How do I fix black/gray screen issue on 2013 Mac Pro and 2013 MacBook Pro?

I have a 2013 MacBook Pro A1398 and in 2019 the logistics board died and apple wanted me to recycle it. I replaced the board and the SSD and It still runs great, but this past year at random times the screen started going black / dark gray with the computer still running but nothing on the screen. I shut it down, and on reboot it says your computer restarted because of an error. I've done everything I can think of or been told to do except replace the board again. It's running the latest version of Catalina.

A couple of months ago I came up on a 2013 Mac Pro A1481 that I upgraded, 12 core cpu, ram and ssd card. Since it didn't have an OS installed, I used the MacBook Pro to create a bootable flash drive, latest version of Catalina. Did the install, got logged in and right away it wanted to upgrade the OS to Monterey and so I did. Everything was running great, and then a couple of days ago I move the mouse to wake it up and realize it's already running but nothing on the screen. So power it down, and back up and it has the same error message as the MacBook Pro. Over and over at random times the screen goes black.

I was convinced that my issue with the MacBook Pro was the logic board. But now a completely different computer with the same issue? I'm now at a total loss as to what to do and would greatly appreciate any advice you may have.



[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Mac Pro, macOS 12.7

Posted on May 1, 2025 4:31 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on May 2, 2025 2:49 AM


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16 replies

May 1, 2025 7:27 PM in response to ROBNDIEGO73

That message says one of Thousands of errors occurred. It is Not at all specific.


Kernel Panic Reports are stored in the Folder at:


/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports


If you copy and paste that string into: 


Finder > Go menu > Go to Folder


it will take you to the Folder where those reports are stored.


Kernel panic reports are named with Date&Time and start or end in ‘panic’If you find one, please post as much as you can here, by using the “additional text” Icon in the reply footer (looks like a paper with writing). (Once the report devolves into incessant software-names or incessant Base-64 dumps with lots of AAAAAA lines, you are done.)


Please don’t post more about 20 lines of any other types of reports — they are interminable, and any information useful for this purpose is on the first screenful.


May 3, 2025 9:35 PM in response to HWTech

Thanks so much for that. Did a lot of reading up on it today and watched several YouTube vids with it all pointing back towards monitor issues and bugs in this version of macOS causing severe instability, over heating and crashes. I did another complete teardown and checked everything again. I've almost got it buttoned up and will test it out here in a bit. Multiple users 30+ said they either hooked up a second monitor, or installed a dummy plug so it thinks there's 2 monitors was surprisingly a quick fix. Also to check and adjust both the settings on the monitor and in OS to what the pro can accommodate. being that its defaulting to 60hz and users said try turning it down to 50 and that the HDMI port can't support 60hz. So I can try the turning it down or utilize the TB ports. Excited for the options and to see how this pans out

May 3, 2025 8:18 PM in response to ROBNDIEGO73

Apple acknowledged an issue with some of the GPUs back in the day and had a free repair program at the time (now long expired). However, I found that a lot of other GPU models were also affected, but were never acknowledged by Apple to have the issue. Just about every 2013 Mac Pro my organization had experienced GPU related Kernel Panics to one extent or another. We only actually had one which was covered by the free repair program.


We just learned to live with the GPU panics and tried to re-purpose the devices with more severe GPU panics to less critical roles.




May 2, 2025 12:47 PM in response to ROBNDIEGO73

Properly working computers do not suffer from panics caused by hardware that stops responding. Your computer is becoming flaky at best, failed at worst.


if you want to continue to use this computer, you may need to seek replacement graphics cards. There are no third-party cards available, and these parts get hot and after as long as these have typically been in use, they are becoming failure prone. Parts and repairs will be expensive.


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How do I fix black/gray screen issue on 2013 Mac Pro and 2013 MacBook Pro?

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