MacBook air pop and dead but no obvious culprit - help please

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MacBook Air 13" Early 2017

In June 2017 Apple updated its 13" MacBook Air with a newer Broadwell Intel Core i5 processor, resulting in slightly increased performance and battery life.

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Daniel R @danielr6149

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Posted: Sep 22, 2023

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MacBook air pop and dead but no obvious culprit - help please

My daughter’s 2017 Macbook Air made a clear popping noise, no smoke, and then died. No power up or response to SMC or PRAM key sequences. I tried to find a blown component on motherboard or power connector mini-board but everything looks fine. Any suggestions before we head over to Apple store? I have uploaded pictures - thanks!

Pictures after cleaning

Passive components seem ok, I wonder if an integrated circuit can fail with a pop that doesn’t show…

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DanJ @danj Rep: 502.8k Self employed contract worker 35 347 977 · Answer 1 · 2023-09-22T10:47:08-07:00

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DanJ @danj

Rep: 502.8k

Self employed contract worker

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347

977

Posted: Sep 22, 2023

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While hard to tell I see a questionable area on the backside of the board just below the MLB label just below the string of resistors and capacitors there are a few transistors give the board a wipe to clean off the dust and take a fresh image of this area again.

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Thanks for looking Dan. I’ll update the post with better pictures. Unfortunately I had to take Humpty Dumpty apart again for the cleaning and new pics and I ended up breaking off one of the wi-fi connector leads so I’ll post a new question for the new problem I created!

Sep 22, 2023 by Daniel R

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MacBook Air 13" Early 2017

MacBook air pop and dead but no obvious culprit - help please

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