Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

Hi ps3specialist,

The expectancy for a product to last for 5-6 years in the UK is not a law or guarantee as such, it's a grey area. If a product fails due to design flaw then consumers have some comeback on the person/company they purchased the product from. So those that purchased directly from Apple in the UK, can attempt to to get Apple to fix the issue on those grounds. (Anyone who purchased their MBP from a 3rd party is probably wasting their time, as the 3rd party will send the customer to Apple, and Apple will say it's the 3rd party who needs to address the issue) Sending the customer around in circles....

As for WHY these GPU's are failing. Dirt build-up under the GPU might well be a factor and contributor, but why are the CPU's also not suffering if this is the case?

Personally I believe it is the use of lead FREE solder that is causing this issue. Lead is higly ductile metal, and with the repeated heat cycles the GPU goes through, the lead free solder just can't cope with it and fractures, as it is NOT as ductile as the leaded solder. THIS WOULD BE WHY A REFLOW WORKS FOR A SHORT TIME! 

In 2006 (in the EU) the use of lead free solder in electrical products became a requirement, and all manufacturers had to start using it. There may well be lead free solder in people's 2008 MBP's that have not failed, but they may not being going through such extreme heat cycles as the 2011 MBP's.

I'm interested in what you said about replacement GPU's having lead FREE solder, as I was looking at having mine reballed with a new GPU. Does the GPU come with lead FREE solder balls on the contacts then?

Ok, to reply to you let me tell you a story that just happened two days ago, I got an Acer laptop that shuts down once you try to turn it on, it was diagnosed by the computer shop that sent it in as a GPU failure, I reballed the GPU but the problem still the same, I know my reballing is perfect so trying to reball the GPU again was a waste of time, the motherboard has a CPU socket so the CPU is not directly soldered to the board but the CPU socket is so guess what it was a CPU socket problem and by reflowing the CPU socket the problem was solved so yes CPU do cause the same problem or other problems, the one I repaired was a core i3 processor model.

About leaded solder, from my experience with over 20000 reballing , leadfree is an upgrade not a downgrade, it creates a stronger bond and lasts much longer, of course leaded solder has a much lower melting point so most technicians prefer to use it for the safety of the chips but they don't give a long term warranty because they know it will fail in a short period of time and as I mentioned before new replacement chips comes reballed with leadfree solder so if you send your computer to someone and he told you he replaced your chip with a new one reballed with leaded solder you know its a lie.

Thanks for the reply PS3Specialist,

I'm not questioning your abilities, or your experience. I'm just trying to talk materials science.

The story about the acer laptop is sadly not relevant to my point, as it just shows one example of a CPU socket failure that isn't even this machine. Yes CPU soldering can fail, but you haven't said it was due to dirt or residue under the chip socket, just that it failed.

Here we are talking about 2011 MBP's with GPU failure, and not CPU failures. Not that i've looked, but I'm not aware of any threads about CPU failures on 2011 MBP's. From the layout of the 2011 MBP case and fan setup, you would assume that the CPU gets just as dirty as the GPU.

As for lead free being an upgrade and STRONGER than leaded solder, how is stronger an advantage? As stronger would mean more tensile and less ductile, resulting in it being more likely to fracture through fatigue failure.

IF the issue is solder fracturing (which I think it is) the solder needs to be able to flex with the heat cycles and not fracture, which means a more ductile solder is preferential. And the melting point of the solder only really becomes an issue, if during it's operation this temperature is reached.

Sorry but I don't agree with your logic. 

Hi ps3specialist, just wanted to get your opinion.

How is it that coincidentally alot of MBP2011s started experiencing this issue world wide. I mean, taking into consideration your experience with the dust being the reason, i just wanted to understand how in a very dusty country in the middle east the MBP2011 started failing at the same time as somewhere in the US/China and wherever else people on this forum are from.

The only explanation i have for this, is my assumption that when designing the MBP2011, apple made sure that only a specific amount of dust got into the laptop over a period of time, which is think is unlikely.

Thanks,

all these technical questions and answers are great, always useful to know the how's and why's but...

let's not forget that we (at least I) mainly buy Apple products for their quality and their customer's service, in the end we shouldn't even have to worry about what is wrong and why it's failing, is shouldn't.

and if it does, because of course it can, Apple should come up with a quick and definitive solution, expensive or not is another subject.

the way they try to convince us that after 3 years of usage it is a good time to buy a new laptop, that we must have use it wrong or  replacing the logic board will solve the problem and there is no proof is will fail sooner than later is unbelievable and incredibly disapointing.

anyway, it anybody here knows a good place in France to reball, I'm all ears because I can't find any so far...

ps3specialist wrote:

 

if you are talking from a consumer point of view so you shouldn't discuss technical issues at all, you are not a specialized to do that, posting a technical openion is a mistake , you can just complain that your valuable computer failed after only three years without discussing the reasons for the failure

Such arrogance.  Passionate amateurs can uncover greater truths simply because of their passion. Do you know the story of Lorenzo's Oil?

