Prevent GPU 8600M GT failure in 2007/2008 MacBook Pro 15 and 17 inch with unrevised 601 and 602 chips.

[weirdoldmacuser]

I went through two 2007s, one 15 and other 17, now im on a 2008 17,

all had unrevised NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT chips, each with diferrent variants, and diferrent VRAM.

What Ive learned to temporarily prevent failure of these unrevised variants, if it hasnt failed yet, or has been "repaired" by a reball, heat gun/hair dryer and oven method,

Is really simple but extremely effective.



WHAT TO DO FIRST :

to lower risk of failure, is to install macsfancontrol, and max the fans out, just completely max them out, constantly,
it will also reduce the heat diferrences that the gpu goes through maximally, it is also recommended to clean the computer and replace its thermal paste, this is what you should do FIRST, unless your computer is already in the state that it fails when you turn it off, making this impossible, without doing the DIY repair again....

Turn ON AUTOMATICALLY RESTART AFTER POWER FAILURE IN ENERGY SAVER IN SYSTEM PREFERENCES, so in case of accidental power failure, the GPU wont cool down so much and the computer should still start even in its fragile state.

What you need :

1. a functioning battery, which can last about 30 minutes under load, and a few hours in sleep mode or a charger.

Essentially, when you turn the computer off and on every day or two (complete shut down, not sleep), the computer cycles through heavy heat cycles, which cause the paste under the GPU die to fail ,once it cools down, much easier after it has been "repaired", or hasnt failed yet, which causes the GPU to either not respond anymore (black screen on boot with sleep light on = complete meltdown, but repairable), or to artifact (lines on screen = usually unfixable at this point).

=======================================================================THE FIX==========
So if you instead put the computer to sleep on battery or charger (instead of shutdown), whenever you stop using it, it doesnt cause a full heat cycle, only cooling the system to about 40C, which is not cool enough for the GPU to fail again, as it does fail when it falls below a certain temperature.

If you accidentally let the battery discharge or shut it down, theres a chance, the gpu will fail, with this "trick" however, you can probably use the computer forever, at least from my experience of using this 2008 everyday, and my old 2007.
Alternative is to never even put it to sleep, which is the least risky (less heat cycling), but honestly, the sleep method is good enough, and saves power.
=======================================================================================

Sorry for the guide being so badly made, i suck



Feel free to ask me anything about this machine, loving it.
ill help.

 

[weirdoldmacuser]

i know im a newbie, and that noone is using these machines, as they are 15 and 16 years old hahaha.
I mean, both are still usable nowadays, the 2007 are getting unusable as they are stuck on el capitan, so its better of using windows 10, which will work fine, i even ran 10 on 2006, it was fine lol.
But 2008 are great, as long as u get the 512mb variant and give it an ssd and 4gb of ram, they support SSE4, so u can run even macos ventura if u wish to do so, using the great OCLP patcher, but i found that high sierra dosdudes01 patcher is perfect for now, as anything newer will visibly struggle, i mean catalina should be fine, but it just wont be responsive and fast as high sierra. people say that they even got 11 and newer running well, but i dont trust them, as i have ran 11 on 2011, and it was so bad, i dont even want to remember it.


just wanted to post the "solution", as i havent seen in anywhere, and i figured it out by accident.

 

[saudor]

At this point you might as well just hackintosh a 15-17" laptop. Would be pretty annoying having to run fans at 100% and never shutting it down.

 

[weirdoldmacuser]

At this point you might as well just hackintosh a 15-17" laptop. Would be pretty annoying having to run fans at 100% and never shutting it down.

i mean, sure, but hackintoshing is just too much for an ordinary person,
and its just not it. I mean the build quality is gonna be crap comparing an old macbook pro to another 20 dollar computer (yes u can get these for dirt cheap), and the OS still wont work seamlessly with the hardware.

I guess its personal preference, but i prefer to run windows on windows laptops, and mac on mac laptops.

this guide is mainly intended for people who have these machines already, or want a cheap mac to use.

