Bake MacBook Pro in a desperate attempt to restore the performance of a discrete video card

Outset

Last Sunday, while watching a video on YouTube, the screen of my MacBook Pro 15 "Late 2011 suddenly turned white and went out for a moment, the soundtrack also stopped, only the average intensity (by hearing about 4000RPM) of noise from the coolers remained. Turning off the laptop with the power button and waiting a couple of minutes , I launched it in the equipment diagnostics mode (holding down the D key when turning on). And I got this picture:



SATA error has nothing to do with it and was probably caused by an emergency shutdown. But the image artifacts in the form of green horizontal lines over the entire area of ​​the screen upset me much more.
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Several times after that I managed to start the system without problems, I ran a drive check and found no errors. Everything worked steadily until the next video on YouTube, that is, using a discrete video card for a more or less long (about five minutes) time. After the next series of restarts, I saw several more variants of unsympathetic artifacts at the start of the system in the form of purple lines, color contours and image shifts. And in the end, he tortured the laptop to the point that the loading process no longer moved beyond the gray apple. And from Verbose boot mode (Cmd + V when turned on), it was clear that the system was hanging when accessing a discrete video adapter. Leaving the attempt, I decided to give the laptop a night to cool down completely.

Development

The next morning, the system started up without any problems. I turned on the power saving mode and installed the gfxCardStatus utility, which, although offering the “Integrated Only” operating mode in the settings, was in fact unable to control the process. Its usefulness is that it displays the current adapter in use as an icon in the status bar, the fact that adapters switch, and a list of open applications that prevent you from returning to integrated graphics (for example, iPhoto). All day I worked using applications that do not require resources of a discrete video card and did not connect an external monitor. However, in the evening I used to send the laptop to sleep by closing the lid, I could not revive it. The system hung at the exit from sleep mode and further, already stable with graphics artifacts, hung at the boot stage.


Prior to this, the laptop was used almost daily for 8-10 hours a day, neatly, but intensively, for almost two years now from the moment of purchase and without the slightest hint of any problems. All software and OS X were updated in a timely manner, Windows saw only in parallel, did not swallow dust, did not drink fluids, did not fall, and in general I moved it from place to place even within the room, only in sleep mode. Why has never the screen poked with fingers gone in stripes? And what to do with it?

I'm not alone

Numerous posts on the Apple forums indicate that this is a frequent problem with a discrete graphics card in this MacBook Pro, most likely due to overheating of the video chip. The solutions (except for replacing the entire motherboard) that I found in the forums are to forcibly disable the use of discrete graphics by removing system extensions to manage it (if it was possible to start the system and enter the account). In my case, this half measure was not even an option, since the system began to hang even at the boot stage, both in the Recovery System and in Safe Mode, and in the Apple Hardware Test modes.

Glimmer of hope

Continuing the search for a possible solution to the problem, I came across a description of the procedure for baking the 2008 MacBook motherboard . Encouraged by this and other similar examples (mostly involving discrete video cards), I decided to try this method myself. Rather, for the sake of experiment and being morally and materially ready to “get” to the complete replacement of the motherboard (and the oven).

Warning

This post is by no means an instruction or guide to action; moreover, I very much advise against carrying out this procedure. It is very likely that the repetition of everything described will not end up with anything but additional problems later when contacting the service center, where they can professionally replace the video chip itself. All described only a description of my personal experience in my particular case.

update: Valuable commentary and nVidia link - Myths of a reball and warming up shed more light on the nature of the problem and why you shouldn’t do it as described below.

update: Comment If you have a Macbook Pro 15 " Mid 2010 laptop with similar symptoms, it will automatically fall under the extended (up to 3 years) (or maybe more) warranty replacement from the time of sale. For more, click here .

update almost a year later: Comment
Here again, the same problem manifested itself three weeks ago, I already wanted to answer that everything had resolved). Stretched out, it turns out, a little less than a year.

I didn’t poke in the oven, but I did as Mac_Plus_Parts wrote earlier "... Warm up the chip chip with a lighter (there will be soot from an ordinary one, I need a flame under pressure, like an autogen, I don’t know what this type of lighter is called). This method will be safer for the board and it’s simpler and faster to buy a cigarette lighter is no problem, and the next time you have a problem from a few days to a couple of three months.

Such a lighter is called a turbo lighter, disassembled, replaced the thermal grease, drove the lighter for about two seconds on the video chip, assembled it. He has been working again for almost a month without any problems.

Experience

When disassembling, I used a wonderful guide with iFixit and after separating the radiator from the CPU and GPU, I found approximately the same picture as in the photo from their instructions:


In my opinion, an excess amount of thermal paste was used. In my case, it turned out to be in some places rather hardened.
The grilles of both radiators did not need to be cleaned. A scant amount of very fine dust was found under the battery and on the fan blades.

