GPUs Dropping Dead In 2011 MacBook Pro Models

New submitter blackwizard writes "MacRumors is reporting on pervasive GPU failures in 2011 MacBook Pro machines, leading both to intermittent video issues, corruption, crashing/freezing, and eventually even failure to boot. Luckily for Apple, the machines are now out of warranty (unless you bought AppleCare). The issues have been reported both on Apple's own forums and other blogs. Apple has so far failed to take action on the problem. Will they take ownership of the issue, or continue to ask customers to pay for an entire new logic board when just the GPU fails?"

Comments

Warranty Shouldn't Matter

[dmiller1984]

If it's truly faulty hardware Apple will typically own up to it and offer repairs free of charge. I have the 2008 MBP that had a logic board issue and Apple replaced it for free even though I was well past the warranty and didn't have AppleCare.

Re:Warranty Shouldn't Matter

[ColdWetDog]

If it was faulty then it should have failed in the first days. That it happens three years later is a sign that the user is to blame.

For not buying a new machine after the warranty expires?

I am intrigued by your ideas and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Warranty Shouldn't Matter

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve

Re:Warranty Shouldn't Matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit, Apple will do no such thing unless they face severe penalties. Here in Denmark it took several court cases regarding faulty design on the MBP, which Apple lost all of them - even then did Apple not want to own up and repair the affected MBPs, it wasn't until they faced severe repercussions they started fixing them.

By the way, I'm a happy MBP owner and will probably keep being one, just saying, don't expect them to go out of the way to help you.

Re:Warranty Shouldn't Matter

[Anonymous Coward]

A laptop built by my company has serious issues with GPUs dropping ead. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of laptops in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.

Re:Warranty Shouldn't Matter

[chmodman]

I have this model MBP, and yes, it failed exactly as described. I think the problem is made worse when paired with the thunderbolt screen, which forces the dedicated GPU to be used instead of the Intel GPU. It runs super HOT all the time, even when simply web browsing. Many have found a utility called smcFanControl to force the fan to run at full speed at all times in an attempt to compensate for a bad design. There are numerous YouTube video's of how to "cook" the logic board in an oven for 3 min @ 375 deg to reflow the solder and I found this does fix it temporarily, so its definitely a solder ball issue. Ultimately, I found a repair service on e-bay that for $150, replaces the solder balls on the BGA with lead balls (supposedly) and this is a more permanent fix. According to him (and he seems legit) the lead-free BGA balls suck, and over time fail with extended heat / use. I hope there is a class action on this one, because I paid almost $3k for this laptop and it only lasted 2 years!

Re:Warranty Shouldn't Matter

[amiga3D]

It's all the rage in appliances. Try buying a new major appliance without buying a warranty. When, not if, they fail you can count on a repair bill of 200 to 1000 dollars nowadays. If it's over three years old and you have no warranty then you might just as well buy a new one for what it'll cost unless you can repair it yourself. I fixed my refrigerator and while sitting at the appliance parts supply place waiting to pay 22 dollars for a part the guy next to me looked at it and laughed. I replace 7 or 8 of those a week he laughed. I asked what he charged and he told me 165 dollars. That was 8 years ago and I've replaced that same fucking part 3 times since then. I hate working on appliances but I hate taking it up the ass even more.

Re:Warranty Shouldn't Matter

[Bing Tsher E]

That's the Ford Pinto memo, eh? I doubt if anybody is going to leak Apple's modern equivalent.

Not that anybody is gonna die like with the Pinto, but the pangs of Mac withdrawal could be debilitating.

Re:Warranty Shouldn't Matter

[Bing Tsher E]

3. Keep remaining good hand clear of the Genius Bar.

Re:Warranty Shouldn't Matter

[TheRaven64]

I've seen the opposite. In the UK, if you quote the Sale of Goods Act when you call them up, they'll quickly replace faulty parts 4 years after the original purchase. In the US, as soon as the warranty expires, you're fucked if anything goes wrong.