 

[B S Magnet]

i know im a newbie, and that noone is using these machines, as they are 15 and 16 years old hahaha.

On the contrary: my early 2008 17-inch (with a green-dot board) is on my home desk as we speak, running High Sierra, via dosdude1’s patcher, on 6GB RAM and a 500GB SSD. It works wonderfully. I still plan to throw Monterey onto a separate partition, via OCLP, once I can find a free weekend to set it up.

just wanted to post the "solution", as i havent seen in anywhere, and i figured it out by accident.

It’s not a solution so much as staving off the inevitable of the flawed design of the earlier GPU revisions. Ultimately, having the 603 revision swapped in is essential if one hopes to never need to worry about kicking the Nvidia failure can down the road.

Of course, dosdude1 also offers this service.

 

[weirdoldmacuser]

On the contrary: my early 2008 17-inch (with a green-dot board) is on my home desk as we speak, running High Sierra, via dosdude1’s patcher, on 6GB RAM and a 500GB SSD. It works wonderfully. I still plan to throw Monterey onto a separate partition, via OCLP, once I can find a free weekend to set it up.




It’s not a solution so much as staving off the inevitable of the flawed design of the earlier GPU revisions. Ultimately, having the 603 revision swapped in is essential if one hopes to never need to worry about kicking the Nvidia failure can down the road.

Of course, dosdude1 also offers this service.

yes, im sorry. just wanted to do something nice. i suppose u cant save the gpu like this.

 

[ThunderSkunk]

Its funny that a couple years later the AMDs had the same problem. MBP’s needed more aggressive cooling from 2008-2012, and then again from 2016-2020. Sometime in the middle they thought, hey with no spinny drive, we don’t need fans at all, and made the Air, introducing the masses to the concept of throttling. But people have to remember, these are laptops, if you want desktop performance, use a desktop.

Still, the 2009 17” mbp has been my hands down favorite, and most reliable, most versatile, and most useful computer ive ever owned and though my newer machines pack more horsepower, if a computer is a tool than the 17” is a swiss army knife and theres not a week that goes by where I dont grab it and put it to work to do something all the new machines can’t. I overhaul it (complete disassembly & clean only takes 15min) a couple times a year and switch various mac & bought a couple spare logic boards so it’ll keep it going until it outlives me.

 

[B S Magnet]

Its funny that a couple years later the AMDs had the same problem.

Indeed.

And unlike Nvidia, AMD didn’t pony up responsibility and fix their design flaw with a chip revision. Now several thousand units of 2011 15- and 17-inch MacBook Pros (and iMacs, etc.) are out of use. Stay classy, AMD.

MBP’s needed more aggressive cooling from 2008-2012,

I can’t say I’m on the same page about this.

The unibody case, over its predecessor, did have more aggressive cooling. In fact, this was a cornerstone of the passive cooling approach not available to the earlier aluminium design. (And no, the failure of the AMD GPU was not related to the case design of the unibody 15/17-inch.)

The use of a single-block piece of aluminium, waterjet-cut — what made the unibody form factor what it was — can both hold and dissipate heat passively and over a wider area of the case more effectively than the previous form factor (it’s also not a surprise that every MBP since has used a variation on this principle).

The internals of the fan and heatsink design for the unibody models were a step up from the rail-style heat sink solution borrowed originally from the 2003 17-inch PowerBook G4; by 2008, that design, however tweaked it was, struggled with the early 2008 MBPs. I’ve worked to improve upon it, but there is a fundamental limit in the heatsink design itself. Subsequent remedy is to manually manage the fans.

The unibody fans are proximal to their respective chips’s discrete heatsinks for the CPU, PCH, and for 15/17-inch units, GPU. The pre-unibody design had those fans a bit more distal from their heat sources.

Moreover, heat from the separate heatsinks in the unibody design aren’t being transferred to a shared rail, as with the 2003–2008 design (which is then fastened to the base of the bottom case, where connection points between the two pieces of metal reduce thermal transfer efficiency) — all before reaching the active cooling of the fans. What worked for a single-core 1GHz PPC7455 CPU didn’t work as well for 2.6GHz of dual-core shenanigans.

