Chosen Solution
I have a 2011 15" MacBook Pro A1286. This issue started 3 days ago. My system becomes HOT TO TOUCH (on the left side & backside) 5-15 minutes after startup. Then it shuts off or the screen goes black & brings me back to login window after 2-5 minutes (like the Mac went to sleep). I wait for the system to cool down & restart but the problem persist. The first action I took to find a solution was to check the activity monitor to see the CPU load. No program was too intensive on my CPU. I even ran my system with no applications running & ran into the same issues. NEXT, I did a SMC reset. Didn’t help. ALSO reset the PRAM. Didn’t help. NEXT, I used SMC fan control. I put the fans on full blast. Didn’t help. The fan does not cool my laptop down. I hear the fan & can feel it but it has no effect on the CPU. The temperature of my system is a normal range based on what I read in the forums. On recommendation online, I decided to apply new thermal paste to the heat sink 2 days ago. I did that successfully but the system is still shutting down. To clarify the overheating & shutting down are the only issues. The computer runs perfect fully smooth and as normal. A detail to note is that playing any type of video makes the system turn off faster. For a example, if a play a video on quicktime player or even youtube, I notice it shuts down more abruptly. That is what’s leading me to think it’s a GPU issue. This year of macbook tends to have these issues. Also to note the logic board was replaced in January & a new board was installed. Never had a problem with the mac until a few days ago. Looking for suggestion & solutions. UPDATE: I ran the Apple hardware test today. I got an error message. ’ ALERT! Apple hardware test has detected an error 4SNS/1/40000000 YG0C- 0.0000 I ran this message in the Google search & it seems it’s a system sensor issue. Temperature issue. How should I address this?
First the error is VG0C not YG0C! Jumping to the schematics and doing a search we find this GPU Vcore Voltage Sense / Filter
This logic board needs repairs! This maybe just one issue as PPVCORE_GPU is often a sign the discreet GPU is in trouble. Update (07/08/2022) To allow the older 2011 display to work with the newer 2012 board do the following
Just so you know I’m banging on such a system it was a late 2011 which is now running 2.7 GHz Intel Core i7 with a NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M GPU! Best investment after having Apple replace the logic board three times!
I attempt to re-apply thermal paste to the CPU. But it could just be old and the motherboard has some type of board-level issue
