any of our members here have the thermal GPU issues as well

I am just putting a call out to our members. If any of you have had 2011 onward MBP's with a dGPU up to and including the mid 2012 and early 2013 model 15" Retina ( not as common yet ) please send me a PM and post over on the ongoing thread @ Apple.com https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4766577?start=0&tstart=0 as Apple may finally be getting around to noticing their solder joints can not take the heat and thermal stresses of these units. I personally have had multiple units fail ( as some of you know ) and at last count the affected users are quite numerous. Many of us at Creativecow and other professional forums are reaching out to see if we can get Apple to deal with this issue which FINALLY came to the medias attention last Thursday and we are hoping to have some sort of response from Apple other than " warranty denied due to excessive use " if under the warranty period, or just ignoring users and telling them they need to pay for a motherboard replacement.

As this affects both AMD models ( of which no other manufacturer had issues with unlike the original Nvidia issues a few years back ) and Nvidia retina models, ( as stated not as common yet ) we all assume it is an issue with Apples design or manufacturing and not that of the GPU makers this time.

Owners of 2011 MacBook Pros report critical GPU failures, system crashes

 

No issues here, at least not yet. I was also extremely lucky that I had a MBP with the 8600M GT that didn't fail during my ownership of it. I'm hoping the streak continues with my 2011. It's hard to tell from reports, but I'm wondering if the issue is affecting the early 2011 more than the late 2011. That's more a curiosity than anything.

In any case, my system is under AppleCare until mid-July 2015. Hopefully Apple will do the right thing and extend coverage past that as they did with the old 8600 GT.

 

it seems all the AMD equipped units ( 2011, 2012 ) and the first two generations of rMBP's are affected at this point. As a couple of engineering members over at Apple.com are pointing out BGA solder tends to flow between 184 and 208 degrees F ( 85c - 97c ) and if bumped or vibrated it would be very easy for the solder to crack, move or degrade.

I wasn't so lucky with the old 8600's as well. and am still in the CLA with Nvidia

 

New 3 year forced upgrade program?

 

I do not have a 2011 model but I have a 2012 cMBP with the 650M. Got my first logic board replacement this past week due to similar issues as the 2011 thread stated, ending with an unusable system that had lines on the screen during boot. My computer was given to me new by the school 1 week before the late 2013 refresh.

I am actually concerned with this as I don't feel like dumping $350 into AppleCare for the lowest end 15" Macbook. My use of the computer ranges from computational research to class note taking so it goes through many heat cycles from 40C to 100+C a day. I started using fan control after I got it back and wow the limits Apple sets are high. With a light load, around 25% CPU usage, temperatures hover around 90-93C and fans stay at 2000. I know it's not a defect, but even on my old white macbook the fans kicked in at 70C; this one starts ramping up only past 95C.

My use hits heat cycling very hard so my failures may be very accelerated. I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing more of this later this year as units hit the 2 year mark.

 

my advice get the 3 year Apple care at this point and hope that they replace motherboards no charge. If you are following any of the main threads at Apple.com then you are noticing the numbers are really accelerating with this issue.

 

I am not having that issue as far as I can tell with a mid 2012 mBPr unit. I did buy AppleCare last week so I've got a couple more years of warranty to go. I really hate laptop problems regardless of whether they are covered under warranty. I sure hate being without my laptop especially when it is an engineering mistake. Hopefully I won't have the issue but that's not usually how my luck works.

 

I have an early 2011 17" per sig. Ever since Mavericks I get frequent random shutdowns. Tried a fresh install and even replaced thermal paste, which was quite baked, btw. Anyways, shortly after both efforts, same thing, random shutdowns. Sometimes the whole system will shut down and other times, the internet browser will crash and restart. Either way it sucks and I have pretty much marked it as unreliable.

 

Sorry to hear darklich, if you are still under warranty see if they will do a mainboard swap. and I agree it is seeming almost all 2011+ units with a dGPU are becoming unreliable if you keep thermal cycling them. we even have our first reports of late 2013 rMBP's getting affected now in one thread. and of course it is the heavy users getting hit first and more regular users in the 2-3 year mark roughly. ( we are now tracking purchase date and usage patterns of a few hundred users now )

I have 2 of the same 17" units and have done a total of 7 board swaps now all under my expense

 

No applecare for me, so no more warranty. I'll just rely on my air for now. I was using the 17 today, and all of the sudden temps spiked at 100c and the fans came on full blast. I started opening programs to see if I could make it crash. Nope, it calmed down and kept on running. Temps went back to around 70c. Right now it's running at 35c. It really seems quite random when it shuts down.

 

I have the standard 2012 15" MBP model with the 650M Nvidia GPU. I have used it for ~6 months now half in clam shell mode and half not. When in clam shell mode, the 650M is always on since I'm outputting to a 1080p display. However, when I'm using it while on-the-go or in my office, the Intel HD 4000 is mainly running.

The only issues I've noticed so far are likely from my SSHD in that it will randomly freeze while my MBP is waking from sleep mode. I have to force shutdown my MBP and then turn it back on. It actually didn't boot a few days ago when I had to do this as the boot screen remained on for 15 minutes before I force shut it down again. I then performed an SMC reset and it booted up just fine. I haven't restarted my MBP in a while so my SSHD booted at the normal HDD speed. I should probably restart it more often so that the SSD in the SSHD starts "learning" the procedure. Then I can go back to 25 second boot times.

 

No Problems at all my 2012 MBPr was thinking about buying a 2013 just now, but realized that I don't really need to upgrade because everything I do does not exactly require or ask for an upgrade. Thus I've concluded that I should just save my cash. I have constantly tried to use the Intel GPU over the dedicated and I often use the Retina Screen on my system.