Random Shutdown on Macbook Pro (15" mid 2014)

I had the same Issue with the same machine.

In the end (I tried almost everything you can think of) I solved the problem by reapplying new thermal paste (Arctic Silver 5).

The shutdowns are caused by too much heat (emergency shut down) because of a bad thermal paste. Mine covered only about 50% of the CPU´s surface.

In fact, the temperatures showing in the temperature tools were not higher than normal, but reapplying thermal paste helped completely.

It´s easy in this model.

There are some youtube videos showing, how to to.

Ifixit is good for it too.

My temperatures were normal too, before reapplying thermal paste.

When i got off the heatsink, i saw, thath only about 50 % off the cpu surfsce was covered with thermal paste.

I see with an intel tool, that the cpu clock varies very fast with peaks in milliseconds to turbo boost 3,2 Ghz. Heat will increase extremely fast. Without enough thermal paste, the cpu cannot be cooled as fast as needed. So for few milliseconds, cpu or gpu overheats und the system shuts down for emergency.

After reapplying thermal paste, the problems are totally gone. When stressing the cpu, the fans will increase speed much later and less fast

Hi Dennis,

Interesting! And thanks for pointing out the differences.

I solve the problem by disabling the Thunderbolt Ethernet Driver, by following the procedures:

1) reboot with CMD+R pressed.

2) open Terminal

3) sudo csrutil disable

4) reboot in normal mode

5) sudo mv /System/Library/Extensions/AppleThunderboltNHI.kext

/System/Library/Extensions/AppleThunderboltNHI.kext.BAK

6) reboot with CMD+R pressed

7) csrutil enable

8) reboot and forget about problem

Now I could not use the Thunderbolt Ethernet (which is quite troublesome when I must connect to the Ethernet). My interpretation is that there are some problems with the Thunderbolt Ethernet Driver. When I do not connect the cable, the driver may check for something related to Ethernet and crashes the OS, while I'm connecting the Thunderbolt Ethernet, everything goes fine.

No matter I turn on or off the WiFi, it stays the same. So I think it may not related to the WiFi.

I think there are quite a lot of us and the problems occur since macOS 10.12 released.

I have installed the nocrashMBP app and it did help solve the problem by running a background python script to keep the CPU waking up. I think this can only be a temporary solution because it causes more battery consumptions.

Apple should acknowledge this problem even they don't wont to replace our Logic board, they should ask the developing team to update their OS kernel to deal with this special issue. We should find a way to tell them.

so I had the same problem and want to add my mustard.

At first, in november, I found the nocrashmbp fix but was annoyed by the CPU load and consequently bad battery life. I also used the turbo-boost switcher because I thought this was somehow triggered by cpu load and frequency/multiplier switching and maybe would be a way to fix it from triggering so hard, but no luck.

I was pretty annoyed by the fact that this problem would not occur on windows nor linux. I ran (older) versions of OSX from an external drive and got less crashes but they appeared again. With a new battery there was the same issues but I noticed that crashes mainly occurred on/right after high cpu loads (more often then on low loads). So I could reproduce the crashes by opening chrome(maybe 4-5 random tabs/no videos) and firefox(facebook). As soon as I scrolled 2-3 minutes on facebook it crashed. When I ran the same "test" with maximum fan speed I could scroll through facebook for 15 minutes (apart from the fact that on battery crashes occurred in less then a minute when the battery was lower than 90%). It never crashed on me when playing back videos, but I also could reproduce the error by watching resource demanding 4k-360° videos. Right after the video finished, or if I paused it there was a big chance of it to crash, but it was not as reproducible as the facebook-firefox trick.

So a few weeks ago I changed the thermal paste. It was pretty usable, I thought, tested it for two battery charges but the disillusionment came right after that and it crashed again. Now I found the thunderbolt-driver fix (had almost no hope because I tried so many things) and (knock on wood) since one week there were no crashes no more. So to sum it up, I think it's a combination of more than one reason (emergency heat shutdown and too low core-voltage). For confirmation I would like to re-activate the thunderbolt-driver and check if the crashes reoccur, but not until my semester is over, and I am done with the more important things. I really don't understand why apple does not roll out a "simple" firmware fix, which increases the lowest core-voltage to a reasonable value (like in the other os'es)...

1) reboot with CMD+R pressed.

2) open Terminal

3) sudo csrutil disable

4) reboot with CMD+R pressed

5) sudo mv /System/Library/Extensions/AppleThunderboltNHI.kext

/System/Library/Extensions/AppleThunderboltNHI.kext.BAK

6) csrutil enable

7) reboot and forget about problem

https://outluch.wixsite.com/rmbp-crash

Even if all of the affected logic boards have the same issue (a sudden shut off with no log activity when running on battery with a very low CPU load), it might reveal in a bit different conditions due to tiny hardware deviations across the affected units. My 15" MacBook Pro (Late-2013, Intel i7 2GHz, Iris Pro) started to shut off a week after upgrading to High Sierra (10.13.2). That first week of using High Sierra the laptop was AC-powered 99% of the time. The issue revealed multiple times during a meeting when running on battery for about 5 hours, the first time after the upgrade. iStat Menus registered the CPU frequency dropping below 900 MHz right before the shut-offs. I noticed that NoCrashMBP holds the frequency at nominal 2 GHz by putting a 20% load on a single core. I downgraded back to Sierra (10.12.6) and no shut-offs have been observed for a few days of working on battery, without NoCrashMBP or any other thicks. Even though iStat Menus still registers the CPU frequency dropping below 900 MHz, but the ambient frequency of the integrated GPU is stable at 750 Mhz on Sierra rather than 300 MHz on High Sierra, which could prevent shut-offs on Sierra due to a higher power consumption.