After removing all the remnants of thermal paste from the radiator and board using paper towels and alcohol, I proceeded to inspect its suitability for the upcoming baking, that is, the search for anything that could not withstand heating. After dismantling the left speaker with a microphone and the MacSafe connector, I was only concerned about the plastic interiors of the peripheral connectors and the series of capacitors next to them. In this part of the heating board, it would generally be better to avoid it altogether, so I loosely wrapped the entire side with connectors in two layers of aluminum foil, thus creating three air bags around them. I put a sheet of foil on a baking sheet and placed a board on it on three more sheets of foil crumpled into balls (as for table tennis).



Preheating the oven to 200 and mentally saying goodbye to the motherboard, I put the pan in the middle position and closed the lid of the oven.
He set the timer for 8 minutes and began to monitor the temperature. Here I must say that I have a very pretty oven in terms of adjustment, so I had to keep the temperature within 210-230 by periodically opening and closing its door.



After 8 long minutes, I carefully removed the board with one hand holding its ends through folded paper towels. And with the index finger and thumb of the other hand, through the pillow of all the same paper towels, gently and gently press the video chip once. update: There is an opinion that I was very lucky: If the solder had not frozen at the time of pressing, instead of a neat array of contacts, it would have been a mess of solder, which is difficult to fix. To hold the board this way turned out to be too hot, so I ran a screwdriver into one of the mounting holes and kept it on for about three minutes, letting it cool down. And then I just put it aside and spent ten minutes studying the prices of the MacBook Pro Retina, as well as the features of restoring from Time Machine in my two-disk configuration, pondini.org/OSX/SetupOther.html, to a single-disk configuration on a new computer.

Having unfolded the foil, I did not find any visible effects of heating, which in itself was already quite good.

Cranking mince back

From a cooler installed in the home PC, I still have a tube of the complete Noctua NT-H1 thermal paste. It does not conduct electrical current, has good thermal conductivity characteristics and is easy to apply.

He applied thermal grease and put everything in reverse order. It should be noted that it is very simple and convenient to disassemble and assemble this model, there are no pitfalls, you just need to act carefully, do not use physical strength and be careful. During the assembly, I noticed that the battery could not be removed: it does not interfere with the process of removing and installing the motherboard, but dismantling it can cause difficulties if there is no special “Tri-wing” Y1 screwdriver on hand. In my set of tools such was.

The whole process of disassembling, “frying” and final assembly took about two hours at a very unhurried pace. If you do not get distracted by drinking tea, then an hour is enough.

The final

The system started immediately and without artifacts and errors. Temperature Gauge Pro v1.1 at room temperature 22 ℃, 2000RPM (minimum) revolutions of both fans and turned off discrete graphics when writing this post shows 42-50 on the CPU and in the GPU area. Forced switching on via gfxCardStatus to Discrete only mode raises the CPU temperature by 8 to 50-58, and the GPU warms up to 48-54.
All other components and peripheral interfaces were tested and proved to be fully operational.

All the next day I was working with a discrete video adapter forcibly turned on and started writing this post.

On the third evening after the build, I drove the stress test GpuTest v0.5.0 FurMark at a resolution of 1680x1050. At the same time, the CPU temperature fluctuated around 85, and 78 on the GPU, but the fans in 10 minutes of testing did not reach their maximum (6200RPM) mode, balancing in the interval of 5900-6000RPM.

Went the second week, no problems noticed, continue to monitor.

Conclusion

It is too early to talk about the success of this enterprise, so I advise you to professionally serve the cooling system and replace the thermal grease, even before the described problem with the video chip (especially if the warranty period has expired). Perhaps in the future it will help to avoid replacing the entire motherboard or conducting radical experiments like this.

Questions to experienced people:

1. How long can stable motherboards and video cards be baked in this way?
2. What components have I reduced?
3. What else could you do?

Useful links:

update: Check the warranty on the Apple website by device serial number:
selfsolve.apple.com/agreementWarrantyDynamic.do

Discussion issues on the Apple forums:
discussions.apple.com/thread/2768351
discussions.apple.com/thread/4766577

IFixit Motherboard Removal Guide:
www.ifixit.com/Guide/Replacing+MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Unibody+Late+2011+Logic+Board+Replacement/7518/1?singlePage

Instructions iFixit on applying thermal paste:
www.ifixit.com/Guide/Applying+Thermal+Paste/744/1

Thermal paste Noctua NT-H1 in comparative testing:
www.overclockers.ua/cooler/thermal-paste/3

The free gfxCardStatus application for monitoring the display mode:
gfx.io

Free GPUTest for stress test and benchmarks:
www.geeks3d.com/gputest

The free smcFanControl application for controlling the speed of the fans, of the temperatures, displays only the CPU:
www.eidac.de/?cat=40

Temperature Gauge Pro application for temperature control and fan speed control (10 days free):
www.tunabellysoftware.com/tgpro

IStat Menus application for temperature control (two weeks free):
bjango.com/mac/istatmenus

Key combinations for running Mac computers with Intel processors:
support.apple.com/kb/HT1533