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Released October 2008 / 2.4, 2.53, 2.66, 2.8 or 2.93 GHz Core 2 Duo Processor

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Flickering screen and white screen?

Hi Guys

I have a Mac Book Pro Late 2008 2.4ghz 4Gb 500gb

Owned for the best part of 2 years and has been lovely to use.

All of a sudden one day when doing some work the screen slowly started fuzzing with multicolor and now flickers with a rainbow of lines

I have uploaded a short video below

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLuZ1sRTs...

I have opened the bottom case and when I tapped the LCD connector closest to the charger port and hey presto it came back to normal, Pure luck? but after a few minutes it came back. grrrr

I disconnected the LCD cable and cleaned carefully around the port and inspected the pins of the label no obviously signs of damage? I have taken it out and put it back in a number of items but the problem still comes back?

Can anyone please advice?

Answered! View the answer I have this problem too

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Chosen Solution

Sorry to say you have the dreaded NVIDIA GPU problem. In your case the solder pads under the chip have become bad due to the chips high heat (cold solder joint). Which is why hitting it appeared to help.

There is two ways you can go here:

If your up to it replace the entire logic board with a new one which is the newer Rev2 board. Apple used a better version of the GPU and better solder. Or if you can find someone with the equipment & skills to re-ball your current GPU with new solder you should be able to get a few more years out of the system.

I'm sorry to say Apple as of this last May ('13) stopped repairing these systems. While they don't offer any support many Apple authorized repair centers still do (and have the correct part).

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I was tapping the LCD connector on the board and not the GPU? I haven't touched the GPU and when re-sitting or tapping the LCD connector is fine again?

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1 Comment:

I think you caused enough pressure to flex the PCB which altered things around the GPU. If you're good with a soldering Iron you could try touching up the connector joints. But, your symptom is more like the GPU issue Vs a bad connector or a bad cable.

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