Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

I have to clean the chip because I can not work on a chip covered by thermal compound all over it, I did reply to your question yesterday and told you that this repairs are professional repairs that require an expert , there is nothing you can do at home and there is no online process that you can follow. when your computer fails find a reballer in your country you can trust his experience and send it to him to fix it for you.

ps3specialist wrote:

 

The photo's you posted in above comment don't really prove anything.

You used flux and heated it up above liquid so the balls were soldered again.

Photo should be taken before any maniuplation

You are always wrong, the pictures are not manipulated on anyway and there is no flux there at all, if there is flux you won't see the dust and the liquid that you see signs of it at the left edge is from the thermal compound cleaner that I have to use to clean the chip before working on it, you just don't want to see the reality and that is you see what nobody else see but you.

Yeah, sure I'm allways wrong and you are allways right.

About the flux, ok, might not be there, but I blame the photographer for that.

And it is not unusual to use flux when soldering, desoldering or lifting chips.

Did not say you manipulated the photo.

To lift the chips the solder had to be above liquidus to lift the chip.

So it IS NOT (the solder andpads) in the SAME STATE as it was before liftig, when it still had the error. Period.

With "Before maninpulating" here I ment the photo should have been taken before changing (manipulating) the solder state.

Which would only be possible with (3D) X-ray, as said....

Excuse me for maybe using a wrong word or expression,

Again, I am not native english. So, please excuse me for making a mistake sometimes.

The fact is, the photo doesn't prove anything as the solder changed when you lifted the bga.

Can be a totally other picture then how it looked before taking it off.

Another 15" 2011 MBP with failed AMD GPU here. A few weeks ago my laptop randomly crashed. Got a blue screen when rebooted. Same issues as everyone else. Right now I am using Integrated chip only through gfxCardStatus - quite an annoying fix since most graphics intensive programs don't run on integrated.

I took my MBP 3 times to my local Apple store. All three times I got it back saying it was fixed. As someone mentioned here, their hardware diagnostics does not detect this problem. I learned that the geniuses at the genius bar are completely incompetent. I researched the problem and found this forum.

I signed the petition and submitted the feedback. Going to call Apple directly some time next week. With tax I shelled out close to 2500 for my laptop 2.5 years ago, firmly believing that I was paying a premium price for better components. So I definitely expected my MBP to last much longer than that. Bummer.

As I said before , Apple doesn't fix logic boards so it doesn't matter how many times you take it to Apple stores , the best they can do is replacing your logic board for another used logic board broken or about to break if you are lucky and that is not a fix, the only fix for your MBP is reballing the GPU chip by a professional expert, other than that you will be wasting your time and money.

I wanted to inform you about my experience. It has been 5 months after reballing and for the moment everything is working properly. Although I often use it with the integrated card, alternating the AMD card when necessary, as a precaution and using the Fan Control application with 3000rpm fan default.

Anybody here had successful results with a brand new GPU replacement? Mine got reballed but the screen glitches when I use high performance GPU apps and sometimes browsing.

Any input?

Thanks ps3specialist. I took my time to read the forum, so I am going to be looking for someone to reball the GPU chip.

About 2 weeks ago I called up apple tech support hoping that they had some kind of a solution. I was transferred to a supervisor. Hate to say it , but the guy was a complete idiot. So after 2 long useless hours he finally offered to send it for a $500 logic board replacement. Glad I listened to my gut feeling and did not do it.

I have a question - if I have the GPU chip reballed will Apple be able to tell it ?

Thank you.

It doesn't matter if they can tell or not since you are out of warranty but in general yes they can tell because there is a glue material around the chip that has to be removed for the chip to come off.

Thanks for the advice, but have we narrowed the cause down?  If I understand you correctly, you seem to think it's due to less-than-stellar manufacture, poorly applied thermal paste, and expansion/contraction associated with regular operation of the notebook computer that's causing solder points working loose, and thus causing the computer as a whole to fail. 

What if the computer was only use a few days a week, and the rest of the time it was turned off?  I don't use mine like a desktop.  I have a desktop for that.  I do use it as a portable computer for work, and I do use graphics programs such as Poser, Vue, and Lightwave as a hobby.  Occasionally, I may even play Call of Duty.  So far, it hasn't failed or hiccuped.  I had thought about forcing it to use the dedicated graphics chipset, until reading all the posts on this forum.  Now, I'm hesitant.