 

[ThunderSkunk]

Yeah I’ve also got the notorious cto 2011 17 as well, but only to run windows & cad, which is a worst case scenario in & of itself bc cad runs it hot. I’ve also connected all the components that run hot to the inside of the back plate via thermal pads, but also affixed some pretty aggressive 16mm tall heatsinks to the outside of the plate, and the whole shebang sits on a pair of fans on my desk while in use. That back plate as a thermal buffer only works if its got lower temp air movement (bc still air is actually an insulator) coming through & wicking that heat energy off underneath the machine. Otherwise, the plate just heats up to equilibrium with the operating temp and cant really react to sudden differentials as well. If I set it on my lap, the heatsinks help by providing a bit of a gap between the plate & my pants for hot air to expand & slowly make its way out, but, without real airflow pulling the heat off them, again they just heat up & then can’t absorb any more energy than they can disperse through my pants. Looks weird, but performs well. Even still, every 6mo’s I overhaul it to keep on the paste & dust, and I will not be surprised the day it just does not turn on again.

I do the same to my big 2019 i9 MBP’s, because with heat being inversely proportional to the lifespan of those integrated ssd & logic boards, every little bit helps.

 

[B S Magnet]

yes, im sorry. just wanted to do something nice. i suppose u cant save the gpu like this.

It’s something other MR forum members have tried to deal with in similar ways. It ends up being a short-term stop-gap. Ultimately the remedy is to pick up a 603 revision and have someone drop that in.

 

[ThunderSkunk]

…what id like to do, and what i’m surprised no one ever made back when the unibodies were coming out, is an internal fan module to go in the optical bay. …and even a second smaller one to go in the expresscard bay, to turn the internal airflow into a rammed-air jet-stream through the machine.

 

[B S Magnet]

…what id like to do, and what i’m surprised no one ever made back when the unibodies were coming out, is an internal fan module to go in the optical bay. …and even a second smaller one to go in the expresscard bay, to turn the airflow into a rammed-air jet-stream through the machine.

Sure, but where would one place the path of a fan-specific heatsink, channelled to such a fan in the optical drive bay?

Additionally, there’s also that wall between the OEM fan and the space provision for the optical drive. The only practical opening left, assuming there was a heatsink plate shaped to use the OEM fan and the aftermarket ODD fan idea, that piece would block a key mount point for that fan assembly.

I mean, one could try that approach, but then one would also need to figure out a way to get that fan to communicate with the firmware as an additional system fan and not as a SATA-attached drive.

Then again, I’m not an engineer.

 

[theMarble]

i suppose u cant save the gpu like this.

Sadly true. One thing that you have to remember is that the 8600M GT's root cause of failure wasn't overheating, rather a manufacturing defect in the solder (IIRC is non-eutectic solder, which should not have been used in the first place) that when constantly heated (when in use) and cooled down in repeated cycles caused the solder to crack, severing the connection. Funnily enough, this problem is also exactly what happened with the Radeon HD 6000M series chips.

That's why reflows/oven-bakes are only temperamental solutions, they fix the cracks but they will just form again and again. Reflowing a GPU in an oven (especially one which you also cook food in) can cause some health hazards too.

So at the end of the day, the only proper solution that fixes it forever and leaves you with a machine that will work without issue is ditching the original 602 rev chip and swapping in a 603.

 

[weirdoldmacuser]

Sadly true. One thing that you have to remember is that the 8600M GT's root cause of failure wasn't overheating, rather a manufacturing defect in the solder (IIRC is non-eutectic solder, which should not have been used in the first place) that when constantly heated (when in use) and cooled down in repeated cycles caused the solder to crack, severing the connection. Funnily enough, this problem is also exactly what happened with the Radeon HD 6000M series chips.

That's why reflows/oven-bakes are only temperamental solutions, they fix the cracks but they will just form again and again. Reflowing a GPU in an oven (especially one which you also cook food in) can cause some health hazards too.

