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0 pointsjosephg3y ago0 comments

My experience has been the same.

I had an old Intel Mac start occasionally crashing after taking it in for a screen replacement. I fired up memtest86 and sure enough saw errors. I took it back and Apple replaced the entire motherboard for me for free.

Does anyone know if there’s a memtest86 equivalent for M1 macs? I’m not sure how I’d go about testing the ram on my machine now.

0 comments

oriolid3y ago

When this happened to me, I was told that the memory can't be replaced without replacing the entire motherboard. Which means that after warranty period has passed the machine is either very expensive to repair or unrepairable.

acdha3y ago

That’s sadly true given the design trade offs: M1 CPU package includes RAM - that makes it fast by lowering latency and removes the category of errors related to physical sockets but means any failure requires the entire part to be replaced.

oriolid3y ago

This was before M1. I'm not sure if there was a technical reason to not have a RAM socket but the chip was soldered directly to mainboard in any case.

1 more reply

lowbloodsugar3y ago

Which is why I pay for the monthly AppleCare.

yzydserd3y ago

TL;DR - Apple makes a huge profit on selling AppleCare.

Recent estimates [0] shows that in 2021 Apple had revenue of $8.5B on Applecare while claims cost $2.6B. Also, the claim rate has been dropping YoY while revenue from AppleCare has been growing YoY.

Almost always, insurance schemes are profit generators (ie not sold at a loss). The reason to buy into a scheme like AppleCare is because you couldn’t recover from an immediate loss. e.g. The only non-mandated insurance I pay for is House Building insurance.

This is why I do not pay for AppleCare.

[0] https://www.warrantyweek.com/archive/ww20211104.html#:~:text....

acdha3y ago

It hasn’t arisen for me yet but the recovery mode (Command-R at boot, or boot holding down Option and select it) has a hardware diagnostic which does at least basic memory testing.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 pointsjosephg3y ago0 comments

My experience has been the same.

Does anyone know if there’s a memtest86 equivalent for M1 macs? I’m not sure how I’d go about testing the ram on my machine now.

0 comments

oriolid3y ago

acdha3y ago

oriolid3y ago

This was before M1. I'm not sure if there was a technical reason to not have a RAM socket but the chip was soldered directly to mainboard in any case.

1 more reply

lowbloodsugar3y ago

Which is why I pay for the monthly AppleCare.

yzydserd3y ago

TL;DR - Apple makes a huge profit on selling AppleCare.

Recent estimates [0] shows that in 2021 Apple had revenue of $8.5B on Applecare while claims cost $2.6B. Also, the claim rate has been dropping YoY while revenue from AppleCare has been growing YoY.

This is why I do not pay for AppleCare.

[0] https://www.warrantyweek.com/archive/ww20211104.html#:~:text....

acdha3y ago

It hasn’t arisen for me yet but the recovery mode (Command-R at boot, or boot holding down Option and select it) has a hardware diagnostic which does at least basic memory testing.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse