the OWC and thanked thme for their effort. I really like their service and their products, this just wasn't to be. I picked up 8GB at Best Buy and that ran for 24 hours w/o a hitch but the chips were the wrong speed so they went back. I put a pair of Crucial 8GBs in last night and have not had an issue since. For some odd reason the memory itself seems to matter. Not the speed. Not the configuration. Your milage may vary but at least at this point this looks solved. If you don't want to pay the Apple price look into Crucial and buy someplace that has a good return policy. I did.

So. When you ordered the apple memory, what brand was it?

Apple doesn't make its own memory so it's normally someone else.

In the case of us with laptops that came from apple with 16GB and had TBD issues it seems only replacing the monitor has helped. Well as much as we can tell.

Great question. I've looked at so many modules at this point I don't recall exactly. The origianl ones are Elpida. Think the 16GB I returned were, too. I went through two TBDs with the same issue which is how we sort of pinned it down to the memory modules.

Same problem here. Got the MBPro & TBD in January 2013 (!!), after the first week it started to flicker and every week it got a little worse, today the screen showed no image, the USB and ethernet worked properly. Repeatedly messing with the cables (in/out) and rebooting fixed the problem (for now).

Really really dissapointed! Specially because they recommend this combination. Don't feel like taking this enormous screen to the Apple store, getting it back and it still doesn't work (like I read on this forum). Expected quality for the price I payed.

Feel screwed!

Hello. I have the same issues as you described in this post. Bought a Mac Mini in December 2012 with a Thunderbolt Display. Put 16GB of OWC memory in it. You haven't posted since February 21, I would like to know if your problem has been solved. Thanks.

Well, "almost four days without a blackout" does not equal "no problems." All it suggests is that the Apple stuff might be higher quality... or simply that it's the same RAM they use in test machines. Either way, it's not a solution. My "solution", as unfortuante as it may have been, was to return the TBD and not get another. I'm currently waiting for them to release a revised model, which seems to be taking a very long time. I wonder if the slow update is partly related to these issues?

I'm on day 15, 2 hourse, 51 minutes without a problem, a flicker or an issue of any kind. OWC was great about taking back the memory. The modules I have in now (Crucial) have been flawless. It doesn't have to be Apple memory but you might have to search around a while to find something that works.

Bought my Mac Mini from the Mac experience in Greenwood Indiana; Great guys to work with. They have been racking their brains trying to figure this out. They are an authorized Apple dealer with certified Apple techs. They have also been in contact with Apple. In the thunderbolt display they have replaced the logic board and the power supply. In the Mac Mini they replaced the logic board. They can get the same results by hooking up a generic display to the Mac Mini. So now the 16 GB of OWC memory looks suspect. Just got off the phone with OWC and they will be sending me more memory, should be here by Tuesday or Wednesday. Will post when tested with new memory.

While it's great that people are so dedictated to solving this problem, it's pretty clear that something is very wrong with the hardware. A display should not be affected by the brand of RAM, period. "Bad" RAM should cause lock-ups, crashes, and so on, but not display flickering. Apple has to fix this. Anyone else spending their time trying should be sending Apple the bill! ;-)