Since the issue seems to be somewhere in between the SoC hardware and power management software, Apple should either recall the defective logic boards or maintain a software workaround, even at the cost of reducing power efficiency for the owners of the affected laptops.

Well, after a few days of successful use of Sierra, my MBP 15" Late '13 started shutting off. So I'm confirming the issue is irrelevant to the macOS revision. I'm successfully running High Sierra now with the Thunderbolt driver disabled, as recommended by @outluch3.

I'm thinking the "fix" is just a side-effect of disabling the extension, which can stop working on any future OS update. I have no Thunderbolt peripherals and the normal current of the Thunderbolt controller is 0A reported by iStat Menus. When AppleThunderboltNHI.kext is removed, the current is stable at 0.28A, which might indicate some erroneous activity in the Thunderbolt driver. I noticed that the total system power consumption has also increased with the extension removal: it's about 9.5W when no significant activity is observed by Activity Monitor, CPU frequency is 800 MHz, GPU frequency is 750 MHz, and the screen brightness is minimal (1 dot). When the extension is enabled, the total power consumption is about 7.5W.

It means that the Thunderbolt workaround might be similar to what NoCrashMBP is doing - increasing the power consumption by about 20%. It might be an indication of a faulty power regulator in the affected MBP models.

Same issues here - mid 2014 15" MacBook Pro screen goes off, keyboard is still lit, fans kick on, shutdown. No kernel panics or anything in the logs. I notice the laptop getting quite hot prior to it shutting down. I've run the hardware test and brought it to the Apple Store, and they've run their hardware tests - everything comes back clean. They want $600 to replace the motherboard but I'm not sure I want to spend that on an older machine.

Disabling the ThunderBolt driver does work for the most part, but I can't use my Apple display unless I connect to it when powered off. It won't work if I plug in coming out of standby. It also crashes when unplugging from the display. That said, there's no crashing issues when plugged into an external display.

If your Macbook keeps shutting down on his own, for a few seconds backlight display and keyboards on, not in safe mode or in Windows or when installing OS X, not when connected to an external monitor, then we are in the same situation and reapplying thermal paste will solve the problem. I am sure. And it is easy and you can do it on your own.

It is not really risky and in one hour it is done.

Hi all.

Ok. I spent one more night to dig that. Here we go: https://www.rossmanngroup.com/boards/forum/board-repair-troubleshooting/28288-82 0-3668-sudden-power-off In short: this bug is known and not solved.

Some more digging gave me knowledge that it is CPU related issue. Not GPU. One man tested with GPU loading firstly, but later found, that it is all about CPU. It is loaded - we are fine. It is in idle - we shut down.

I tried to run yes > /dev/null & one time, but it loads my cpu a lot and fans go full throttle. Not fun. I will better look at fullscreen youtube video of beach while working. 😀

And tomorrow I will visit nearest apple service to talk a bit. I dont think I will approve logic board replacement for 808 or how much $$$ + month (?). I found these logic boards on ebay and aliexpress. And they cost not more than 600$. (A lot too....)

There are solution. You will lose ability to use ethernet via thunderbolt.

PS. Today I told apple about this solution via chat. They maybe will fix it soon.

1) reboot with CMD+R pressed.

2) open Terminal

3) sudo csrutil disable

4) reboot in normal mode

5) sudo mv /System/Library/Extensions/AppleThunderboltNHI.kext

/System/Library/Extensions/AppleThunderboltNHI.kext.BAK

6) reboot with CMD+R pressed

7) csrutil enable

8) reboot and forget about problem

Guys, I had EXACTLY the same problem. When connected to an external display AND an ethernet-to-thunderbolt adaptor, I never had any shutdown, but just working with my laptop I got random shutdowns. This was introduced in High Sierra tho. As I can't extract the responsible driver (it seems to be the culprit), I downloaded that little app called NoCrashMBP, it's a simple script that keeps CPU working. Definitely works. I didn't have even a single shutdown since I'm using it. Shame on Apple. This is the way they take care about professional people nowadays.

4k Hdmi dummy plug will also prevent shut down.

Appart from nocrashmpb and ethernet trick there is no other work around.

Yes, of course, more of us!!! There is a fix NoCrashMBP and it works (only $10) but it eats up battery time big time and also runs the MBP a little hot I found. Otherwise no crash withMBP on. So WE know the problem (it has to do with some low frequency thing on the CPU if I get it right) but APPLE can’t get around to even acknowledge the problem publicly and write a simple fix for it. Much easier telling all of us to buy new logic board and cross our fingers…