Why I Drilled Holes in My MacBook Pro and Put It in the Oven • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Drilled Holes in My MacBook Pro and Put It in the Oven

#221

Post by puckmunch » Tue, Dec 30, 2014, 6:51 PM UTC

forrestthewoods wrote: post #201

caycep wrote: post #197

This is one of the philosophical beefs I've developed against discrete GPU's, particularly in laptops. I've been using 13" unibodies with iGP's (Sandy, Ivy, Hassy vintages) and haven't had any of these problems. Bad stick of RAM, sure, but I blame samsung or whoever their supplier was. But most of the MBP deaths I've heard about from friends have been with AMD/nVidia GPU daughter cards on the 15's. My rMBP 13" also h…

Why the beef against discrete GPUs? Shouldn't the complaint be against cases not properly designed to house them? MacBooks also use, quite frustratingly so, damn near the slowest Nvidia mobile GPU you can buy! A newer model might actually run faster and cooler.

Discrete GPUs are soldered to boards using ball-gate arrays, a technique which was invented with lead solder balls in mind. The patent holder died before the EU mandated non-lead solders.

The reason this matters is because the process by which those solder balls are made does not check for the presence of voids in them. At least 10% of these balls (regardless of composition) x-ray as having voids.

GPUs go through the most radical thermal shifts of any surface mounted component. Lead has a sense of humor about that kind of temperature change; tin alloys do not and begin to crack after a sustained number of shifts. This happened on my 2011 MBP which was not used for gaming.

It's worth noting that the iMacs made the same year, where the discrete GPU was a replaceable daughtercard, had a voluntary recall for exactly the same reported video problems. The irony here is that the average cost of having a GPU reballed is about $150US, with a high rate of reliability compared to reflowing. Part of that reliability comes from reballers refusing to use anything but lead.

The EU is directly responsible for this problem but Apple is responsible to its users and with a cash reserve outstripping the US Treasury's, could have absorbed the cost of repairing these MBPs easily.

Re: Why I Drilled Holes in My MacBook Pro and Put It in the Oven

#222

Post by Someone » Tue, Dec 30, 2014, 6:52 PM UTC

jwr wrote: post #166

Someone wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wondered that, too. I wonder whether he actually reflowed solder in the oven. Wikipedia gives a sample profile that heats to over 200 degrees Celsius for a minute or so. This uses around 170 degrees Celsius, which is used for preheating in the Wikipedia example. Also, a Google image search gives me reflow heats above 200 degrees for the 5 images I checked. Also "The speed holes worked: The boot chime rang. The scre…

It's possible that he did reflow the board. Consumer ovens usually reach 250C, slightly more when in autoclean mode. Lead-free reflow happens above 250C (normally 255-275C). The whole procedure is wild, though, and I wouldn't recommend trying it out. He was lucky that the board didn't get destroyed. Most SMD components can withstand temperatures above 250C for tens of seconds, not necessarily for nine minutes.

But he writes "and turned the oven up to 340 F". That's about 170 Celsius. The oven probably isn't very precise, but I doubt that's in the 250 Celsius range.

Re: Why I Drilled Holes in My MacBook Pro and Put It in the Oven

#223

Post by lostlogin » Tue, Dec 30, 2014, 6:58 PM UTC

wldlyinaccurate wrote: post #211

azinman2 wrote: post #196

I wouldn't want to eat any food out of that oven....

Most (all?) component manufacturers use lead-free solder these days. Lead alloy solders are harder to come by since they're generally only used by hobbyists who find them easier to work with.

The board would bother me more.

Re: Why I Drilled Holes in My MacBook Pro and Put It in the Oven

#224

Post by brendannee » Tue, Dec 30, 2014, 6:59 PM UTC

I did a little holiday baking myself this year - fixing my old Samsung 30" display in a similar way: http://blog.bn.ee/2014/12/22/sometimes-you-just-need-to-bake...

Re: Why I Drilled Holes in My MacBook Pro and Put It in the Oven

#225

Post by niels_olson » Tue, Dec 30, 2014, 6:59 PM UTC

jamesaguilar wrote: post #175

Alupis wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you doubt the temperature did not reflow the board? When I solder electronics, I'm usually somewhere between 500F to 650F, but that's so things get hot enough quickly enough to not burn. I don't doubt a slow bake at 340F would do the same thing... some online googling shows people doing reflows with toaster ovens in the same temperature range (340F-450F). It's likely the solder joints were not completely disco…

Right. And the reason why it keeps breaking? Well, the solder on the board might not have any flux left, so it might have trouble flowing properly. There could be a cold joint, etc. If it fails again, one possible next step would be to grab a multimeter and test the resistance across each component on the board. If the resistance is infinite, that might be your problem component.

Don't you have to isolate components from the circuit to check resistance? Otherwise, you're looking also the other components look like the other arm(s) of a parallel circuit.

