Fried GPU! MacBook Pro 2011 Restoration

hi guys welcome back to another huge jefferies video in this video i'm going to be restoring this 2011 macbook pro with fried graphics this is an extremely common issue for these 2011 macbooks with amd graphics this one usually shuts off before fully booting but on occasion i am able to get into mac os and be bombarded with messages saying the computer has detected a potential problem or that it was shut down or restarted because of a problem while it works while it's running on its integrated intel graphics as soon as anything gpu intensive is detected and the macbook switches to the amd graphics it glitches out and crashes particular macbook is an early 2011 model with an amd radeon 5750m graphics and a core i7 it's the largest mac laptop ever made with a massive 43 centimeter display compare that to a 28 centimeter macbook air from 2015 and you can see the difference between the smallest and biggest apple laptops while fixing this macbook i'll also be giving it some much needed upgrades thanks to my mates over at ifixit for sending across a 16 gig ram kit and an ssd for this project if you want to check out any of their computer parts or one of their awesome tool kits i'll leave a link down in the description this particular kit includes a 250 gig ssd screwdrivers and an enclosure to be able to transfer data from the old drive i received this laptop as part of a 26 kilo mac lot i purchased from john from roadkill incorporated john is a mac refurbisher and reseller who like myself supports the right to repair movement i'll leave his youtube and website in the description below to fix this macbook i'll be using a cmi zapper gpu killer which will reprogram the max rom to no longer detect the faulty gpu this little add-on board wasn't cheap costing me a hundred australian dollars i'll also be replacing the keyboard as the left shift key isn't working to begin i'll remove the 10 phillips screws holding the bottom cover in place while the bottom is held in with phillips head screws there are various torx screws throughout the device so i'll be using my ifixit protect tool kit for this repair taking that bottom off which is also clipped down into place i can start by disconnecting our battery before we begin removing the logic board while he could solder the chip into place without removing it i need to do further work to the logic board after the installation of the gpu killer to make everything work properly i'll need to remove all the flex cables some of which were hidden under some metal brackets and all of the torx screws securing everything down into place i will leave the fans attached to the logic board as it's not necessary to remove them carefully maneuvering the board out i can now place our gpu killer chip over the rom of our macbook pro and solder it into place ideally you'd want to use a microscope for this however as i didn't have one i'll be doing it by eye you need a very tiny soldering iron tip to be able to get a more precise application of solder and avoid bridging the pins of the rom chip although to make things a bit harder in my case i was also working around the camera after soldering it into place i cleaned everything off using some alcohol and an old toothbrush now that our rom will be reprogrammed we have to kill power to the old gpu this apparently stops the computer from detecting the gpu on boot which may cause it to crash to do this i'll need to remove a resistor up near the left fan for this i used the same soldering iron to see whether it could be removed without using hot air while it took longer than i was expecting i was able to remove it without causing any damage to surrounding components afterwards cleaning the surface with some alcohol to remove the flux with that it's time to test our modification i'll place the logic board back into the laptop and reconnect the flex cables i won't yet install any screws as we'll need to do further work later pressing the power button nothing happened i pressed it again and it seemed like the laptop was only briefly turning on i reflowed the solar joints and did a p-ram reset and after that a laptop now boots i'm not sure whether i just had a bad solder joint on the gpu killer or i needed to do a p-ram reset to get the rom to reprogram but regardless the gpu has been disabled and the mac only reads the intel hd graphics one issue faced is no brightness controls or backlight after resuming from sleep when running mac os high sierra so we'll need to do two more modifications to make that work after removing the logic board again i'll remove the speaker from the other side of the board as we'll need to solder a wire underneath however before we do that i notice some corrosion on the board which i'm wanting to remove to get a closer look i'll remove the heatsink from the board after doing so i can clean off the cpu and old dead gpu in preparation for later when i'll reapply some fresh thermal paste now i can use some more alcohol and a toothbrush to remove the small amount of corrosion from the board while i'm at it i'll also use an anti-static brush to remove any of the dust and grime build-up getting a very close look at the board i'll need to remove this component and solder a wire to the test pad next to it to do this i'll be using hot air to remove the component and a soldering iron to solder in the new wire i started by preheating the board in the area to which i was going to be removing the component to reduce strain on the board from the heat i used 380 degrees of heat to melt the solder before lifting the component away using a pair of tweezers then i could solder in a new wire this one i actually salvaged from an old ps2 keyboard cable here is what it looks like after the modification not bad for doing it by eye the other end of the wire needs to connect to the pwm pad on the gpu killer these additional wires are only needed for use with high sierra and later as the display drivers were changed and require the dedicated gpu to work by running these wires we are making the gpu killer control the brightness so for the second wire we need to connect it to a test pad which will read the keyboard input so we can change the brightness using the brightness keys with our modification done it's time to reattach our heatsink and get some new thermal paste installed i'll remove the crusty old thermal paste and clean out the fins before we reinstall it i'll be using arctic silver for this and whilst i did install some on the gpu this isn't necessary as it shouldn't have any power now anyway reinstalling our heatsink i will get each screw started before tightening them down in a star-like pattern once all the screws have been installed i will tighten them all down into place and with that our logic board is hacked and ready to go however before we put that in i'll need to install our new keyboard so we can hopefully fix the broken shift key that this computer has i'll start by removing the old wi-fi card and the dvd drive with those out of the way i can remove the three screws from the speaker and remove the warning label from the battery this was really secured into place and proved quite difficult to remove it's clear apple really didn't want you removing the battery for some reason with the speaker out of the way i'll need to remove this bracket which goes across the keyboard and the expansion card slot that's right no dongles with this guy you can just simply slide in the expansion card of your choosing to get any ports that you would like with that out of the way i can remove the backlight film from the keyboard which will give us access to the actual keyboard mechanism itself this is only lightly adhered down into place although it contains many layers so i'll try my best not to separate those with those out of the way we can get a closer look at the back of the keyboard unlike newer mac models the keyboard is actually removable and isn't riveted into the case so if you have a faulty keyboard it's easy to replace in saying that there's over 50 screws holding this down into position so it's still quite a time-consuming process to remove the keyboard in the case of new mac laptops if the keyboard fails you'll need to replace the entire top portion of the laptop which includes the battery trackpad keyboard and aluminium top not only is the keyboard not replaceable but the battery is so securely glued into position it's almost not meant to be removed or ever replaced with all the screws being the same size reinstallation is quite easy however these screws are very tiny and easy to strip so be careful when removing them after a solid 10 minutes of unscrewing i can finally detach the power button and unroute its cable and fully remove the keyboard i will clean the keyboard area before i reinstall our new keyboard into place after reinstalling the power button and the portion of the hinge which i needed to remove to deroute the cable i can painstakingly reinstall all of the screws as i've done with many of my other macbooks i'll be installing a colored sheet of cellophane to create a custom backlit keyboard i have done a multi-colored one before as well as another purple one as purple is my favorite color i will be doing it again with this laptop i can simply tape it into position behind the keyboard so the backlight can shine through it with the backlight aligned i can simply press the tabs back into place adhering it back onto the frame i can then go ahead and reinstall the bracket and the speaker back into position while some people replace the dvd drive with a secondary hard drive or ssd i'll be leaving the factory dvd drive in place before i install the wi-fi card i'm actually going to be upgrading it with one that has bluetooth 4 enabled i had this one laying around as i got it in a previous part slot video and it is actually out of a 2012 macbook pro as the actual carriages themselves are incompatible i'll need to remove the actual wi-fi module itself from each carriage and swap them across after doing this you can use a third-party tool to enable airdrop to ios devices although not natively supported bluetooth 4.0 will allow you to enable it after pulling both units apart i can swap our new module into our old carriage screwing it back into position reconnecting the cable and carefully reinstalling the shielding that goes around it it's ready to go reinstalling it into the machine i can screw it into place routing and connecting all the appropriate cables next to go in is our expansion card slot which simply screws into position further i can reinstall the speaker and microphone onto the logic board after connecting that up it's time to reinstall our logic board into our casing i can remove the one fan from the left side so i can properly reconnect the backlight cable for the keyboard i can then reinstall all the flex cables going to various components throughout the laptop the hardest of which was our new keyboard as the cable hadn't been bent into the correct position after reinstalling our fan and our display cable i could reconnect the battery and test out the laptop pressing the power button nothing happened pressing it again it booted right up testing out our keyboard our shift key still doesn't work so it appears it isn't the keyboard at fault so it looks like i'll be using the right shift key with our computer up and running it's time to reinstall all the screws securing in place the logic board as well as the various covers going over the flex cables after that it's time to get this disgusting four gigs of ram out so we can throw in a nice new ifixit kit of 16 gigs of ddr3 memory straight into this macbook pro after that it's time to get rid of this slow hard drive and install our new crucial ssd which we also got from ifixit screwing that into position i can reconnect our battery and reinstall the bottom cover onto this macbook pro after reinstalling the 10 philips head screws all that's left to do is to give this macbook a much needed clean using some alcohol and a microfiber cloth i was able to remove almost all the marks from the top lid however there are some permanent scratches to the aluminium after cleaning the base of the laptop all that's left to do is to wipe down our matte anti-glare display and we're done so this is it a working and patched 43 centimeter 2011 macbook pro packing 16 gigs of ram a 2.2 gigahertz intel core i7 and intel hd graphics 3000. we've successfully disabled the faulty amd graphics for good and hacked working brightness for mac os high sierra while the keyboard can control the brightness for high sierra the option is still missing from the os however in all previous versions of mac os the brightness will work with or without the two wires we added this modification isn't without its quirks you can no longer use airplay or attach a second monitor also if the battery is disconnected and then reconnected the mac won't power on the first time i believe this is because the gpu killer is reprogramming the rom while there are temporary methods to disable or repair the amd graphics this is a permanent solution so resetting the pram or os won't re-enable the gpu i've seen people even put their logic boards in ovens although i love this mod it's very complex to install while skilled soldiers could install the mod chip and run sierra and lower i wouldn't even attempt the additional two wires for the high sierra support without a microscope and on that note this has been a huge jefferies video if you like what you saw hit that subscribe button and consider checking out the computer playlist for more videos just like this one and if you're looking for some tips or what tools i use to repair devices be sure to check out my website link for which is down in the description that's all for this video and i'll catch you guys next time

Channel: Hugh Jeffreys

Views: 820,472

Keywords: Hugh, Jeffreys, Apple, iPhone, iPad, iPod, technology, repair, restore, restoration, GPU, fried, broken

Id: 8L77ARC4ENI

Length: 15min 46sec (946 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 24 2020