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mitchW

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 23, 2015
1
0
I got a MBP 15'' Mid-2010 that just died last week during some Safari web browsing. It does not react when pressing the Power-On button, I did the SMC reset, SMC bypass, disconnected the battery, etc. But nothing. The only thing that still works is the charging of the battery and the battery fuel gauge.

At first I thought that it might have been liquid damaged, but when opening it, I didn't see any signs of spill damage.
I then took the logic board out and did some measurements suggested by a friend of mine. He told me to do a continuity check of the SMC capacitors at the top of the main BGA chips to check for shorts. The south bridge and the GPU chips showed normal continuity (a very short beep by the multimeter), but on the CPU I got a steady beep on the both sides of the capacitors measured to the GND, so there must be a short somewhere. Also some caps around the CPU measured as shorted, but I doubt that they are. There must be something else they're connected to, that has shorted to ground.

Now the question: is this checking procedure correct? Is possible or common for the CPU to die like this? I've repaired and checked probably more than 1000 laptops and PCs in the last 10 years, but I've never seen a CPU that shorted inside. Perhaps something else to check?
 
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