Chosen Solution
I’m wondering if anyones had the same issue….. One day I opened my laptop and the screen had gone almost completely white, with some flickering into negative when I moved the cursor around the screen. I could just about see what was on the screen. I took it into my local Apple Store and they said I need a new LCD screen. I’d done some research and had heard of the faulty/too short Flex Gate cable, refusing to pay for a hardware fault. I took the computer home and after a few days, It fixed itself!?!? It’s done this three times now, the most recent fix came after an update, with the computer left open for 24 hours. How can this happen? Is it a faulty flex gate/LCD screen, or is it related more to software? Any guidance would be appreciated!
Here’s the details on FlexGate The Design Flaw Behind MacBook Pro’s “Stage Light” Effect and 2018 MacBook Pros Try to Solve Flexgate Without Admitting It Exists As you can see the issue was strictly within the displays backlight cable, What you are seeing is a very different problem! In your case the issue is within the T-CON board which controls the scan of the image across the LCD panel. Apple had a second issue related to its systems cooling (2016 thru the current 2021 Intel models). Lets take a deeper look at what yours looks like
13” MacBook Pro Fn
13” MacBook Pro TB So as we can see between the two 13” models Apple thought the lower clocking of the Fn models wouldn’t need as much cooling dropping one fan and cooling fin from the heat sink! While the TDP of the lower clocked CPU’s was lower the amount of margin was reduced too far! So the T-CON board can overheat if you loose the systems cooling as well as push the system too hard so the system can’t cool properly.
Once the display has started to fail the damage is done! The parts are now weaker so when you push your system it can show up more often. I’m suspecting you have a cold solder joint within the T-CON board or a failed capacitor from being cooked. Someone with the deeper micro soldering skills might be able to extend the systems life or I would just replace the display assembly. So how can I prevent this from happening again? The very first action I would do is make sure the system was clean of dust and debris from the fan and the heat sink fins as well as any dust build up on the logic board. Next I would install a good thermal monitoring app which can also rev up the systems fan more effectively than Apples thermal model. The negative aspect of this is of course the fans noise! But you don’t need to max out the fan and pre-cooling things before you run a heavy process also makes sense! This is what I use and recommend! TG Pro
