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The March 2015 update of Apple's 13" MacBook Air features fifth generation Intel Core i5 and i7 processors, resulting in slightly increased performance and battery life.

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Dead Logic Board – Advice

OK, so I have a 13-Inch MacBook Air (Early 2015) that will not turn on. At first it took a couple of tries to turn it on, but couple of weeks later it just died. I decided to open it and check if there was some liquid damage or something else that I could spot myself. I have no technical knowledge but I hoped I could use the alcohol and a brush to clean if there was something obvious. I took out the logic board (820-00165-02) and there was no obvious liquid residue, but I found a spot that was looking wrong (marked on the image)- so I cleaned it with 99% alcohol. The rest of the board looked brand new.

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I re-assembled the laptop but it still would not turn on. I left it like that for a couple of hours and when I touched it again I realized it started to heat up. The whole laptop was really hot. So I opened it up again, took it apart and found that the part that I cleaned looks like this now:

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So here’s my question: Should I try to take the logic board somewhere for repair or should I just get a new one? What would be cheaper? Any other suggestions?

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Those are undoubtedly signs of liquid damage and relative corrosion..you didn’t mention where you got the Mac from, but I wouldn’t be surprised it would be a ultrasonic cleaned board and that cleaning was the only attempt to fix it as probably who sold it didn’t have the needed skills. An ultrasonic cleaned board is what technicians don’t like to work on as most obvious signs of liquid damage have been washed away and that makes fixing more troublesome. No harm in trying handing it over to a specialized lab for attempting repair, but nobody can tell what’s possibly wrong besides those 2 capacitors and the resistor without deeper testing. If it heats up without booting there are certainly shorts to be found in the board.

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2 Comments:

Thanks for the reply! I got the Mac refurbished from Apple 3 years ago. My wife did spill some water on it about six months ago. We used a blow dryer to dry it and it worked fine up until now, but I guess it finally got to it.

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@ Background information is always very important. Being apparently a limited damage, chances of a successful repair are higher..hope for the best :)

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Nikola Kostic will be eternally grateful.
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