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The Dreaded Graphics Chip Problem

Hi, John.

I was watching Louis Rossman, and he said the problem wasn’t the graphics chip.

He said it was a defective capacitor right NEXT to the Graphics chip.

He demonstrated how to replace the capacitor.

And he explained that since every attempt to “reball” the graphics chip inevitably heated up the capacitor, that’s why the computer would resume working for a while.

I was planning to get the heated tweezers and try this.

What do you think? Even if I get a 2016 model, that bad chip will still gnaw at me.

Comments

  • Thanks for the post!

    I'm by no means an expert at fixing GPU issues. I'm sure what Louis stated is true concerning whatever year board and GPU he was talking about, so I would believe him on that.

    However, it all depends on the year and GPU. I know for a fact that the GPUs themselves do fail on certain years/models. So it all depends on the specific board/year/GPU, and it can't be generalized across all MacBooks.

    If you have the specific board he was talking about, I'd say go for it.

    Thanks,

    John

  • Louis Rossman's capacitor repairs were for the A1286 Models,(Late 2009-Mid 2011 macbook pro). I have 3 mid 2010 models, and I can confirm that replacing the capacitor does solve the gpu issues on that model. I'm using one of them to type this comment. Purchased it on ebay with the same gpu issue.

  • Oh OK, so you're talking about the tantalum capacitor issue -- I do know about that. As far as I understand that one is not actually a GPU issue, and I think it affects 2008 through at least 2010 A1286, most commonly the 2008 and 2010 that I have witnessed. The primary symptom it fixes is the intermittent "random reboot" issue. The issue is so common on 2010 A1286 that many people replace the capacitor on every machine they encounter because if you don't you never know when it'll start rebooting.

    He mentioned a 2016 machine, so that threw me off and made me think he was talking about some different issue.

    Thanks

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