Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

Thanks Miguel, and I will always be there to assist you during your one year warranty and after.

Thanks Clinton and I am looking forward to fix your computer soon.

I am sorry I don't know anyobe in Barazil that I can recommend but I get business from Barazil specially for PlayStation. Keep in mind that Reballing is a very advanced and also very sensitive procedure and the most important part of it is the thermal profile which is different from one to another because they don't come with the machine so every Reballer has to make his own profile and that is what makes the difference between a reballing that will last a week and another one that will last a year or more, also the material, most reballers use leaded solder and they try to convince people that its better, I use leadfree just like the manufacturer and its proven to have the best result , Of course leaded solder is cheaper and easier to work with because it has a lower melting point but I care more about how long my repair will last and in that leadfree solder is the better choice in addition to its main feature as an environmentally safe material.

Without wishing to be unnecessarily argumentative, you are totally defending Apple: "Guys, I don't know why everyone is blaming Apple".... "at the end non of that is Apple problem".  But that aside, do you dispute that there are significantly more of these early 2011 machines failing than other devices?  Sure, I am a consumer, but I am also a professional user.  This problem machine is my personal laptop, but I have a 2010 MBP for business which is fine, as do my colleagues. My iPad2 has never give me a moment's problem. My son has my old iPhone 3GS which fulfils its duties without technical issues.  At my work we run eight Mac Pros, three iMacs, three Mac Minis amongst other devices. Most of the units are older than 2011 and the 'environmental factors' are all similar. We even have a couple of G5 towers - even a G4 - plus a few old PowerBooks that all still work.  ****, my Ti400 PowerBook stills works!

As for wanting a computer "to last for good" - if you mean forever, well, obviously not. But an expectation of more than three years is not unreasonable. I also appreciate that some devices have failed earlier, some not at all - yet. "Five years or even longer" doesn't apply to the units in question - they were introduced in February 2011 - so older units do not have "the same exact logic board, design and components".

You are clearly a technical professional and are successfully servicing some of the other contributors on this forum and good luck to you. You also must see many, many failures in your professional life and can comment with authority on the nature of electronic devices.  But I repeat my original question: would you deny that there is an unnaturally high level of problems related to the GPU seating in early 2011 MacBook Pro units?

The only other devices I've seen with this level of failures are LaCie external hard drives. There's a situation where you can look to a huge range of varying environmental factors and handling. But frankly, you shouldn't build a device that isn't up to the job.

@squashball. Yeah - it's a bit confusing.  Once you've deleted the extension, gfxcardstatus no longer seems to work - perhaps because it has nothing to work with.  This whole thing is that dreaded beast - the intermittent fault. Although some here can cause the machines to fail on command by running certain programs, I think generally it's hit and miss. I haven't yet been totally unable to boot my machine eventually. It could be that deleting the extensions doesn't prevent the machine from firing up the AMD chip and you've been able to boot just by chance. I tried it and had the same result but the screen lag was unbearable. As mentioned, there are other opinions on the whole extensions business, including extra command-line steps to clear the kext cache. 

ps3specialist wrote:

 

I use leadfree just like the manufacturer and its proven to have the best result , Of course leaded solder is cheaper and easier to work with because it has a lower melting point but I care more about how long my repair will last and in that leadfree solder is the better choice in addition to its main feature as an environmentally safe material.

That is discussable. I wrote an article about that on CVX, which is sadly gone now.

First of all, I do NOT DISAGREE with you about using the same alloys One of the things I wrote in that article was using the same alloys wil give the least chance for bad intermetallic bonds etc.

From that point of view I even dare to say that a good reflow using the right equipment/'technicque/profile etc can be a very long lasting fix too, at least on virgin systems. Have reflows running for years now. Just as reablls done with lead.

About reballing with lead however, if you know what the problems are that can come up and anticipates on them you can have perfect results. Don't forget that the main part in both lead and lead free solder is tin.

The lower soldering temps can be an advantage as it also stresses the pcb and other components less.

The problem is there are many seeing all these reflow/reball techniques thinking hey, this looks easy.  Let's do this and earn some easy money.

They invest money in a rework station, get it home, set it up put a pcb on and... destroy it. Same for next one etc. Com to the conclusion it is not an "out of the box and working"  machine.

Then go to forums or other social media asking for profiles, sometimes get some help resulting in success maybe but the only thing they in fact did was copying their "spoonfed knowledge".or profile.

Imo, there is a lof of difference between those "spoonfed" cowboys or someone knowing his stuff.