Re:Warranty Shouldn't Matter

[Just Some Guy]

That's not true. I bought a used, out-of-warranty iMac which developed bad capacitors (swollen and leaking) on the graphics card a year later. I called Apple and they replaced everything inside it without charging me a penny. I never heard of that being a big scandal, and in the US I doubt they had any legal obligations to fix my 3.5 year old used Mac.

I think a more accurate version is that sometimes Apple fixes things for free because they want to, and other times because they're forced to. There's no obvious way of knowing in advance which way an "event" will go.

Re:Warranty Shouldn't Matter

[MightyYar]

I've also noticed that the high-end appliances seem to have more problems than the cheap stuff. Admittedly, I'm a small sample size, but I bought a house that had previously been owned by Orthodox Jews, and so there are two of everything in the kitchen. I haven't had to repair any of the cheaper appliances, but the expensive stuff keeps nickel and diming me.

Re: Warranty Shouldn't Matter

[DigiShaman]

This is an industry wide issue thanks to RoHS. This isn't just Apple, this effects Dell and HP laptops that have high temp GPUs. The XBox 360 is another perfect example. The problem is caused from the constant thermal cycling causing expansion and contraction as it cools. Like bending a paper clip, over time metal fatigue sets in and cracks the solder.

Re:Warranty Shouldn't Matter

[dgatwood]

That's not really a surprise. A few years ago, while trying to decide between two products made by a major electronics company, I asked one of their engineers for advice (having repeatedly repaired the previous product before giving up on it), and he suggested that if lifespan was a major concern, I should buy the cheaper model. Why? Because it was built in such volume that even a 1% failure rate would be catastrophic to the company's bottom line, whereas a much higher failure rate in the expensive product would still be a small enough number of total units that it could be absorbed.

Re: Warranty Shouldn't Matter

[v1]

In the case of the 2008 and the 2.2/2.4 mbp's, the problem was actually Nvidia, fault, not Apple.. Apple pushes the design limits of their components pretty close to the edge to keep their designs small, light, and enduring. The frame and cooling was designed to only slightly exceed required cooling for nvidia's GPU, according to their provided specifications.

Nvidia lied about the cooling requirements of their GPU, describing it as requiring less cooling than it actually did. (probably as a selling point to get Apple to use it) As a result, the machine didn't adequately cool it under very high stress. (playing WoW for an extended time was a known cause of failure) As a result, boards and GPUs flexed, ball solder joints failed, and gpus stopped functioning. (this is not a gpu defect or a ball problem, it's a mechanical problem, caused by thermal stress due to inadequate cooling)

After Apple had encountered a larger number of in-warranty failures than expected, they contacted Nvidia, who denied the problem. Bad logic boards continued to pour in and get repaired under the one year warranty, but replaced boards were frequently failing again, and users were sometimes seeing 2-4 replacements within the first year. A few customers got a new machine per Apple's policy on "three major repairs within warranty", some of which had gpu failures on their replacement machines as well. Apple put their own engineers to work testing new GPUs, and found that the cooling requirements were significantly above Nvidia's stated specs.

Although they were aware of this issue well before the first year, Apple's SOP on an issue like this is to stay quiet until the units start dropping out of their first year's warranty, and then issue a Repair Extension on them. (probably trying to mitigate a drop in sales on a "defective model") Coverage time for REPs vary, and only extend the warranty on the specific part, and only for the specific failure. REPs typically extend coverage to the 2, 3, or 4 year point after purchase. It does not stack with applecare extended warranty. This REP I believe went the maximum at four years from date of purchase.

Apple has issued a dozen or so REPs in the last ten years. Considering the units sold, the variety of models offered, and the cutting-edge technology they'r fond of using, this is actually a pretty low failure rate, as well as a very good manufacturer's response.