Is it possible that the reason I haven't experienced the problem - yet - is that I haven't used the computer (temperature variances) enough to exercise the parts loose yet?

The computer age is not calculated by the years of ownership , it is calculated by the hours of use and the less the hours of use the more the years it will last, that is why yours did not fail yet and it might take years more before it fails. Using high graphics applications takes the computer temperature to extremes and that makes it more likely to fail faster than others.

It's a shame that AppleCare isn't based on hours of actual use rather than calendar days.

On another note, what's a good way to begin to tear down one's commitment to macbook pro computing?

Obviously, many of our Apple products are on borrowed time and the message seems loud and clear that if Apple sells a defective product, we are SOL and I for one intend to believe their message.

My current needs are occasional use of photoshop, microsoft office products e.g. outlook, excel, word, etc, web browsing, a short movie every now and again and I prefer that performance never be an issue.

At present I cringe every time I engage an event that I suspect may tax the integrated graphics card for fear that the OS may attempt to engage the discreet card and blow my mbp out of the water (yes, I have gfxcardstatus enabled and set to integrated).

My early mbp 2011 is a 23GHz quad core, 16GB RAM, 256 SSD, ADM 6750M and even in its prime I was never overly impressed with its performance but it was satisfactory.

For hardware, what do you guys think about some of the Asus products?  What are some of the best laptops under $1000?

For software, does anybody recommend alternatives like open office? I have thousands of pertinent outlook formatted emails, many Word formated docs, and numerous excel formatted spreadsheets.

So what's a good way for a previously dedicated mbp user to tear down the tent and begin a migration to the PC laptop world?

Thanks,

It's a shame that AppleCare isn't based on hours of actual use rather than calendar days.

Your point of view as a user is different from the manufacturer point of view because the manufacturer can not put a limit on daily use for the computers they sell so they determine their warranty according to years of ownership since you as a user are free to use the computer during the warranty 24/7 if you choose to and if it fails during that time they cover its repair under the warranty free but at the mean time by using it 24/7 you put the computer at a high risk of failure and if it fails after the warranty time you pay for the repair because the computer at that point will be out of warranty, I think that is the real problem for some users is they expect free out of warrant repair even if they abused their computers one way or another during the warranty time and it did not fail.

My comment about applecare was a side note only.

As for your other comments about repairs in and out of warranty, with your logic I think you may already be primed for a position in Apple's executive mgmt team.

In other words, you're logic is sound for repairs in and out of warranty.  But your logic is for the birds, but apparently in sync with Apple's, when it comes to manufacturing defects, especially those serious defects that render the product useless for some-to-many. 

And for many, the defects reared its ugly head within even a year or so of purchase, not 3 years after purchase.

As for your implying that mbp owners are looking for a free lunch on repairing Apple's very serious mfg'ing defect on a supposedly premium laptop and having certainly paid a premium price, you're coo-coo.  That's why I think you might fit right in with Apple's exec mgmt team.

In case you haven't notices, this defect isn't the equivalent of a car's tires shredding or wearing out prematurely.  Rather it's more the equivalent of the car's transmission burning up and shredding all the gears, except for some who are able to limp along in 1st gear only.  And you think you should pay for repairing the transmission even though you've only owned the low-mieage $50k car for several years and it's a well-known defect experienced by thousands of other car owners?

If Apple doesn't step up to the plate, then like you, they are the one's who think they are entitled to a free lunch (taking consumers' hard-earned monies) when they knowingly sell defective products to unsuspecting buyers.

Since your logic is skewed when it comes to responsible parties, the logical alternative is for Apple to advertise their mbp's listing up front the AMD card/install as defective and listing the effects of the defect and then see how many units they can sell.  Or they could generically just advertise that Apple does not stand behind their products regardless of the seriousness of any manufacturing defects.  Now that would be fair to all.  Even though Apple may not sell a single product.

Otherwise, you and Apple are the one's who think Apple is entitled to a free lunch here.

Looks like the replaced logic board only lasted for 2 days. I have faced the problem again. Would be taking it to apple next week.

Please add value to your complain by directing it to Apple feedback channel because Apple do not monitor this forum. cheers

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macbookpro.html