Mac Mini 2011 Vertial Lines on screen, GPU Issue?

[rip]

I recently got my hands on a Mac Mini 2011 off a friend however it seems to be suffering from the dreaded vertical lines. I have looked around however I can't find too much on it, especially blue-ish colored lines. The system will turn on, load with the Apple logo, it gets stuck around 3/4 of the way through the loading bar, the screen will turn black for around 2 seconds and then it will turn to a blank white screen for around 15 seconds then reboots and it will go through the same issues again.
I have tried to see if I can boot into a USB installer however it doesn't seem to work. When turning it on, the keyboard doesn't seem to work until it starts the Logo boot sequence so it seems impossible to boot into a USB.
I took open the system and everything seems all okay. Do you think I would be able to boot into linux and disable the GPU to only use the CPU's graphics instead?
I have uploaded a photo of the screen I am getting. Is this the graphic chip problem or something more? The weird non-working USB slots for the first 15-20 seconds are rather worrying. Not sure if this a scrap job or something I am able to fix. Thanks for reading.

 

[techiesteve]

Based upon your photo and fault description the GPU has failed. It's a vintage product, and even if parts had been available an exchange logic board wouldn't have been viable. The AASP cost from Apple used to be around £195 ex VAT.

 

[jasongoldworthy]

hi rip

the reason the USB ports may be disabled is if there is an EFI password set so it will allow it to try and boot from the HDD but anything else and it will ignore it,


if your confident enough that its just a bad GPU you could back the logic board in the oven for 10 mins at 200'c (now I know this isn't the correct way of doing it but it will work)

or at least in my experience it did work.

one more thing I've noticed is your screen has some black lines on one side which looks like a damaged screen to me,

let us know how you get on.

 

[chscag]

What is an EFI password? I think you meant "Firmware" password.

 

[jasongoldworthy]

thanks for correcting me chscag you are correct Firmware password I meant (its been a long day)

 

[rip]

Hi,

Sorry for the long delay. I tried the cooking method at 180c for 8 minutes and all is now working perfectly. No issues at all.

Those are cables from my test bench which unfortunately got into the shot haha.

Thank you for all your replies.

 

[jasongoldworthy]

hi rip


that's great news personally id have baked it for 10mins but if its working now great but there is no guarantee that it will last,

but on the positive note if you can source a logic board and swop it over that would be better.


but I'm glad it's working.