2011 is not a new computer, it's going on three years old. Referring to them as "dropping dead" makes it sound like it's a very early failure (first year or so) I think the article is being sensational and a bit deceptive to link-bait. Apple expects their products to last 3-5 years before they get replaced. Considering how fast tech advances, and that Apple users typically want new and cutting-edge tech, this isn't at all unreasonable. With as many models as they make, there are going to be those that fail sooner than others, and that you can expect to get less than 7-8 years out of. This may just be one of them. It happens. And it can suck to be the unlucky one that owns one. But "only" getting three years out of a laptop may not be desirable, but it's hardly a travesty. If Apple were to refuse to cover failures inside the one year warranty, or not extend coverage to units failing frequently in the 2-3 year area, that'd be newsworthy. This really isn't.

Re:Warranty Shouldn't Matter

[viperidaenz]

A place I worked at lost a whole bunch of hard drives from HP laptops just after the warranty expired.
Turned out the HP sticker they put on the drives covered the ventilation hole that says "do not cover".

Re: Warranty Shouldn't Matter

[sjames]

3 years IS an early death. Even my ten year old white box specials still run just as well as they ever did. It's reasonable to expect more from a premium brand.

Re:Warranty Shouldn't Matter

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not really a surprise. A few years ago, while trying to decide between two products made by a major electronics company, I asked one of their engineers for advice (having repeatedly repaired the previous product before giving up on it), and he suggested that if lifespan was a major concern, I should buy the cheaper model. Why? Because it was built in such volume that even a 1% failure rate would be catastrophic to the company's bottom line, whereas a much higher failure rate in the expensive product would still be a small enough number of total units that it could be absorbed.

Pardon my ignorance, but why would Orthodox Jews have duplicate appliances?

I'm not being an ass, I'm genuinely curious.

Thanks.

Re:Warranty Shouldn't Matter

[dreamchaser]

Because it's not Kosher if dairy and meat are prepared together, mostly.

Re:Warranty Shouldn't Matter

[tmosley]

I don't think you have ever owned a Mac there, friend.

One of the primary selling points is their longevity. I have two Macs from 2006-7 that I still use on a regular basis. I'm typing this on a 2007 model now. Finally had to shelve my 2003 model a few years ago as it can't handle playing high res video.

As an amusing anecdote, I will tell you about my experience with Mac vs PC in a laboratory environment. My lab has always been all Mac, even before I got there. I was allowed to get a new iMac back in 2008 as I needed a higher resolution screen to do graphics manipulation on electron micrographs. A couple of years later, another member of our lab wanted a new computer, but insisted on a PC (he had to run some stats software and couldn't into boot camp). So we got him one. A couple of years later, he wanted another one, complaining that his had slowed down so much it was unusable. I was still using my 2008 model, and it was running like a champ. It still works fine, so far as I know, as I have since moved on. Also of note is that we had another Mac from the early 90's running our HPLC, which still works, though that probably isn't a fair comparison as we never used it for anything else.

I know people that this has happened to...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thankfully, I was there to tell them "I told you so."

History

[Sponge Bath]

Apple has shown they will replace whatever is necessary, if there is a defect. When the Nvidia 8400M chip was defective (material in chip package caused solder ball fracture due to thermal expansion), they replaced main boards. Dell used the same chip in XPS laptops (I had one and it did die), and supplied the same fix. Of course, in that instance they got some reimbursement from Nvidia.

Smart corporations know to do the right thing or take a righteous bitch slapping from consumers and lawyers.

Re:History

[Mark4ST]

The problem is that Quanta (they build system boards for Apple's laptop division) has never been able to properly do a ball grid array. The problem is not the chips or cooling, it's the "good enough" techniques Quanta uses to attach them to to a system board. If a ball grid array is done properly, it can be quite robust-- Quanta doesn't seem to care about longevity of the product, and hasn't for a number of years.

Quanta's quality problems are even more dire when you see that they manufacture about one third of the world's laptop system boards.

Please see Quanta and ball grid array.

Score: -1, Flamebait

[danaris]

"Will they take ownership of the issue, or continue to ask customers to pay for an entire new logic board when just the GPU fails?"

Seriously?

Apple has a history of acknowledging and providing free fixes for issues of this magnitude, if they're really affecting a significant percentage of the population. I've been the beneficiary of such a fix in the past myself.

