If you have come across this auction, the chances are your pride and joy Apple Macbook Pro laptop has seen better days and is starting to play up and display some rather strange behaviour on the LCD screen. I am sure I do not need to preach to you about the problems with the graphics chips on these models and how they oh-so-often fail and leave you in the lurch with that all important presentation to make or assignment to hand in. You will have done a little research on the issue and maybe even seen some ‘DIY’ tutorials and other guys talking tosh on YouTube about how you heat the GPU up and that fixes the problem. Maybe you have read about the problematic lead-free solder that is causing the BGA (ball grid array) to crack which in turn cre 
ates a cold solder joint on the circuit?
OK, so now the truth about this fault …….
The thing that is causing those strange shapes on your screen, those feint horizontal lines across the Apple logo on boot or preventing the laptop from fully booting and crashing as the OS loads. The thing that shuts down your computer when you run some software that utilises the discrete graphics on the logic board rather than the integrated is in fact a FAULTY GRAPHICS CHIP. No end of heating, reflowing, reballing or whatever tricks you have seen on YouTube will solve this problem. The only solution is to remove the graphics chip and throw it in the bin! Then, you take a brand new chip which has a newer manufacturing date but is of the same specification as the old one, reball that chip using leaded solder and then solder it to your laptop’s logic board in place of where the old faulty one was. Only then are you giving your laptop the best opportunity to help you get many many more presentations finalised or assignments completed to the end of your education. If you continue to use graphical intense software on the laptop after a reflow or a reball, it WILL most likely fail again. The reason why it works for a while after it has been ‘repaired by reflow or reball’ is that the heat generated when the chip is removed temporarily ‘fixes’ it internally. That fix is due to heat expansion and compression but after a while it just stops working and those annoying symptoms just come flooding back. This is a problem at effects ALL graphics chips in the Macbook Pro range. This is not isolated to just the nVidia chips which has been documented most out of all the others. The AMD chips suffer from the exact same problems. If you have read about the solder ‘bumps’ that attach the silicone chip to the carrier causing the problem …. correct, that is very true, but those bumps are INSIDE the chip, sealed and can NOT be fixed by a reflow or a reball. That is what makes up the graphics chip and THAT is what is failing, not the lead-free solder that attaches that carrier board to your laptop’s logic board.
So what are we offering here? …….
For the auction price, we are offering to take a look at your precious laptop and diagnose the fault to confirm if what you have here is a graphics chip issue. An issue that can be fixed by us by replacing that old duff chip for a brand new one. The auction price covers a quotation for fitting the chip using new leaded solder and also the return delivery of your laptop by insured Parcelforce Next Day. The auction price does NOT cover any repairs, it is purely just a quote and return price. If you then wish to have the repair carried out, we will do that for you, carry out stress testing and then contact you to arrange payment. The payment of the job can be paid by Paypal by clicking on a special auction which we have set up so that the transaction is carried out through eBay to keep in line with their selling rules. More details on this are supplied at the time.
Questions? …….
So what’s the bottom line, how much is this going to cost me?
The final cost of the repair depends on the part number of the graphics chip on your laptop. As a guide, the cost of the repair will be in the region of £125 to £155 on top of this auction. If it turns out that there is damage that cannot be fixed such as broken traces on the circuit board leading to the GPU, then you will not pay a penny more than what you pay on this auction.
What models can you fix, can you fix mine?
We are able to repair ALL the Macbook Pro models in the 13″, 15″ and 17″ sizes. Unibody and non-unibody, anything from 2006 to the present date. With the 13″ models, the graphics on these are handled by an MCP (Multi Core Processor) which produce graphics as well as a long list of other tasks. It is rare for these the suffer from the graphics fault as they do not have a dedicated graphics chip. They CAN fail, but it is less likely. If you have a 13″ model it might be worth contacting me first to discuss before buying the service.
How long will it take?
After we have received the laptop and the price has been approved, we will then need to remove the logic board and place it through a heat process to remove any moisture from within the circuit board and chips. This process takes a minimum of 24hrs and will prevent permanent damage being caused to your logic board when the old chip is removed and the new one soldered back on. Once that has been completed and the chip can then be soldered, it is cooled, re-assembled and stress tested. Generally, the full process can be completed in 2-5 days all depending on current workload but if you have a deadline to meet, talk to us and we will do what we can to push it through quickly for you.
What are the risks?
There shouldn’t be any at all but inevitably the occasional board comes along which cannot be repaired and in fact after the work has been carried out, the graphics are in a worse state than they were before. These cases are rare and tend to be due to broken copper traces that join the GPU solder points to other areas on the logic board. In a situation like this, there is an extremely slim chance of it being repaired and you would be presented with options for a possible replacement board (but be warned, they are not cheap and are ordered in as we do not stock them ourselves).
What’s the guarantee?
This is a repair to a logic board bought by you from Apple. we are afraid that we can not give any guarantees, we can only offer a warranty on the work that we carry out and that warranty is 6 months from the date of the repair. The warranty is a RTB warranty that covers rework of the failed components if such a thing occurred.
How long is it going to last?
How long is a piece of string? If you are going to run high intensity graphical applications/games on the laptop 24 hours a day 7 days a week, you can be sure that it will not lost as long as if you were to use it for general everyday use in a home or office environment.
Is it worth doing?
That is something that only you can decide. You know what value you put on the laptop and how much you paid for it. You know what budget you have and how much a similar replacement will cost you. Personally if you ask me, I will say Yes, for around £150, you have a working laptop that set you back over £1K a few years back and even if it gets you through another couple of years until the laptop no longer supports those applications, do it!
If you are changing the graphics chip, can I upgrade it to a better one?
NO. We are not into changing the specification of a logic board that was professionally designed by Apple. If they decided this logic board needs Chip ‘A’ on it, who are we to say “it would be so much better with chip B on it” and then the thing goes BANG two weeks after you get it back. No, we prefer to swap like for like thank you.
So what now? …….
Click the buy-it-now, pack it up and wait for my email with instructions of where to send it to and what to include, then arrange a courier to collect from you or take it down to the Post Office and send the machine over to me. Then just sit back and let us work our magic!
This auction may be a bit different from the others you have looked at for guys selling a similar service. Where this auction differs is that we are giving it to you straight, no B.S., no made up facts, no scaremongering, no pushy sales tactics. We have given you all the information you need to make your own informed decision to have your laptop repaired. We believe that it is the best way to get off on the right footing with potential customers. You only have to look at our feedback and what people have said about our repair services and communication. We think it is important to build a business around that trust and honesty and we hope that comes across in this auction and gives you the confidence to give our services a try. Who knows, you might be as impressed as all the others that have raved about us!!
