The early (first?) retina macbook pro's (sold from mid 2012 till 2013) have a design flaw on the motherboard, this causes external 4k displays to show noise, we

The early (first?) retina macbook pro's (sold from mid 2012 till 2013) have a design flaw on the motherboard, this causes external 4k displays to show noise, weird colors, lose sync or not turn on at all. Apple 'solved' this by not listing the 2012 macbook pro on the supported device list for 4k monitors [0] (this list appeared in 2015) It seems like a signal timing issue on the early motherboards. The macbook negotiates 60Hz with the monitor, but as soon as the monitor switches to 60Hz it loses sync. If you install linux you can work around this issue by forcing the output to 30Hz. The issue was solved in the following motherboard revision, somewhere in 2013. So that's why your MBP plays nice with your monitors. [0] https://support.apple.com/nl-nl/HT206587 https://support.apple.com/nl-nl/HT206587 (btw, I was not complaining that my almost-7-year-old 2012 device does not work with modern 4k displays. I was just trying to explain why a 200USD pinebook would be an upgrade over my 2012 macbook.)