2011 mac mini video issue

Well just to add my disappointment with my 2011 Mac Mini with the AMD GPU to that of everyone else. OK I use it under some stress as a Plex server transcoding to 1080p but according to Plex's advice it should be more than capable with a 2.5GHz i5 processor. The graphics chip failed after about a year of use and it cost me £200 to have the solder replaced with lead-based, but failed again within a month.

Like others I would like Apple to acknowledge the same fault between the MBP and the Mini, and offer a repair program. A very unhappy customer with an expensive paperweight.

I've encountered almost the same problem.

After a few involuntary restarts the Mini went dead. It's also a Mid 2011 i5 2.5ghz.

I also had 8gb of ram and I added a 256gb ssd leaving the original 500gb.

The (not so beautiful) apple logo would come on but after that, a white screen. I tried every letter combination for booting the computer, both disks and also an external pendrive. Nothing happened after the apple logo. Even in verbose mode I couldn't change a thing.

I took it to a local repair shop and they could only boot the Mini when they disabled a few drivers of the video card. They offered to reflow the logicboard but they weren't too confident about it. So I now have a half usable Mac Mini. The problem was the AMD Radeon HD 6630M graphics processor with 256 MB.

It seems to be a defected batch.

How many did it take for them to acknowledge the MacBook Pro issue?

It seems to be really to arrive to the conclusion that the video card is defective.

Me too 😟

2011 Mac mini, 2.5GHz with Radeon GPU.

Started restarting for no reason about once a week or so. That went on for a month or 6 weeks then the machine died.

Now I just get the chime, apple logo appears then either white screen, black screen or black and white vertical lines.

Occasionally it will boot up but it will only run for 15minutes before white screening again.

Only had the machine just over 3 years, happened a month or two outside Applecare

I'm having an engineer look at it now who advised me that here in the UK under the sale of goods act 1979 you have 6 years of warranty from the retailer if the goods are deemed to be expected to last that length of time. If they don't last that length they are deemed to be not fit for purpose.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2875453/The-six-year-warranty-right-shop s-don-t-tell-customers-Law-says-retailers-responsible-dealing-complaints-officia l-guarantee-expires.html

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1979/54

He advised me to make a claim against Apple and that he would provide the necessary engineers report.

As I bought direct from Apple, in this case they are the manufacturer and retailer.

I think Apple should do the right thing here and offer the same repair to the faulty mini owners they offered to the MBP owners.

The only reason they feel they don't have to is down to the numbers sold.

This is no way to treat their customers.

Same issue here with a Mac Mini mid 2011 2.5GHz and a discrete AMD Radeon HD 6630M. At boot I get the green / grey vertical stripes, then the grey screen. It started happening a few hours after installing the latest 10.11.4 public beta.

I took it to a local Apple store, the diagnosis is a faulty graphic card. Apple does not want to admit the coincidence with the software update. So I'm left with a dead Mac Mini or paying several hundred bucks to replace the logic board.

In the first few days after it started, I was still able to boot to recovery mode, now I'm stuck with the grey screen.

Apple, please recognise you have issues with these graphic cards like for the MacBook Pro.

My Mac Mini (2011) has been doing the same thing (2.3 GHz i5, 4GB Memory, Intel HD Graphics 3000 384MB graphics) Some times it works fine for a while then freezes up with screen glitches. I have read that my logic board would need replacing. It makes a good paper weight right now. 😟

After a while of having the Mac Mini running half the way, with an unusable video card, it died again.

I had planned before the whole disaster a trip to New York (we don't have Apple Stores at my country).

I was planning on buying a used Logic Board so I could replace the board and hence the video card. But it's expensive and a hard piece to find.

The price range was between 320 and 400usd. But only from private sellers in Amazon.

So I took my Mac Mini to the Apple Store, I had nothing to lose (they consider the RAM and disc upgrade as user replacement so they didn't care that it wasn't the factory model). I had a meeting at the so called Genius Bar, we ran all the possible tests, we couldn't find the problem. They advised me to check in the mac in order to get a better diagnose, since they don't charge for that, I accepted.

After a few days, they told that they couldn't precise what the problem was, but they were pretty sure that by changing the logic board, it could be fixed. They would charge me 400usd for the replacement and labor (only 39usd of labor, the rest the replacement itself). I stated that if the new piece would have the same video card I wouldn't be quite satisfied, they told me that from what I told them and what they found on the internet they already had a different video card on the logic board (I didn't quite believe the guy at that time). Anyways I accepted.

Another few days went by, I called again and they told me that they couldn't fix the problem with the new logic board, they did some new tests and something went wrong. So they were going to replace the computer, I asked if I could get my SSD back and they complied.

I went to the store to pick up the new computer (by that time I didn't know if I had to pay anything or not, nor which model I was getting).

They were going to give a new Mac Mini (late 2014 I think), the same gamma I had, the middle one, free of charge. Since I needed an SSD for a better speed for my work I upgraded it to the top model. I payed 326usd tax included and I got a new Mac Mini late 2014.

I'm quite satisfied with the results.

If you have your mac minis just sitting there I recommend that you take them to an Apple Store and see what happens.

Hope this helps!

same problem here with mini :

Mac-Mini 2011 - AMD Radeon GPU Failur

it takes a lot of evidence to Apple wakes up!
they are currently ostrich 😟

I had a pink apple boot screen, then white screen and reboot. I did a similar bake and it worked for me too. I worked in the semiconductor industry for 20 years and an oven bake is a valid repair attempt.

375 deg F preheated oven, eight minute bake, open oven door - DO NOT DISTURB BOARD until hand touchable. YMMV - Attempt at your own risk!

I've the same problem. I have macmini5,2 aka Mid 2011 i5 2.5hz with AMD Radeon HD 6630M 256 MB.

After a few involuntary restarts the Mini went dead. After starting apple logo would come on but after that, a white screen. I tried every letter combination for booting the computer, both disks and also an external pendrive. Nothing happened after the apple logo. Even in verbose mode I couldn't change a thing.

Now It seems that it started happening with everyboady, so sooner or later Apple should do something about it!

yes absolutely.
All minis have the same problem.
I also have these problems as indicated on my link above.
It is a shame that Apple does not move!

Same here - all of the sudden only the grey Screen... Apple - plz help!

Same here - Apple please help us. We are MAC users like the iMAC and the MacBook Pro ones!

Got the same problem this week on my Mac Mini mid 2011 i5: Pink stripes and the grey screen. Thinking on trying the reflow as I have not much left to loose.

You have to go at Apple and claim a warranty repair.

We shall show our complaints to the Apple Store to explain clearly how big is this issue. Otherwise Apple still continues to ignore us.

Or we can write an email with our complaints directly to Tim Cook.