Back in June 2012 when I gazed upon the newly released MacBook Pro with Retina display, I know that it was the machine I wanted to purchase. It ticked all the boxes; had good battery life, great screen, CPU, GPU and all I wanted back then. Sadly the demand was rather strong and I waited for 2 month patiently, checking if it was in stock daily without any luck.
In September 2012 I walked in to a Comet store in Oxford, and decided to try my luck and asked to see if the manager could let me have the display model since my old Toshiba laptop was running at a snails pace. To my surprise she agreed and I bought one with 10% student discount and a free leather case which costs £99. A great deal.
Things were looking great but in June 2013, I was editing a photo and the image had a white shade going through it (thought it must have been lint on the lens), did some colour correction and exported it. It turns out that the white shade was actually an artefact in the display. Took the computer to my local Western Computers store to get it fixed and week later I could collect it. Brought it back, turned it on and now I had full red display, sometimes it would switch to green and interesting patterns. Took it back and another week later It was fixed for free.
Fast forward to February 2016 and I am getting kernel Panics and the cause, bad GPU. Since the model had extended warranty repair scheme for this very issue, they replaced the logic board for free and things were good.
Fast forward to March 2017 MacBook display's coating is pealing off. Took it to store and they replaced the display for free. All good.
Fast forward to September 2017(exactly 5 years and 1 day from date of purchase) GPU is dead once again and getting artefacts on screen (I do CAD design and rendering in Fusion 360 + some games). Took it to apple store and they asked for £600 for a logic board repair. I thought this laptop had a good run and declined repair and stated looking for a new machine.
2016 rMBP 15 and 2017 rMBP 15 were priced very aggressively £3300 and I could not justify purchasing them at that cost when compared to Dell XPS 15 and others. So I decided to wait.
I am finding it rather difficult just limiting my usage to Intel HD4000 GPU, so I have deciding to fix the logic board myself. Looked a bit deeper into the issue and sourced the laptop Schematic and board view files. After a couple of days of looking and making sense of documents, I found that all the power rails are working well, namely GPU VCORE and GDDR5 VCORE.
The usual fault in this model was overheating logic board which caused the GPU VCORE buck converter contacts to come loose but this was different. I suspected the GPU silicone itself as NVIDIA had issues like this before (PS3 YLOD and XBOX RROD) which I cannot replace.
Digging further GPU silicone was clear but now my guess was GPU GDDR5 frame buffer. As pure GPU memory tests were failing. This laptop has 1GB VRAM total from Hynix chip H5GQ2H24AFR four of them small enough for me to replace (I think).
Looked around for replacement chips but couldn't find any. Then I looked around for next best thing and decided to purchase 4x H5GC4H24MFR from a Chinese seller which are probably stolen since you can not buy them as an individual. The difference being, the new chip has twice the capacity and runs on 1.35v instead of 1.5v. Bigger capacity should be fine and apple already runs the GDDR5 frame buffer on 1.35v (measured and schematic) so voltage should also be fine.
In the next week or 2 I will make an attempt to replace the chips and see what happens.
Stay tuned to fined out if this MacBook lives or dies!!
In September 2012 I walked in to a Comet store in Oxford, and decided to try my luck and asked to see if the manager could let me have the display model since my old Toshiba laptop was running at a snails pace. To my surprise she agreed and I bought one with 10% student discount and a free leather case which costs £99. A great deal.
Things were looking great but in June 2013, I was editing a photo and the image had a white shade going through it (thought it must have been lint on the lens), did some colour correction and exported it. It turns out that the white shade was actually an artefact in the display. Took the computer to my local Western Computers store to get it fixed and week later I could collect it. Brought it back, turned it on and now I had full red display, sometimes it would switch to green and interesting patterns. Took it back and another week later It was fixed for free.
Fast forward to February 2016 and I am getting kernel Panics and the cause, bad GPU. Since the model had extended warranty repair scheme for this very issue, they replaced the logic board for free and things were good.
Fast forward to March 2017 MacBook display's coating is pealing off. Took it to store and they replaced the display for free. All good.
Fast forward to September 2017(exactly 5 years and 1 day from date of purchase) GPU is dead once again and getting artefacts on screen (I do CAD design and rendering in Fusion 360 + some games). Took it to apple store and they asked for £600 for a logic board repair. I thought this laptop had a good run and declined repair and stated looking for a new machine.
2016 rMBP 15 and 2017 rMBP 15 were priced very aggressively £3300 and I could not justify purchasing them at that cost when compared to Dell XPS 15 and others. So I decided to wait.
I am finding it rather difficult just limiting my usage to Intel HD4000 GPU, so I have deciding to fix the logic board myself. Looked a bit deeper into the issue and sourced the laptop Schematic and board view files. After a couple of days of looking and making sense of documents, I found that all the power rails are working well, namely GPU VCORE and GDDR5 VCORE.
The usual fault in this model was overheating logic board which caused the GPU VCORE buck converter contacts to come loose but this was different. I suspected the GPU silicone itself as NVIDIA had issues like this before (PS3 YLOD and XBOX RROD) which I cannot replace.
Digging further GPU silicone was clear but now my guess was GPU GDDR5 frame buffer. As pure GPU memory tests were failing. This laptop has 1GB VRAM total from Hynix chip H5GQ2H24AFR four of them small enough for me to replace (I think).
Looked around for replacement chips but couldn't find any. Then I looked around for next best thing and decided to purchase 4x H5GC4H24MFR from a Chinese seller which are probably stolen since you can not buy them as an individual. The difference being, the new chip has twice the capacity and runs on 1.35v instead of 1.5v. Bigger capacity should be fine and apple already runs the GDDR5 frame buffer on 1.35v (measured and schematic) so voltage should also be fine.
In the next week or 2 I will make an attempt to replace the chips and see what happens.
Stay tuned to fined out if this MacBook lives or dies!!