Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

Just spoke to a local repair guy, unfortunatly my battery is expanding inside the laptop and I forgot about that so I think I am just going through with the Apple repair. He explained to me the reflow would fail within a year, but it's only $95. He said that the reason is because manufacturers design them this way - the way the chip attaches causes the chip solder to crack through expansion and contraction. Sad truth, but there we go.

He explained to me the reflow would fail within a year, but it's only $95.

Likely, if not sooner. The problem is that the balls are only supposed to be reflown exactly once during manufacturing. Trying to reflow again after many months will not easily work because the tin solder doesn't have the same properties as during the first time anymore; and checking the results is tedious work which is why almost nobody does verify if properly. Simply reflowing again is more of a stop-gap measure than a real fix. A real fix would also require a reball of the old chip or a balled new chip.

He said that the reason is because manufacturers design them this way - the way the chip attaches causes the chip solder to crack through expansion and contraction. Sad truth, but there we go.

BS. Nobody designs a system to fail after a short period of time, that can easily turn into a very costly desaster. And I think this case also will be eventually.

I am aware, he told me reflowing was a short term fix and reballing wtih lead solder would work better, however it would cost more to gane a few years. Either way cheaper than the $340.

That was his opinion based on his eperience with what he sees in electronics. I can't repeat the whole conversation, but BS or not, they could have gone a better route was his point.

Page 200, 269994 views and 2,988 replies, yet the defening silence continues.

**** you Apple! Speak, speak I say!!! (In my best Charlton Heston voice)

I think desperate times call for desperate measures. Let us pray.

The Founders prayer (14:01-30):

Steve Jobs, who art in iCloud,

legend be thy name;

thy ecosystem come;

thy will is being done,

in Macs as it is in the iPhone.

Give us this day our daily update.

And forgive us our grievance,

as we try to forgive Apple for not acknowledging ours.

And lead us not into Android;

but deliver us from Windows 8.

So be it.

A bit of light humor to help ease our frustrations!

This discussion group is depressing me more by the hour.

This is what Eve must have felt like after she bit the Apple, but then again, she didn’t spend thoudsands.

Yes and he told me that apple didnt perform a quality test on the 2011 (CTO) model. And this problem was somehow expected. And also i got a tip not to repair it, but to sell it on ebay (This is not a joke...).

The recent macbook pros dont have the same cooling system. The case has a different layer know and problems like this should not appear.

This guy wasnt an usual employee. He had a very good IT knowdledge we could talk on the same level.

Just about $1000?  Isn't it interesting that we are dismayed that the resale value is $1000, yet most people in the PC world consider $1000 pricey for a good laptop...

If what's been said in another recent conversation here is true, and they knew all along that this was a failed architecture, they have got to be cringing...

Same problem here with a late 2011 15" Macbook Pro and AMD Radeon HD 6770M.

The laptop started glitching recently, after I upgraded to Mavericks and to 16GB RAM, when running GPU intensive applications, such as videogames or WebGL graphics, but also just doing regular stuff like we browsing. Most of the times it ends up freezing or crashing and takes forever to reboot. In some cases I've had to reset the NVRAM to do it.

Here are some bad pictures of the effect:

The computer passed all hardware tests at Tekserve, an authorized Apple service provider in New York. They told me they received notice from Apple acknowledging the issue, although it might not be true.

So I have an early 2011 MBP and it stopped working while I was working on it. I restarted it to only get a bunch of red lines and unable to boot up to use again. It then started to boot only in a grey screen.

I wasn't happy that this thing was broken as I have another MBP that is 2009 and works like a charm and no issues at all.

Tried doing some searching online and it was pointing to the Logic Board that need to be replaced and was not something that you can just do yourself. I had an online chat with apple and we did some resetting of things but nothing worked. Made an appointment and they told me that it was indeed broken and the logic board needed to be replaced. I wasn't happy as now I was thinking that I needed to buy a new computer and I had client work to finish ASAP. Luckily I found an apple care box lying around my house that I never actually registered with my previous 09 MBP so I had it added to the newer 2011 one. I had literally 27 days left till I was exactly at the 3 year mark.