Re: Why I Drilled Holes in My MacBook Pro and Put It in the Oven

#226

Post by tlrobinson » Tue, Dec 30, 2014, 6:59 PM UTC

matthewmacleod wrote: post #188

Nitramp wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't buy insurance for things that won't ruin you. The insurer will calculate the risk of whatever happening, and obviously charge more than likelihood * cost. So unless your risk is higher than average, you're losing money. And keep in mind that the average insurance taker probably has higher risk than the overall population.

This is awful advice! Losing a smartphone isn't going to ruin me, but it sure would piss me off to have to fork out £500 or whatever because it gets jacked. Similarly, someone could break into my house and clean it out. Not going to ruin me, but I'd rather not have to replace everything. The whole point of insurance is collective risk-spreading. Yes, this means that the majority (by value) of people with insurance wi…

"The whole point of insurance is collective risk-spreading"

If you can afford to replace the item yourself you can instead spread that risk over time (and multiple items) by essentially self-insuring.

I absolutely agree you should buy insurance for "large, uncertain costs", but a smartphone or laptop is not that for a lot of people.

Healthcare and liability (auto, homeowners/renters, etc) are two examples of actually "large, uncertain costs" for most people.

Re: Why I Drilled Holes in My MacBook Pro and Put It in the Oven

#227

Post by tnorthcutt » Tue, Dec 30, 2014, 7:01 PM UTC

jwr wrote: post #166

Someone wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wondered that, too. I wonder whether he actually reflowed solder in the oven. Wikipedia gives a sample profile that heats to over 200 degrees Celsius for a minute or so. This uses around 170 degrees Celsius, which is used for preheating in the Wikipedia example. Also, a Google image search gives me reflow heats above 200 degrees for the 5 images I checked. Also "The speed holes worked: The boot chime rang. The scre…

It's possible that he did reflow the board. Consumer ovens usually reach 250C, slightly more when in autoclean mode. Lead-free reflow happens above 250C (normally 255-275C). The whole procedure is wild, though, and I wouldn't recommend trying it out. He was lucky that the board didn't get destroyed. Most SMD components can withstand temperatures above 250C for tens of seconds, not necessarily for nine minutes.

He stated he was using a temperature of 340F, which is roughly 170C. Would that temperature also be harmful to SMD components when exposed for several minutes?

Re: Why I Drilled Holes in My MacBook Pro and Put It in the Oven

#228

Post by korzun » Tue, Dec 30, 2014, 7:01 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #195

matthewmacleod wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is awful advice! Losing a smartphone isn't going to ruin me, but it sure would piss me off to have to fork out £500 or whatever because it gets jacked. Similarly, someone could break into my house and clean it out. Not going to ruin me, but I'd rather not have to replace everything. The whole point of insurance is collective risk-spreading. Yes, this means that the majority (by value) of people with insurance wi…

Over time, you're probably paying 2x or 3x in insurance premiums compared with what the loss would be. Consider also the overall effect if you invested the premiums instead of paying them.

You can't guarantee 100% expense coverage during random events. Not everybody has thousands of dollars laying around in emergency fund for 12+ months. Committing to an insurance policy is simply a semi-guaranteed safety net.

Have tons of cash? You should still probably look at a cheaper plan with a super high deductible.

Re: Why I Drilled Holes in My MacBook Pro and Put It in the Oven

#229

Post by TrainedMonkey » Tue, Dec 30, 2014, 7:06 PM UTC

fein wrote: post #214

digitalsushi wrote: post #99

There is an alternate universe where every time he took his computer apart, he skipped the reflow heat stuff and just put it back together... and it worked identically for identical periods of time between failures. I'm not saying it's this universe, I'm just saying there is one out there.

Are you in my living room? A few months ago I disassembled and cleaned a grape juice damaged MBP. Tried it afterward and no dice. Tried it yesterday on a bored whim and I now have a working MBP with a sticky keyboard. Why? I have no idea.

Most of the actual logic board is sealed. So unless you spill something corrosive that goes through that seal and damages the logic board liquid can only get to and damage[0] actual connectors between components and physically moving entities. In case of MBP physically moving entities are mostly fans and keyboard.

My guess would be that grape juice shorted some of those connectors. After few months it dried sufficiently, such that when you reseated them short went away.

[0] And by damage I mean mostly short and/or corrode the metal.

Re: Why I Drilled Holes in My MacBook Pro and Put It in the Oven

#230

Post by slantyyz » Tue, Dec 30, 2014, 7:07 PM UTC

andrew_wc_brown wrote: post #130

I owned an early Macbook Pro 2011 model. I had the logic board replaced 4 times and the 4th time paid out of pocket. After that one burnt out I gave up and bought a new computer. Simply the worst computer I ever owned.

I only replaced my logic board once before it died, but I consider it the best -and- worst computer I ever owned. Outside of the fact that the board design was $*#$#387 and that it didn't have USB 3, it was a great computer in that it was fast, solid, light and easily upgraded. As prices came down, I kept upgrading the RAM and storage.