Comments on: How I repaired a MacBook Pro Logic Board

By: BugHound

BugHound — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 19:17:00 +0000

You just saved me $300 that Apple wanted to charge me since the time period for which Apple used to repair this manufacturing problem for free has since passed.

I re-flowed the nVidia chip using a heat gun and my MacBook is once again working.

Thanks a ton.

By: Brian

Brian — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 06:08:00 +0000

Thank you so much for this post… I went out and bought a heat gun at home depot and tried it out. Did like others said and had it on low setting for about 4 minutes and about 4 inches away. I put everything back together and booted it up (After dismantling and melting some keys, as I tried to fix the tilted power button while I was at it and super glued it stuck. Go me). Anyway the computer boots up fine and no more lines of death.

However, now my left fan seems to be spinning at the max and is unrecognized by istat pro and smc fan control which has it at 0. It is spinning very loudly. Has anyone had this problem after fixing their macbook? maybe i fried something else on the board? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks again for the helpful video and instructions!

By: Kenny Van der Wildt

Kenny Van der Wildt — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:02:00 +0000

To anybody attempting this (ingenious) method, a few pointers:
- Be careful with aluminum foil, blowing hot air may build up an electrical charge. You don’t want your board to break of ESD right after fixing it. Try insulating your board before applying the alu foil
- While heating up your board, do NOT touch it and make sure it is NOT being disturbed in any way. If your solder liquifies again your chip and probably the surrounding components as well will be floating on the solderdrops. If you accidentally hit your board, your chip may shift it’s position, connecting the wrong gates or even shorting out. Also make sure you don’t keep the heat gun too close to the board, your chip might shift position due to air pressure, or even components may fly away (not kidding)
- Go the extra mile and spend 15$ on buying flux, this enhances solder-characteristics. apply some to the edges, heat it up hot enough to liquifiy the flux but NOT the board. Tilt and pan the board so as much flux as possible runs underneath the chip.

Good Luck!

By: Pedrox1000

Pedrox1000 — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 22:14:00 +0000

Hey again

The macbook its now with the same problem.. i tried all the possible combinations with the 2 2gb rams.. it does not work..

By: Pedrox1000

Pedrox1000 — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 16:25:00 +0000

Man you are the one!
Thanks alot for your help it did work fine for me!
Since 2 months i dont turn on my macbook.. it works!

Thanks alot again

Greets from Portugal

By: Ray Finkle

Ray Finkle — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 23:27:00 +0000

Macbook Pro 2.33GHz Fixed! The test piece of solder I placed next to the chip let me know how hot i was getting it. I was on low for about 1 min in slow circles about 3-4 inches above. Then I went to high for 1 min for 4-5 inches above in the same pattern. Once the test piece of solder began to melt I went for about 30 seconds more. I let it cool down for about an hour and now it works perfect and these are easier to tear down then the Powerbooks. Also, I added in the fan control program from http://www.eidac.de/?p=134 and raised up the RPM on my fans so this does not happen again. I have a 1.67GHz Powerbook I am going to try this on next that has been sitting around for a while with the same problems.
Thanks!

By: Joel Cuthriell

Joel Cuthriell — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 06:14:00 +0000

Another success story here. http://imgur.com/a/hhfX2

I had almost given up hope until I came across this page. Much appreciation!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 08:08:00 +0000

Thanks for the great idea.
I just fixed my MacBook Pro with Radeon x1600.
I bought a heat gun with temperature control to do the re-flow of the GPU.
It’s a AOYUE 968. Worked great.
Used this video for the temperatures and time to heat the chip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJDvvBaeN1s
I also used some tinfoil to shield the other components on the board.

By: mathdude

mathdude — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:24:00 +0000

Hey. Just fixed a 2006 macbook pro thanks to your video. Very similar video distortion as was on your laptop. At first I was hoping reapplying thermal paste and cleaning internals would fix the problem. But it didn’t. So I grabbed some aluminum foil.. rapped that sucker up (logic board) and started to heat gun the thing. I had I think a 1200W heat gun which I set to low setting. I only needed to do this for about 3-4 min… having the gun pointed about 2-4 inches. I made sure to always be moving the gun in a side to side or circular motion.

Watching your video, you mentioned heating it for 10+ min, but I wanted to err on the safe side so I thought I’d first start with 3-4 min… then go to 5-7 min if that didn’t work.. and so forth. Actually, taking apart the macbook isn’t so difficult. It might take less than 20 min if you know what you’re doing. Wow… you’re awesome though… thanks for all the help. Now onto the real issue though.

The macbook get’s hot. I installed smc fan control to see the running temps. Even at idle… my macbook hovers at around 50+ Celcius… and can spike +10 degrees when I do simple tasks. I reapplyed thermal paste as well as cleaned the internals… which leads me to believe that over time something inside of the macbook has changed to make it so hot. Strange…. I wish apple would take more heed in allowing customers to monitor and maintain this heat problem. I know.. it exists on all laptops, but if you’re paying $1000+ on a machine I would hope they would have a way to properly maintain it.

By: Medhatmactech

Medhatmactech — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 07:47:00 +0000

aaaaand….
another MacBook Pro up and running, Thanks to Charles_T’s brilliant tutorial!
2.2GHz 15″ MBP with nVidia 8600GT 128MB, no video on internal or external monitors. LED latch light would not go out when trying to start, but there was a start tone and HDD and optical drive noise, so I knew that the monitor was not getting a signal to turn on, but everything else was “working”. Since the computer was a write-off, and the last time I tried this, it worked flawlessly, I figured “why not?”

Well… it worked again and I am typing this on the repaired computer. Will run it hard for a few weeks and see how it lasts. Will update.

I must emphasize, this is NOT guaranteed to work. Only try this if you are comfortable with the total loss of your Mac, ’cause that’s what will most likely happen. If it works, GREAT! but don’t count on it.