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Help me figuring out what to do - HW question


Glougloumouth

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Hi,

 

I have a D630 Nvidia that worked wonderfully for the past year and as of last week, the screen turned all messed up. Tried an external screen, not better, so I would think my GPU is a bad one and just gave up.

 

I am now wondering what to do. I see I can get a used motherboard off eBay but it will run in the 100$ with shipping & taxes and I have no warranty I won't face the issue again. Are you aware of motherboard revisions / versions that would provide defect free GPU? If so, I am interested, and I would start looking for such (albeit more expensive than the "working pull" I see on eBay).

 

Otherwise, I really don't know what to do. I hesitate to just sell this one for parts (high res screen, RAM, HD, keyboard...) and look for something else. I am quite hesitant to go again with a D630 or any serie affected by the Nvidia bug... If not a D630, what else? I am looking for something that can handle ML (and what ever comes out next week :-) and supports 8GB RAM at least. 

 

What would be your take on this? I will appreciate all constructive comment.

 

Thank you,

 

Gl.

 

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All nVidia D620 and D630 can suffer from the GPU defect. No motherboard can be defect-free. If you're certain it's the GPU, not your LCD wire, then you can try to bake your motherboard to reflow the GPU.

https://osxlatitude.com/index.php?/topic/2054-my-d620-nvidia-based-laptop-has-gone-belly-up/?hl=bake&do=findComment&comment=15386

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Thank you, I will try to bake it and report. Will take a few weeks, I hardly have spare time these days.

 

Otherwise, I stand by my question: what would be the best ML supporting hardware / decent price point once I exclude the D620/630/820/830 family?

 

Thanks,

 

Gl.

 

Edit: reflow liquid ordered, I'll see how good I am at cooking...

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That's difficult to answer. Hackintoshing a laptop is a rather opportunistic method in the sense that, unlike a desktop, you don't usually buy (and can't build) a laptop to turn it to Mac OS X. One can only try and run Mac OS X on the basis of would-be compatible hardware specifications. As such, you'll find it hard to find a definitive "ideal" platform that act and run like a real MacBook.

 

Browse our forum for Asus/Acer/HP/Latitude E Series models and see how that goes. There are other sites that provide good lists too.

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Will do.

 

I have a Mac laptop, but I need a backup machine, and there are few options in the sub 400$ that run ML well (with 8GB RAM and a fast old fashion 500GB :-).

 

The D630, with the incredible help of OS X Latitude, has proven very flexible and handy. I had a backup of my main machine ready to go with near sync data replication.

 

Issue with a secondary laptop is that it is a plain waste of money 99% of the time, but pays for itself when things go wrong (and for me, it goes wrong about once every 2 to 3 years).

 

Anyway, I'll work on cooking on one end, and lok from the EDP compatibility list & forum reports to see what comes next, provided I am as bad at cooking motherboard as I am with cakes.

 

Thanks a lot for the feed back.

 

Gl.

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