2008 MBP + Nvidia 8600M GT failure rate

[Idefix]

How hot would you say it was when it failed (or would cause it to fail)? I've been using my Macbook Pro with the 8600M GT now for almost four and half years and I've had no problems at all. I use Fan Control (auto-adjusts for temperature at a preset curve). Dumping my song tracks runs the thing at nearly 100% on both CPUs and I did that several dozen times to no ill. Maybe I just got a "good" one? (I thought I read they were ALL bad, though).

I used my MBP 8600M for 3.5 years when it went belly up. Video tearing cleared up, didn't take any screen shots, my bad. Apple ran the test, didn't detect a problem. But at least the problem was documented in the notes.

Problem developed again, this time it was black screen, no restart. Used the heating-the-MB technique from

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/feedback/MacBookPro_video_failure.html#storytop

and took it in again. It failed right in the middle of the test.

Got new MB and new battery. (with a great big, huge fight with Apple!)

 

[etn]

Definitely not 100% failure rate. My early 2008 MBP (bought the week it was released) has been doing strong ever since.

 

[shokan]

How hot would you say it was when it failed (or would cause it to fail)?

I don't know. I wasn't checking temps because I didn't know yet about problems with the chip. When I first got the laptop, I hooked up a 22" Dell LCD monitor and the chip failed within a couple of days. Had I known about problems with the chip, I wouldn't have used an external monitor.

 

[mckey]

I'm still using my 2008 mbp 2.53 GHz every day it never gets shut off and runs as strong as ever.Only problem I've ever had is the black light keyboard went out a month before the 3 year apple care expired and luckily I got it repaired at no charge.I upgraded the memory from 4 to 8 GB and installed the OWC 240 GB SSD and it the best laptop I've ever owned.

 

[7031]

It's definitely very prominent - my MacBook Pro is on its second motherboard (so far so good, but will be replacing it hopefully soon), and I know at least two other people who have had this issue.

It's very possible that it's down to the load that people put on them - I was a pretty heavy user back when it failed. I do know however that it tends to run very hot (although, in fairness I think all laptops seemed to back then haha).

Unfortunately I was not lucky enough to get a free replacement courtesy of Apple (under the extended warranty program thing), although I was able to get another motherboard for it off eBay fairly cheaply.