Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

Dust is not something you can prevent so all of them have dust but its different from one to another, some boards would be also rusty from humedity and that is another reason I see very often, I beleive everyone should open up his computer and clean the dust once every six month and also replace the thermal compound if needed and that will extend the life of these computers. if too much dust accumilated inside the computer the way the pictures show that will cause the computer to overheats, the fan will start to run faster which will bring more dust in and the computer will start showing issues with graphics which would be very expected in this case, ignoring clean up will definitly shrten the life of any computer specially laptops which have very little room for ventillation.

KinYik wrote:

 

After reballing mine I might not be illegible for whatever apple has to offer then , be it a replacement board or a new laptop .

As I've stated before, I don't believe that Apple is going to start production on a 3 year year old logic board, nor replace with old boards (since the problem just returns) ad certain not - across the board - new laptops. They may surprise us with an acknowledgement and, at best, offer a 10% discount for the purchase of a new MacBook Pro. And that's only IF they even acknowledge the problem.

Frankly, I don't expect for Apple to lift a finger so I don't think that a reball - which fixes the problem - is going to hurt.

Clinton

But are you suggesting that in many of the MacBook Pros that you see excessive dust is the problem that has caused the GPU failure? Or are many of the MacBook Pros that you see relatively dust free?

I'm trying to understand if you think the cause of the failure is excessive dust and/or other environmental factors.

If so, future Apple laptops are going to suffer more and more of these issues as they are so incredibly tightly packaged. They have fans to suck in dust into the machines...

The dust that you see is very fine dust granules , they don't just stay around the chips and they don't just go under the chips, you won't beleive me if I say they go under the solder, when I clean the solder from the motherboard after removing the graphics chip I usually find a brown layer of that dust that got under the solder all the way to the soldering pads and that what causes the bad connection and that is why reflow usually doesn't work because that layer of the very fine dust will stay under the solder as it is and that what makes reballing necessary to really fix the bad connection on the graphics chip side, sometimes I feel like the CPU should be also removed and reballed and I am getting ready to start doing that specially in cases like the one I show pictures for.

So from that I sounds very much like you are saying it's not a manufacturing fault, but caused by the environmental conditions we use our MacBook Pro's in? Could you directly answer that question please?

Answering that question will upset some people who wants to make it a manufacturer deffect but in my openion a computer with a manufacturing deffect will not last for two or three years regardeless of what brand or what price, its a common issue that happens with every brand , every manufacturer , why manufacturers don't give five years warranty for example? its not up to them or to the way they manufacure these computers, there are many factors affect the life of the computer and the most important of them are environmental factors and personal use.

Let me show this context. I have several Apple laptops working in my business. Why this one was the only to show this problem? Some machines here are working for more than 7 years without any special cleaning.

Why thousands of people arround the world are having exactly the same issue. If this equipment have special needs of cleaning or enviroment protection (as many equipments actually needs), Apple should advice. For me this is a classic problem os the project, using components that works in their bordrline of heat. Since I bought this machine, all reviews noted the high temperature and noise (fans overworking). Something was wrong from the beggining! But ALL OF US are confident in that brand. WE sell this machine spreading the Apple quality. NOBODY here ever expected an epic fault like this. That's my point of view.

@ps3specialist Thanks for uploading the dusty motherboard photos. I will have a look about cleaning mine when I get time.

I personally don't see this as an excuse for gpu failure though. I've had pleanty of macs that have never been cleaned and not had a problem. Every laptop maker is having this problem is not an excuse either. Apple markets itself as a Premium electronics firm it charges more and it also makes lustful Jonny Ives videos telling us why their products have been designed better than every one else. Thats why people get upset.

ps3specialist wrote:

 

Answering that question will upset some people who wants to make it a manufacturer deffect but in my openion a computer with a manufacturing deffect will not last for two or three years regardeless of what brand or what price, its a common issue that happens with every brand , every manufacturer , why manufacturers don't give five years warranty for example? its not up to them or to the way they manufacure these computers, there are many factors affect the life of the computer and the most important of them are environmental factors and personal use.

Well I am pretty sure you also had many with much lesser or hardly any dust in them failing too.

At least I had. When opened pretty clean inside and yet they did fail.

I do agree that it is indeed best to regularly clean the inside of it and to much dust might inluence it failing.

But for me, the problem stil is most likely bad manufacturing/soldering/thermal design/application

Where I gamble on the used solder and/or production soldering process..

Explained before about the heatcycles probably causing (cracking) this.

You should know this.

I think we're finally at the heart of the matter with the dust/overheat/gpu failure issue. Looks a bit like your typical chicken-and-egg problem. A lot of us have had older Apple laptop models without that problem - so how come it occurs with this particular 2011 MBP series ??

My AASP had sold an extended 5-year-warranty (3rd party) for my MBP when I bought it in 2011. Now he refuses to fix it even though it is still under said warranty. Reason: They sent fotos of my MBP that looked similar to those that ps3specialist has posted above. My use of (aka the dust inside) the MBP would 'not be typical' and thus they'd regard themselves out of any liabilities. Ah ok.

I see a technical design fault here. Imagine our failing GPU were the brakes of a 2011 Mercedes ...

Little to no dust in my machine when opened up and still failed. In reply to Clinton, I was offered the 10% and 3 years apple care on a new machine. Personally I would prefer to have my MBP 17 working but the store were heavily trying to persuade me against repairing. Wonder why. Anyway for sure everyone, if you want to stick with Apple push for 10% plus 3 years Apple care..... worked out same price as new logic board in Hong Kong.

Can I have the details too? I'm from Malaysia. My board was replaced last Oct, but it's failed again now.

It's definitely design issue, imagine how much dust new Mac Pro will '*****' when it's not cleaned up in 6 months? Has Apple ever thought of losing us from the market? We're not begging for refund but we need Apple understand their responsibility on this GPU design failure on 2011 MBP.

I clean my computers every six months or so... Mine still fail.

Anyway my MBP kust arrived from ps3specialist. Im gonna stress stest the GPU. Anybody can point me to a decent gpu stress test app and a temp monitor? I will report here what will happen after testing a reballed MBP from Ps3specialist.

Well I think the discussion is getting slightly detracked here. I live in Canada and I think Its not a dust problem that is causing these issues. My three years warranty just got ended and during my warranty I went to Apple Store many times and got my laptop cleaned. They always recognized the problem and said that this is a known issue and they were working on it to resolve the issue.

The problem is with the AMD GPU. Its a known fact that the CPUs and GPUs of AMD have a tendancy to get over-heated. That is why Apple is not with AMD anymore. Now they put NVidea GPUs.

I always asked Apple Store, what if my GPU stops working after my warranty expires and they said, it will not happen. Now my warranty is expired and the GPU has started giving me problems just after 3 years.