A week later they had my computer back to me and fixed. Said they weren't sure what why the computer died, but suspected heat to be an issue (an original issue from when these came out). I told them that I upgraded to Maverick and it RUINED EVERYTHING. I noticed that my fan also ran faster all the time too and  the computer actually was locking up. They said, this can happen and that I need to do an update. Told them you can't do an update when you are already updated to the newest OS and all the release versions after.

All in all, I was not happen to then read on Techcrunch (or some other news source) that this thread exisited and that all early 2011 MBP were suddenly dying and the logic board needed to be replaced.

Of course Apple will continue to deny this as they don't want the Press for it, but I shoudl get a refund for having to use my apple care when this is happening to MANY other same model MBP people.

I'll be bookmarking this thread to see what happens and hopefully reaching out to gigaom to see if they can make a story about this issue too. I stress everyone else shoud do the same. I didn't buy a Pinto, I bought a high-end luxury" car, which should not die in this way!

My early 2011 macbook pro has failed today. I am now unable to boot the OS or boot into recovery mode, although I can access the boot option page.

From everything I've read it appears my HD 6750 GPU has failed, I experienced the display banding before what appears to be a total system failure.

I very rarely ran computationally intense GPU applications, although the discrete GPU was almost always enabled as I mostly work with an external apple display.

Should I repair the macbook or cut my losses and purchase a commodity laptop and run ubuntu.?  I though I was paying for quality engineering, but that doesn't seem to be part of the culture at apple anymore.

>> mokies

Just another option for you to consider is to install Ubuntu on your macbook pro (without the discreet graphics drivers.  I did it and all works fine.)

Back on pg 21 (!!!) of this thread(https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4766577?start=300&tstart=0) I gave the instructions for what I did and have cut the relevant paragraph out and pasted it below.  Note that although I used the instructions for booting via usb pen via efi, I did not use a pen drive, but booted from an install cdrom, but I did use the grub2 instructions from that thread.  The information may be getting a little old now since 13.04 is no longer the newest version of Ubuntu, but it may still work.  I have since updated my 13.04 to 13.10 and everything updated fine so you can probably use those instructions with 13.10, it's just that I've not tested the installation process with 13.10 myself.  Good luck!

<---- clip ---->

On a side note, if I weren't able to get it fixed, I did manage to install Ubuntu 13.04 on it working perfectly, with just the built in intel graphics.  If you have no other option, can't get it replaced for free or at a cost you can/want to affort, and want to try that route, I used the information out of help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro8-2/Raring and the "booting from usb pen via efi" to try it out, and then askubuntu.com/questions/149921/how-to-add-a-command-permanently-to-grub2 to make it so I could boot directly from the drive straight into ubuntu.  For my early 2011 15inch MBP specifically I added the "outb etc.etc." stuff to /boot/grub/custom.cfg (you'll know what that means if you read the links I just referenced), and then added i915.lvds.channel_mode=2 i915.modeset=1 i915.lvds_use_ssc=0  after "quiet splash" in /etc/default/grub on line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT, and then ran sudo update -grub (which will update the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file for you.)

Hi matt_jd,

Thank you for reminding me the linux solution! Finally my mbp gets half of its life again. By half I mean the external monitor cannot be used. I am using Mac/Ubuntu dual boot with rEFInd. For those who are trying to the same, here is another detailed solution:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2157775

(ignore the discrete GPU part, of course)

Has anyone that encountered this issue have their Macbook Pro running on a cool pad/cooling station when doing heavy tasks?

I am hoping the use of a cooling pad will delay or prevent the degradation.

I want to ask out of curiosity those who have noticed falling MacBook Pro's and mostly with Build to order MacBook configurations if their cover bottoms are slightly uneven or touching a flat surface (ex. a glass table)

That isn't a problem, it's a feature. :-)

But seriosuly, mine isn't custom, but it is bulging making it not sit flat. For me, the battery is swelling up and making it push down and now through the trackpad.

No , I believe that is not the point . You see , if you try to remove ten screws securing the lower case to the upper case , you will see that on center of your bottom cover there is an extra clip securing it to the upper case . This clip many times , even from factory built , it happens not to sit well , resulting in deforming bottom of MacBook Pro . Trust me ...