Hell, that's even mentioned in the linked article:

Mid–2011 iMacs with AMD Radeon HD 6970 graphics cards experienced similar failures and in August of 2013, Apple initiated a Graphics Card Replacement Program for the computers, replacing the graphics cards of affected iMacs at no cost.

So with the MacRumors article having only come out yesterday, it seems pretty aggressively snide to be suggesting that Apple's going to ignore the issue.

Dan Aris

Re:Score: -1, Flamebait

[ssimpson]

Mainstreaming reporting started in the last few days. The issue has been reported consistently for nearly a year. I and many other impact users have reported faults in stores, reported via Apple Product Feedback in forums and written to Tim Cook to complain. Not only do they ignore the issues reported on the forum but they also delete posts with links to online forums, news stories and petitions. Nice work Apple.....

Apple do little on the issue and offer you a (paid for) repair service to fix this systemic fault. The repair being a replacement board that many users report fails again anyway.

I'm not an apple defender, but...

[damn_registrars]

Will they take ownership of the issue, or continue to ask customers to pay for an entire new logic board when just the GPU fails?

That doesn't sound any different from any other manufacturer. The GPU on the laptop is, after all, soldered into the laptop motherboard. Even though is it "just the GPU" it isn't something that can be replaced on its own. I don't know why we should expect Apple to have a different standard for customer service and expected system longevity.

Can doing a lot of Ruby on Rails cause this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shit, I'm getting really worried now. I've got a 2011 MacBook Pro and I do so much Ruby on Rails and JavaScript. I wake up at 4 am every day and then I put on my fedora, my anime t-shirt and I write Ruby on Rails and JavaScript libraries until 3 am the next day. Sometimes I don't even eat and urinate, but that's beside the point.

Could all my hardcore Rubying be causing my MacBook Pro to die? I do push it pretty hard. A lot of the coding I'm doing is webscale. I even use NoSQL I'm dealing with so much data. My web app's logging subsystem logs almost 2 GB of data a month. When you're dealing with a lot of data like that a superpowerful database like Mongo then I can understand my poor little MacBook having a hard time coping. Maybe I'm pushing her too hard?

I can't just ease up though. I've got so many Ruby on Rails web apps to write and so many JavaScript libraries to craft. This is a life or death situation for me. I don't want it to be a life or death situation for my MacBook either. We've been through so much! I remember writing my very first line of code ever on my laptop. It was a Ruby code and it made me feel really good. Now I'm an accomplished software architect with numerous Web 2.0 web sites under my belt like for the local veterinarian and the herbal store down the street.

Now I really don't know what to do. I'm so confused. I want my MacBook to live forever because it has become part of me. But I need to use her, too. I need her to do my Ruby on Rails coding and my JavaScript programming. I need to use my NoSQL DB but if it hurts my MacBook Pro, do I really want to use it? I just don't know any more.

It's not just Apple...

[trparky]

It's not just Apple that's had an issue with this particular problem. HP has had an issue with their GPUs failing on their motherboards too in their notebooks.

I'm of the opinion now that notebooks just don't belong having high-end GPUs in them. Notebooks have always had a history of cooling issues because of a variety of issues from inadequate fans or other various issues. Now let's stick the equivalent of a space heater in the device and let's see what happens. I'm really surprised that this sort of thing isn't happening more often to more brands of notebooks.

Let's face it, a notebook is a portable device with very cramped internals. It's like it's become a form of art to find out just how much more stuff we can cram into an even smaller space. A notebook is a portable device, it's not meant to be your one and only device. If you want to be playing games, get a desktop; not a notebook.

For people impacted by this issues

[ssimpson]

Join the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2011mbp/

Keep up to date with the news articles: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Eb-f4R0rWNfK5gPPw4O38bCJZUh5zLTjxj3qSKtqXkA/edit

Mail Tim Cook and express your frustration, politely: tcook[at]apple.com

Sign the petition: https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/timothy-d-cook-replace-or-fix-all-early-2011-macbook-pro-with-graphics-failure