Thunderbolt Display turns off randomly

Also I've just tried a different MBP Retina (15 rather than 13) and the screen is flickering like crazy. When it stops raining I'll walk it down to the repair centre and hopefully in a couple of days will have a response.

Its not the cable I have had it replaced twice with no success. Mine is in the shop right now and they are trying to swap the power supply and now have swapped the display. I have a feeling the quality control on the mfg of the displays was pretty bad. Sad thing is that with the cost of replacing the display you might as well just buy a new one!

This helped me! I stopped using the all-in-one cable and connected a seperate Apple Thunderbolt Cable between Macbook Pro Retina and 27" Thunderbolt Display. All my flickering, connections, and sounds problems went away.

I still use the all-in-one ot power my MBPR but the seperate Thunderbolt Cable for the display until I can get back to the Apple Store to have my all-in-one cable repaired.

Yeah this is what i done too. All is working as it's supposed to so far. Poor that the thunderbolt cable from the screen is rubbish though.

Hello, so many people have had this issue including myself, so I'm going to add to this as its clearly a manufacturing defect.

So I started seeing the intermittent flickering then black screen about 4weeks ago. Tried all the resets and firmware updates but no use.

Called Apple and arranged for an authorised repairer to take a look. They tried the logic board but that didnt help. They said they could 'try' a new panel but they were not convinced. Decided against that as we all know how exspensive it is. Took it to the genius bar in Bromley together with a MBP 15" Retina. Managed to show the problem to the guy and he said it could be the LCD panel and or the Logic board. In the shop I remembered about the thunderbolt cable idea, so borrowed one and the display worked fine! Used it for around 45mins in the store worked perfectly. Decided it was the all in one cable at fault and using just the thunderbolt cable was good enough for me so I bought one and took it home.

After a about a days use the problem came back! Hours of research later I decided it could be a power issue. So I bought a new power supply and installed it. Display worked again perfectly and I thought great it's fixed! Display blacked out again last night. This seems to be the end of the display it wont turn on now even with swapping plugs, no peripherals etc etc.

I think there are major hardware conflictions in this batch of displays. Not sure what to do now - new LCD/Logic board/fan or chuck it in a SKIP!

Major annoyance for such an exspensive monior!

The monitor is back up after resting overnight and plugging replugging at the wall? No doubt it will fail again but I am lost to the reason it blacks out. Perhaps I will try without any devices connect to the display and see if that is the issue. Perhaps the wacom or keyboard is drawing power causing the blackout?

check earlier posts - I suspect the problem lies in the combination of a few small things that in total cause the display to fail. Cable quality, temperature, conncetor quality, PCB tollerances, etc etc. I suspect that this is why it is so difficult for apple to solve the problem.

I've been watching this thread but haven't contributed since my earlier notes on the problem. The short version is that the TBD worked like a dream until I upgraded the Mini's memory from 4GB to 16GB with non-Apple memory. Putting the 4GB back in cured the problem. Putting the offbrand modules in resurrected he problem. I put in 16GB of Apple memory and the problem went away. Wanting to see if that was the issue all the time, I bought 16GB of Crucial memory, installed that and it's been running almost a year without so much as a flicker. The Apple memory went back and I've been happy with the system ever since.

Your mileage may vary, but it seems you've changed a lot of stuff without examining the memory modules. Might be worth a shot.

Thanks Steven, If this is the case we are all doomed. Dont think there are enough people with this problem for Apple to recall and admit failing on quality contol.

Thanks Bsammon but the MBP Retina doesnt allow you to swap/upgrade memory its soldered onto the board. I've had the MBP hooked up to a Samsung LED via HDMI and had no problem whatsoever.

The Thunderbolt display was taken to the Oxford University authorised repair centre with no fault found. Annoyingly, I had to get the user to video the evidence when it happened which they did. I've now carted it down to the city centre repair centre - so we'll see what happens there. I put money on the all in one cable again though.Will keep posted

Alas it was the All in One Thunderbolt/Power Cable. New cable - problem solved.

John - can I ask where you got the cable from? I can't find an Apple retailer that even acknowledges they can be bought seperately.

Chris

You can connect a thunderbolt cable from the Thunderbolt port on the TB Display to the Mac- any standard TB cable for example:

http://eshop.macsales.com/Search/?Ntk=Primary&Ns=P_Popularity%7c1&Ne=5000&N=1001 13&N2=100113&Ntt=thunderbolt

instead of using the built in TB cable. So - if the built in cable is the failure, this is a work around option.

It's lovely to find that the right answer has already been provided by OWC Larry 🙂