Has anyone successfully done a redneck reflow of the 2015 MacBook?

[Jos.]

My 2015 MacBook is periodically having issues with the SSD and Wi-Fi simultaneously. It can go months without happening it can also happen twice in the same day. The computer hangs and reboots to a flashing question mark. When I boot it off of a USB drive the computer is fully functional other than for the absense of the SSD and Wi-Fi. After some period of time both will reappear on reboot and when they're both visible the machine passes diagnostics.

Since the two devices fail simultaneously and they're both PCIe devices that makes me suspicious of the solder bond between the processor-chipset package and the board.

I inquired with the two places who do Rossmann style repairs around here and neither of them has ever so much as touched a 2015 MacBook and didn't seem enthusiastic about giving it a try.

I successfully reflowed the GPU on my 2007 MacBook Pro several times with a heat gun and the machine lives to this very day but the pitch of the balls on the Core M package is a lot finer than the GPU in the 2007 MacBook Pro.

I would love to get another year out of this machine, I suspect the next form-factor MacBook Air will be similar in size to the 12-inch than the current MacBook Air. Before the plague times I travelled a lot for work and I loved having a real Mac of my own along with my company 15-inch MacBook Pro and I simply never had a problem with it before this other than the original power brick failing after about a month.

 

[Jpoon]

Try looking through Louis Rossman's video history, I bet he has at least one video on a repair for that Macbook. Mine is still going strong, sorry to hear about your troubles.

 

[Jos.]

The Rossmann videos didn't appear to address this particular issue.

In any event, once again the machine was failing to boot from it's internal SSD and after many reboots and leaving it turned off overnight it still wouldn't boot.

So I decided to call around, got a M1 MacBook Air put on hold and then I gave it a shot.

I took the MacBook apart, wrapped the rest of the board in foil tape, removed the heatsink and then blasted the Core M for two minutes with a heatgun. https://www.michaels.com/heater-tool-by-celebrate-it/10314014.html

And to my slight surprise the machine booted after I reassembled it and passed the diagnostic. (and yikes, watch for those Wi-Fi connectors, they're barely attached to the board)

So far so good... but I can't be certain because the issue has failed to appear for months at a time. I'm slightly impressed I didn't destroy it.

I had no trouble with this machine, not even the OG butterfly keyboard until this issue cropped up. It owes me nothing after nearly six years but I'm happy to keep it going.

 

[Jos.]

It has now been two months since I blasted it and the issue has not reoccurred in that time. Of course everything in nature has to balance so now it's reporting Service Recommended on the battery.

 

[MBAir2010]

my 2010 MacBook air is reporting the same thing, in which the battery is fine.
i need some logic board repairs, but will hold off until i can waste the money.

 

[Jos.]

According to Coconut Battery's aggregated statistics I am doing better than most, but at the end of the day I'm at 494 cycles after five and a half years.

If the substantive MacBook Air refresh disappoints I might spring for the $199 battery replacement.

 

[Jos.]

So, six months later I began to have graphics anomalies and memory related kernel panics.

This time I went ahead and bought a new MacBook Air but decided to try blasting the CPU again once I was all moved-in to the new MacBook Air and once again the machine returned to full functionality after blasting the CPU for a minute with the heat gun.

If the battery in this thing wasn't crap I would find somebody to replace the solder balls on the CPU with good old fashioned lead solder.

We just hired somebody here who was at one time a Mac Genius and she commented on the 12-inch MacBook on my desk saying that the model was extremely unpopular but to look at the service bench at the Apple Store she worked at you would have thought it was outselling the MacBook Air.

When I told her I had been keeping it going by just taking it apart and blasting it with a heat gun she looked at me like I was crazy.

 

[kxcnd3]

I know old post, but still wanted to share my experience.
Had a sudden death of my MBR 12 2015. After checking the most common failure modes I was hoping to bring it back to live by replacing U4700 (as Rossmann did in his excellent videos). No luck but voltage was back, 3V3 line ok, still the USB-C-voltage was only 14.7 V instead of 20 V, CPU VCore was 1.7V (I think should be 1.5 V).
So I gave it a try in a professional reflow oven.
And it came back to life.
What I noticed though were high CPU Temps of 94 deg C even after directly waking from stand by. Since it also has some other glitches (battery end of life, some keys unreliable), the next day I traded it in at Apple, so at least could get some money towards my next Mac instead of just having a brick with zero value.