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The MacBook GPU Fault That Wasn’t

By Disc Depot In Cautionary Tales, Repair Process

How Our Rivals Handled It

 

Today we’ll be looking at a MacBook a customer brought to us after being less than impressed with one of our alleged rivals. She had used us for a previous repair and been happy with the service, but for some reason- possibly because we’re closed on Sundays- she took this one elsewhere instead.

 

After she’d waited for a week with no response, it turned out they’d got her phone number, address and email wrong when it was booked in. The problem had been diagnosed as a GPU fault requiring a reflow- which she was quoted for. However, she hadn’t been happy with the service- on top of the original mix-up, they were rude on the phone- so she brought it to us for a second opinion.

 

We immediately noticed that the machine was a 13″ model. Those don’t usually suffer from GPU failure- something more commonly associated with 15″ and 17″ versions^*– and in any case this isn’t an assessment that can be made reliably without a proper diagnosis.

 

We tried turning it on; the lights came on, but there was no display, not even a lit-up Apple logo on the top. This isn’t what we’d expect with GPU failure; when that happens you normally see the screen turning on and displaying white with no display, a loading bar that gets cut off, or a proper display, but with flickering and lines of bars. None of that happened in this case.

 

 

The Real Cause- and a Successful Repair by Us

 

At this point the customer was ready to cut her loss on this five-year-old laptop and buy a new one (at a price in excess of £1100). We offered to take a look anyway or retrieve her data. We explained that if it *was* still a GPU issue, we wouldn’t fix it. This is because it’s hit and miss how long such repairs last, due to poor cooling inside the laptop and the risk of the issue returning quickly. Having told the customer that there would be a fixed £20 diagnostics charge to cover our time (in the event it was unrepairable), they decided to go ahead with it.

 

The same day we inspected the board and found corrosion around the CPU clock controller IC near the air vent at the back. The customer had no idea any liquid had got in, but it’s clear that this must have happened at some point (and indeed, this is a common cause of damage). Due to lines between the IC and the clock crystal itself being damaged, the signal- essential to every aspect of the computer’s operation- wasn’t getting through.

 

Fortunately, once we knew what the problem was, we were able to repair it effectively, as well as having saved the customer’s data. Our diagnostics fee is slightly higher than theirs, but this would only have applied where the repair was unsuccessful and we needed to cover our time. For this case, the customer only had to pay the repair cost- this was still slightly higher than the other store’s quote for the GPU reflow… but, of course, that wouldn’t have fixed this problem anyway, and we know that our repair will last much longer than a reflow would!

 

^* These models contain two GPUs. Apple has extended the GPU warranty on these since 2006 as nearly every generation of 15 and 17″ MacBook has failed.