Multiple credible publications, such as PC World and Computerworld are reporting that some users of the new MacBook and MacBook Pro unibody laptops are reporting that their machines become unstable or lock up after they add third-party memory. Additionally, NVIDIA is being charged with selling “bad bumps” in their some of their chips.
According to a very active online support forum, users of Apple’s new unibody Macbooks, claim that upgrading with RAM from reputable suppliers like Other World Computers, Kingston Technology Corporation and Crucial.com, leaves their laptops prone to crasher and lockups. Stated best by support forum user “mmike70″, “Mini freeze after about 7 hours, never less. It’s crashed under all conditions, under load or no load, AC or battery.”
After reading through a slew of lengthy messages on Apple’s support forum it appears that once the original RAM is put back in, their MacBooks worked fine from that point on. According to user “nikushima”, Apple tech support claimed that “the RAM from OWC lacks memory management, something like non-polarity in the old RAM chips. So if one of the Apple 1GB RAM is used, it works because it uses the memory management from the 1GB chip.”
If you are experiencing this problem, word on the street is that Apple is about to release a software update to address the issue. Officially, it might take up to a week or two, or it could be expected in a matter of days. In the meantime, a solution can be found by removing one of the 2GB sticks and replacing it with the original 1GB.
Additionally, TheInquirer was able to confirm that the NVIDIA chips used in Apple’s new notebooks contain “bad bumps.” Although NVIDIA denies such claims, TheInquirer insists that their investigation is credible.
The question of the season is whether or not the brand new Macbook was designed and sold with ‘bad bumps’. Nvidia told us directly that the chips were not using the ‘bad bumps’, and we took their word for it even though internal Nvidia sources were telling us that this was not the case.
One thing to keep in mind however, is that these bumps are so small that they are virtually invisible to the naked eye. In this case, they are about 100 micrometers in diameter, near the diameter of a human hair. To complicate things, they are permanently sandwiched between the chip die and the green fibreglass carrier, the bumps literally solder the two together. They are then covered with an epoxy-like material called underfill.
Nvidia could have shipped chips with bumps made of peanut butter and said that they were gold. As long as the chips functioned, there was almost no way of knowing exactly what they were made of. It is a pretty safe bet for Nvidia to call the parts good publicly, even Apple might not bother to check up on them. Again.
NVIDIA was hit with a $200 million charge over the same issue in July, but will not openly admit which parts are defective or which machines they were sold in. Apparently HP, Dell and Apple are among the major victims. Be sure to check out the full account over at TheInquirer.
