caselogicboardmac
I have an early 2016 MacBook A1534 with a failed SSD.
I was thinking of buying a logic board from the A1534 early 2015. Everything looks fine by the looks of it all connections match up just fine.
But maybe there’s more I don’t know. Can anyone tell me if it will work? Could the pins be different?
Picture on the left is a 2016 and on the right is a 2015.
Since you've paid for AppleCare - send it in. It doesn't make sense you would be charged for a repair unless there was some sort of external damage, so perhaps you misunderstand the quote.
Perhaps the pricing was for an estimate if the fault was not covered so you could be prepared in case that were the case.
Call back and ask to have your situation cleared up or drop by a store with if one with a Genius Bar is convenient. I would remove the third party RAM and accessories (as Apple will ask you and inspect for before beginning service) before presenting your Mac for service. Inform them you have had a second drive in the optibay and offer to let them have / evaluate the part if desired to ensure it didn't cause the malfunction.
Here are the North American terms of service - and you can see that Apple may charge you a diagnostic fee if you send them a Mac and the failure is due to third party parts being the cause.
I think you're out of luck. From iFixit, here's the logic board from the original MacBook Air:
And here's the logic board from a 2012 MacBook Air:
Unlike desktops, which typically use standardized parts, laptops use fairly specialized components, and on top of that, Apple tends to iterate its designs fairly aggressively even within models with similar outwards appearance to achieve better cost or performance (e.g. smaller logic boards means more space for the battery). Because of this, most Apple components beyond hard drives and RAM are only interchangeable with those of the exact same generation.
Best Answer
No, this will not work.
It's not the connectors you have to worry about, it's the screw hole locations and Apple is notorious for changing this very minor but critical detail to prevent this exact thing from happening.
For example, I just finished restoring a Mid-2007 (white) MacBook. I ordered a bottom case (improperly listed as a 2007) and while every single connector lined up properly, it would not go in because of very subtle differences in where support posts and screw holes were placed - sometimes as little as a couple millimeters.
Absolutely! Apple makes changes all of the time depending on the components they source. The MacBook Pro's you referenced could very well have an issue where the pins are different. After all, it's the 2016 MacBook Pro models that suffered the "flexgate" (display cable) issue where the 2015's did not. The cable was made shorter and the back light power pins (21V) were moved too close to a data pin (3V) resulting in machines that had fried GPUs.
My advise is to have the SSD repaired. There are firms out there that will do board level repair like this for about the same price as you're going to pay for a different logic board.