So at the end of the day, the only proper solution that fixes it forever and leaves you with a machine that will work without issue is ditching the original 602 rev chip and swapping in a 603.

I heard it was the underfil paste that would weaken and disconnect the GPU die of 601 and 02s from the GPU PCB

 

[weirdoldmacuser]

Sure, but where would one place the path of a fan-specific heatsink, channelled to such a fan in the optical drive bay?

Additionally, there’s also that wall between the OEM fan and the space provision for the optical drive. The only practical opening left, assuming there was a heatsink plate shaped to use the OEM fan and the aftermarket ODD fan idea, that piece would block a key mount point for that fan assembly.

I mean, one could try that approach, but then one would also need to figure out a way to get that fan to communicate with the firmware as an additional system fan and not as a SATA-attached drive.

Then again, I’m not an engineer.

I was thinking of the same thing, like a fan that would intake from optical drive slot and just exhaust into the case, so id be like on the retinas, where the fans intake cool air from the outside, run it through heatsinks and the case, and exhaust it, only this time, on the pre unibody or unibody. I guess apple was going for longevity, though they were far sighted, as while it reduces dust intake if you have no intake and only exhaust, its extremely inefective when you use this with power hungry hardware.

 

[weirdoldmacuser]

It’s something other MR forum members have tried to deal with in similar ways. It ends up being a short-term stop-gap. Ultimately the remedy is to pick up a 603 revision and have someone drop that in.

im going to have to do that on this computer myself. i also have a 15 late 07 at home, both had gpu fails, both i diy repaired, just waiting for it to give, so i can learn to solder and do this myself.

 

[weirdoldmacuser]

Yeah I’ve also got the notorious cto 2011 17 as well, but only to run windows & cad, which is a worst case scenario in & of itself bc cad runs it hot. I’ve also connected all the components that run hot to the inside of the back plate via thermal pads, but also affixed some pretty aggressive 16mm tall heatsinks to the outside of the plate, and the whole shebang sits on a pair of fans on my desk while in use. That back plate as a thermal buffer only works if its got lower temp air movement (bc still air is actually an insulator) coming through & wicking that heat energy off underneath the machine. Otherwise, the plate just heats up to equilibrium with the operating temp and cant really react to sudden differentials as well. If I set it on my lap, the heatsinks help by providing a bit of a gap between the plate & my pants for hot air to expand & slowly make its way out, but, without real airflow pulling the heat off them, again they just heat up & then can’t absorb any more energy than they can disperse through my pants. Looks weird, but performs well. Even still, every 6mo’s I overhaul it to keep on the paste & dust, and I will not be surprised the day it just does not turn on again.

I do the same to my big 2019 i9 MBP’s, because with heat being inversely proportional to the lifespan of those integrated ssd & logic boards, every little bit helps.

I had two 2011s 15 myself, both tragic, i just kept diy repairing them, till the logic gave. I would love to see the modification you made, sounds absolutely incredible.

 

[weirdoldmacuser]

Its funny that a couple years later the AMDs had the same problem. MBP’s needed more aggressive cooling from 2008-2012, and then again from 2016-2020. Sometime in the middle they thought, hey with no spinny drive, we don’t need fans at all, and made the Air, introducing the masses to the concept of throttling. But people have to remember, these are laptops, if you want desktop performance, use a desktop.

Still, the 2009 17” mbp has been my hands down favorite, and most reliable, most versatile, and most useful computer ive ever owned and though my newer machines pack more horsepower, if a computer is a tool than the 17” is a swiss army knife and theres not a week that goes by where I dont grab it and put it to work to do something all the new machines can’t. I overhaul it (complete disassembly & clean only takes 15min) a couple times a year and switch various mac & bought a couple spare logic boards so it’ll keep it going until it outlives me.

While the late 2008 and 2009s were fine, i didnt have luck with the 9600M GT, as it failed. while the 9400m is just way too slow. Though the geforce 320m that came on these afterwards, was relatively fine. I even ran far cry 3 on it.