Had a 2015 MacBook Pro come in with a dead GPU, got it working again with a heat gun

Customer brought it in, said it would just show a black screen. I opened it up and the board looked fine, no liquid damage. I used a heat gun on the GPU chip for about 45 seconds at 380 degrees, being real careful. After it cooled, the machine booted right up and has been fine for two weeks now. Anyone else had luck with this method on older Mac logic boards?

3 comments

3 Comments

ruby_rivera769d ago

Remember doing that exact thing on a 2011 iMac with the bad AMD chip. Held the heat gun on there for a minute, crossed my fingers, and it actually worked for another eight months before it finally quit for good. It's a decent band-aid fix.

mia_stone9d ago

Did the same with my old MacBook's GPU. A quick bake in the oven actually brought it back for almost a year. It's a last ditch effort, but sometimes you get lucky.

king.andrew7d ago

Wait, you put a whole laptop in your oven? That's wild, I've only ever heard of doing that with the bare circuit board. I can't believe the plastic case didn't melt or something. You must have been really careful with the temperature. Honestly, getting a year out of that is a pretty amazing result for a kitchen fix.