Pro tip: I got a 2018 MacBook Air to boot again by baking the logic board in my kitchen oven

The customer brought it in with the classic 'no power, no sign of life' issue. I'd already checked the usual suspects, the charger, the DC-in board, even swapped the battery. Nothing. I was about to tell them it was a lost cause and quote a full board replacement, which would have been around $700. Out of pure desperation, I remembered an old forum post about reflowing solder with heat. I took the logic board out, placed it on a piece of foil on a baking sheet, and put it in a preheated oven at 385 degrees for exactly 8 minutes. Let it cool completely, reassembled it, and the darn thing powered right up. It's been running fine for three weeks now. I know it's a hack, not a real fix, but it bought the customer some time to back up their data. Has anyone else had a specific temp and time that worked for them on these newer models, or did I just get lucky?

3 comments

3 Comments

harper_foster1d ago

385 for 8 minutes worked for me too... once.

ninas671d ago

Actually sounds like user error, not a problem with the method. If it only worked once for @harper_foster, maybe the other variables were off. Consistency is the real key, not blaming the time and temp. Plenty of people get great results by sticking with a solid process instead of switching things up all the time.

riley431d ago

Forget the oven, the real trick is a cheap heat gun from the hardware store. You can target just the chip that's failing instead of cooking the whole board. I did that on a 2020 Air with a bad GPU and got another six months out of it before it finally died.