My Terminally Ill Macbook Pro

gollum84 · #1 May 15th, 2009, 06:48 AM

I feel as though my Macbook Pro has a permanent death sentence.

It's Nvidia 8600M GT chip burned out within a year of purchase, but luckily still within warranty. I bought AppleCare to cover it for the next three years just in case it happens again. But the horrible thing is that I know it will happen again, because the Apple repair techs swapped the fried chip for another 8600M GT.

Will Apple ever really fix the problem or are they just hoping for it to go away?

I use the laptop almost everyday, creating motion graphics, occasionally playing WoW and running Seti@home. Each time I turn it on it's like a ticking time bomb. I just know within 6 months the same thing could happen again, 2 weeks out for repair to get another 8600M GT.

Anyone else have a Santa Rosa Macbook Pro and feel the same way?

DeltaMac · #2 May 15th, 2009, 08:25 AM

I will feed you the "party" line. As Apple support would suggest.
The problem is not with the Nvidia 8600M GT, per se.
There was a block of failing chips, which Apple replaced as a courtesy to their customers. Other computer makers apparently have also struggled with this same chip set. The repair did replace your logic board with an updated, supposedly fixed version of the that 8600M GT. It's a newer build-version of that chip, and supposedly has fixed the issues that have appeared on those models.
Have you seen anywhere that a 'repaired' MacBook Pro failed again?
If yours was repaired with the 'fixed' version of the 8600M GT (to a v2 or v3, I believe), are you having problems again?

gollum84 · #3 May 16th, 2009, 05:23 AM

Thanks for alleviating my concerns. I checked the AppleCare Service receipt and it lists PCBA,MLB,2.4GHZ,REV2 as one of the replacement parts. So I'm guessing that's v2 of the logic board with the new 8600m gt chip on it.

The repair was done back around October last year and I haven't had any problems. The case still gets really hot but after the repairs I went out and got a laptop cooler just in case.

There was always a question in the back of my mind if the chip got replaced or not. But like you said, I haven't seen any repaired MacBook Pro's failing yet. So I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope my MBP can last as long as my still operational PowerMac G4.

SGilbert · #4 July 18th, 2009, 10:32 PM

Not only a spammer, but can't even figure out where to post his crap! Bye-bye!

bbloke · #5 July 19th, 2009, 06:43 AM

I'm confused. Has a post been deleted?

DeltaMac · #6 July 19th, 2009, 08:22 AM

Yes. It was spam, spam, wonderful spam...

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gollum84 (May 16th, 2009)