So I wanted to update you all on what happened with my call with the apple support here. I received an email from the support team with an application to run on the MBP and gather the relevant information for them. The support officer said she will send the report that comes out of this to the engineering team.

Anyway, ran the application and forwarded the file to the support officer.

Again crossing my fingers for a resolve!

Anyone who wants to know more about whether to choose leaded, or lead FREE solder on a REBALL should probably watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptXBfJ--Ri8

Guess what, the military and aerospace industry are exempt from the restriction of having to use lead free solder. I wonder why???

This guy also talks about the type of flux that should be used, as some flux's continue to be corrosive, where others (RMA) flux's are only corrosive over a certain temperature and inert below that temp. SO WORTH KNOWING WHEN CHOOSING A REBALLER!

Same issue, was told it would cost $AU1000 to replace logic board. So disappointed after only 2.5 years of use. 

If you want to know more about leaded and leadfreee solder youtube videos is not the place, you don't take the information from non scientific sources and build your conclusions according to them, here is a link where you can get the right information from sorce you can trust  http://www.ipc.org/feature-article.aspx?aid=Designing-with-lead-free-technologie s ,

Interesting that no matter how many times the MacBook Pro will not power up correctly with the display being incapable of displaying nothing appart from just a blank Grey or Blue screen when the fault occurs; it DOES however immediately get back it's display integrity with no flickering or lines while showing perfect icons in the 'Boot Disk Partition Selection' screen (holding down Option on Power-up) for all attached internal & external bootable OS X and repair partitions.

Ok, it may be that only the 'integrated' graphics chip only is active for the Boot Disk selection screen and that when loading the OS it may attempt to enable the discreet graphics GPU when different previous states require it upon power up. However I have three bootable drives (each with an additional rescue partition) and one of the drives contains OS X with some repair utilities only that don't require discreet GPU being enabled and it fails to boot up even to that when the fault is in full swing.

Furthermore there are occasions that the fault has happened while in integrated GPU mode only at Desktop (with gfxCardStaus confirming the GPU mode).

So what's different on the perfectly displayed Boot Disk/Partition selection screen (holding down Option on Power-up) with perfectly displayed disk icon graphics and no flickering, yet immediately fails when proceeding from there until the temperamental natured fault alleviates. Is it just me that can display the Boot selection screen when the problem state exists? Could it be a possible indicator to something potentially useful towards this issue? (I won't build up to much hope)

ps3specialist wrote:

 

If you want to know more about leaded and leadfreee solder youtube videos is not the place, you don't take the information from non scientific sources and build your conclusions according to them, here is a link where you can get the right information from sorce you can trust  http://www.ipc.org/feature-article.aspx?aid=Designing-with-lead-free-technologie s ,

from the same article you linked:

"However, it is clear that we have not  established long term reliability, as most of these products have not been  deployed that long..."

Do you understand the Metal Fatigue Phenomena?

ps3specialist wrote:

 

If you want to know more about leaded and leadfreee solder youtube videos is not the place, you don't take the information from non scientific sources and build your conclusions according to them, here is a link where you can get the right information from sorce you can trust  http://www.ipc.org/feature-article.aspx?aid=Designing-with-lead-free-technologie s ,

I don't need to take my information from non scientic sources, I just referenced a video that would explain the differences and issues to the layman. And your referenced article don't even debate the issue of ductility or fatigue failure, so not even sure why you referenced it.

As for my conclusions, I will use the Degree in Mechanical Engineering that I did (specialising in Design and Materials Engineering) if that is OK with you?

You went to the wrong line , here is what you need to keep in mind from the same article " “Lead free solder doesn’t wet well so you can get better lead spacing,” Lasky said. He cited a study by Motorola where designers built identical boards with lead-based and lead-free solder. It showed that leads printed close together shorted out when lead solder flowed during melting. That makes leadfree is almost a must for Apple's little logic boards.

Furthermore there are occasions that the fault has happened while in integrated GPU mode only at Desktop (with gfxCardStaus confirming the GPU mode).

gfxCardStatus can only request staying on the iGPU but there's no way to enforce that. If the driver is loaded and some application goes nuts (or you plug in an external screen) the system will switch to the dGPU no matter what. The switch to dGPU also happens during a typical boot which makes it quite tricky to get into the system to deploy counter messages; it seems that the only way to prevent this switch is by overheating the system (which it will coincidentally do itself it you just let it rest at the crash).

I've also seen several times that the UI simply freezes but not completely (ie. mouse pointer moves were still rendered and I could even log in remotely but the local screen was dead); in that case gfxCardStatus will also not show updates. You might want to open a Terminal and observe the logs for any driver crashes to pinpoint this problem to a dGPU fault.