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Best way to confirm 820-3330 PCH failure?

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SMMRepair

Member
I got in ~10 820-3330 boards with "various issues". Some had clear PCH problems, others seem to work fine but with minor issues (i.e. bad iSight camera, bad USB ports, etc). I know this model is also very affected by the PCH/GPU failure, and I want to make sure the ones I repair that "seem" to work fine are in fact OK to re-sell.

They all pass ASD, but some of them do have the tell-tale signs of eminent failure (i.e. the "blue tinted screen" when opening PhotoBooth or disabling automatic graphics switching, etc). My question is two-fold:

1. If an 820-3330 board has the "blue-tint screen" effect when opening PhotoBooth or disabling "automatic graphics switching" in System Preferences, is the board already toast?
2. What's the best/most-reliable method of determining whether a board has latent PCH/GPU issues? Should I just run FurMark for a while to see if the board shuts off/restarts or video cuts out? How long is "enough" time to run it in order to determine if a board is OK to sell?

I obviously don't want to sell a bad board (bad for business), but I also know that a lot of these 820-3330 boards are "newer" and may last a long while before having any issues. About half of them show no signs of problematic GPUs, while others do exhibit the aforementioned blue-tint issue. Thoughts?
 
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dukefawks

Administrator
3330 are the most solid boards of all 15"! Blue tint would probably be a MUX problem, but give the GPU some heat to see if that "fixes" it.
Don't know how bad the blue tint is, but usually there is some tint change visible when switching the graphics so it may be normal. GPUs are not a common failure on these and PCH never unless liquid spilled.
 
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SMMRepair

Member
Really?...I feel like there are still a lot of them (820-3330) with GPU issues, but not nearly as many as the 820-2915 boards. The tint change is very, very noticeable; it's as if 70% of the red light has been sucked from the display. On the boards we received that had "other" issues (bad USB ports, etc), there is hardly any noticeable change in tint. On the boards that came without any notes (presumed GPU issues), the tint-shift is enormous. It's the same "tint shift" that occurred on 820-2850 and 820-2915 with failing GPUs.

I'll look into the MUX on the boards and try to see where that goes. Thanks!
 
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