The way you compare products is not scientific, you are comparing laptops with desktops , computers with standalone graphics cards with computers with built in graphics cards, cellphones with computers, that is not how to compare products, to make a fair comparison you need to compare a laptop with another laptop or more accurately a laptop with a built in graphics card with a laptop with a built in graphics card or a laptop with standalone graphics card with a laptop with standalone graphics card , when making comparisons everything has to be the same with only one variable which in this case would be the manufacturer. Once again I am not defending Apple, I have eight laptops for repair none of them is Apple , couple HP, couple Dell, A Toshiba, an Acer, and two Gateway, they are all having the same issue , a problem with graphics. do you think they were all built poorly?! Of course not, once again it is the nature of the BGA packages technology, soldering crack and Oxidation happens, when you have cupper, Oxygen and high temprature that means Oxidation will happen that is in addition to many other environmental factors that get involved. If things the way you see it you would find law suits against not just Apple but also HP, Acer, Dell, Toshiba, Sony and every other computer manufacturer in the world.

Wow! 300+ freaking pages!!  And I read them all.  Well add us to the list. Me and my girlfirend got MBPs in 2011 and they bnoth started doing weird **** about a month back.  Mines hanigng in and the gfxstatus thing is helping but Jen's is taking several goes to start up.  Seems like Apple need to really sort this.

Thers been some useful stuff here thanks to everyone. The reballing thing looks interesting but id rather await tosee if Apple say somthing. Mostly there has been reports and suggestions to help us keep running but this PS3 guy has popped up now saying this happenms to all electronics?  Lilke, we should suck it up?!

He sauys: but I am telling technical facts or you can explain to me why some of them last for a year others for two years and others for five years or even longer?! they are all the same with the same exact logic board, design and components, the differnce is always the environmental factors and the user not the computer or the technology used to build it

What?! what computers have exact same components over five years??  He says hes a professional and some poeple here are using him to reball but really?!?  Apples change every sixmonths. They introduced the AMD chip in these ones and they are falling over. Must be manufacturing.

BTW he's making a few bucks out of us poor sods.

You right about profiles, if you look at my machines you will see I have to exact similar machines from the same manufacturer and guess what , the same profile doesn't work on both machine so every one of these two machines has its own profiles that will work only on it , the reason is clear, the machine look the same from outside but internally , heaters are not the same, fans are not the same and that makes the profile different so copying someone's profile makes the repair a matter of luck , could be 1% success, 10% success and people with this poor success rate should stay away from people's stuff.

@ps3specialist:

I wasn't attempting to make a scientific comparison. I was just pointing out that in a sea of reliable products we have a series of similar models from a particular model run that appears to be exhibiting a high rate of failure.

Why do you not classify the BGA issues as a manufacturing flaw?  Why do few other, older Apple machines exhibit the problem?

As for your other repairs, I can't comment except to offer the "consumer opinion" that substandard practices are obviously shortening the useful life of electrionic goods. It seems indefensible.

In the interests of "scientific" accuracy, can you clarify some of your previous points?  As another poster just pointed out you seem to be suggesting that there are units of more than five years that have the same components and design.  Would you care to reconsider that?

Earlier you stated: "Actually its affecting all models, I have been getting every model Apple made for the same issues, from the old first generations to the latest with core i7 processor."

Can you provide some statistics on that, particularly in light of your recent statement that you currently have no Apple laptops on your repair bench. I assume that "every model Apple made" is a sweeping generalisation.  Any Lisas about?

You'll appreciate that I just want to keep things "scientific", as you do.

Well it looks like ps3specialist ran away as I was composing my last message. I was getting a bit narcy I suppose but all I could see was a technical guy saying "everything dies - deal with it" and refusing to see any shortcomings in the manufacturing while at the same time pointing out in detail what those shortcomings were! Go figure.

+1 Macbook Pro 17' early 2011... In my case it's been like 2 month since the problem with GPU showed itself. Thank's to some tips I've found here my macbook is working now on integrated GPU only. I gues I'm gonna go for reball service.. waiting for Apples solution doesn't look any good to me

Same failure here. I can hardly boot into my computer anymore.

Where is the replacement program Apple!?

Hi DysPolishchuk

Mine is also early 2011 17"... 2.2Ghz here.

No issue yet, however, it is sad to see lots of people afffected.

Now im full time on Intel HD 3000 to prevent **** happens

+1 same here with my MBP 2011, is there a way to run the computer forcing the use of the integrated GPU (Intel), i know it is possible to use softwares to do that but i'm looking for a solution when booting the mac. (like press a key or else) because for now i even cant run it anymore, THX