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Apple Computing Products:
macOS - Desktop Hardware
Mac Pro 2012 Random “Snap” Sound
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<blockquote data-quote="Nanco" data-source="post: 1828029" data-attributes="member: 50325"><p><strong>Problem Solved!</strong></p><p></p><p>Hi there,</p><p></p><p>I know its been some time since I first created this thread (and <a href="https://www.mac-forums.com/forums/apple-desktops/351136-psu-fan-sounds-2012-mac-pro-5-1-a.html" target="_blank">the other one regarding the PSU/fan sounds</a>) however, after a few months of various troubleshooting and trying things people suggested in this forum, I managed to figure out what was going on and believe I have finally resolved everything. I thought I’d make a final post regarding this just in case anyone happens to have the same issues in future to simply save them a bit of time (and possibly money). Some of this may seem self explanatory, however I have never really felt the need to properly dissect my Mac Pro before apart from periodic cleaning therefore a lot of it was new to me. The system had been working fine up to now so I never really felt the need to do anything else really.</p><p></p><p></p><p><strong>1) The snap sound</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p>As I suspected, the random “snap” turned out to be coming from the Radeon HD 5770 graphics card/s. Bearing in mind that they had been a part of this system for roughly 7 years from brand new, a part of this could have been down to general age or wear and tear.</p><p></p><p>The graphics cards appeared to work fine. I had no sporadic glitches or crashes either from within OS X or BootCamp. One thing I did notice however was how hot each card was running at (from idle, this could range from about 60-80 degrees C). I found that GPU monitoring was lacking within OS X so I began testing using MSI Afterburner from within Windows.</p><p></p><p>Using graphically intensive software increased the temperatures to upwards of 100 degrees at one point. GPU usage was peaking at 100% however it looked as if the fans would not speed up on their own past a certain point (suspected faulty sensor?) leaving me to tweak the fan speeds from within Afterburner. I managed to get the temperatures under control, however this resulted in running the GPU fans at about 60-70% max (it was quite loud). I reapplied new thermal paste and pads to each card (they were a bit worn out) and repeated the test however this literally made no difference to the temperatures.</p><p></p><p>As PCIE card fan control is not possible within OS X, I began looking into flashing the cards using Radeon BIOS Editor with the intention of matching the custom fan curve I created in Afterburner. Ultimately this didn’t work for me as it seemed like the Radeon drivers in BootCamp and OS X were overriding whatever custom settings I applied to the BIOS (there was a moment when the fans resembled the custom curve, however this was short lived when the login screen had loaded). Unfortunately I couldn’t find much information about this and what I did find went over my head so I decided not to continue with tweaking anything more at this point.</p><p></p><p>I had tested my system using a combination of the two cards simultaneously, swapping them around, and using just one at a time in different PCIEx16 slots. Ultimately this didn’t present a drastic difference in performance and temperature. One thing I did notice however was that the card temperature was determined by the number of screens plugged into the card and their resolution settings. I honestly never considered this to be a contributing factor before, but basically running two 1600x900 resolution monitors would result in temperatures of roughly 60-70 degrees on idle. That would drop to about 50-60 degrees idle if using just a single monitor however it would rise to 70-80 when plugging in a 1920x1080 monitor. Running a HD YouTube video in full screen would see an increase of about 10 degrees as an example.</p><p></p><p>I actually sourced a replacement ATI Radeon HD 5770 from a reputable Apple dealer to see if the problem was specifically with my cards. Though the card was roughly a few degrees cooler (nothing drastically different), the performance remained the same under both Windows and OS X.</p><p></p><p>In the end, I actually decided to purchase a different card (an Nvidia GTX 960) to see if this made any difference. I lost the boot screen (not really bothered), but the results were extremely favourable. I now have a card that idles within the 40-50 degrees range and reaches maybe 60 degrees when under pressure. Not only that, I can now run three monitors from this single card without exceeding these temperatures (I never had any luck with getting three monitors running off a single HD 5770 in the past despite following instructions on using active adaptors). More importantly I haven’t heard a random “snap” in weeks since swapping out the cards, which leads me to believe that the HD 5770s were at fault after all. I guess they are pretty poor cards even by todays standards.</p><p></p><p></p><p><strong>2) The PSU & fan noises</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p>There’s not really much I can say about this. Again, this may be obvious to some people, but for me I genuinely had no idea and wanted to try all I could to troubleshoot this problem.</p><p></p><p>Basically, the fizzing sounds that emanate from a Mac Pro PSU are completely normal but can actually be amplified depending on whether the Mac Pro is drawing more or less power for certain tasks. I sourced a replacement PSU from the same reputable Apple dealer and can confirm that the performance was no different to the PSU that had been in my system for roughly 7 years. What I did notice was that the fizzing sound would get louder when my graphics cards were put under stress (at the temperatures they were running at, its no wonder that the PSU was fizzing like crazy at times). I can only assume that the cards were drawing a lot of power.</p><p></p><p>Since replacing the two HD 5770s with a single Nvidia GTX 960, the PSU has been much quieter although it still produces a small amount of noise. This is barely noticeable though as the Mac Pro is located under a desk. I guess its safe to say that unless you are having obvious power related issues (random power outages or visual indications like smoke or sparks etc) then the PSU itself won’t need to be replaced.</p><p></p><p>The fan sound is also normal however the speed (and therefore the pitch) it was running at was making it quite annoying. I basically increased the PSU fan speed slightly using Macs Fan Control and have found a sweet spot which doesn’t sound as intrusive as it was when running at a slower speed. I guess I could one day try to replace this fan completely to see if that makes any difference, but as I understand, its not as quick of a job as it should be and I’ll probably need to book time off work to do this.</p><p></p><p>A massive thanks to everyone on the forum who contributed help. I really do appreciate it!</p><p></p><p>Kind regards,</p><p>Matt</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Nanco, post: 1828029, member: 50325"] [b]Problem Solved![/b] Hi there, I know its been some time since I first created this thread (and [URL="https://www.mac-forums.com/forums/apple-desktops/351136-psu-fan-sounds-2012-mac-pro-5-1-a.html"]the other one regarding the PSU/fan sounds[/URL]) however, after a few months of various troubleshooting and trying things people suggested in this forum, I managed to figure out what was going on and believe I have finally resolved everything. I thought I’d make a final post regarding this just in case anyone happens to have the same issues in future to simply save them a bit of time (and possibly money). Some of this may seem self explanatory, however I have never really felt the need to properly dissect my Mac Pro before apart from periodic cleaning therefore a lot of it was new to me. The system had been working fine up to now so I never really felt the need to do anything else really. [B]1) The snap sound [/B] As I suspected, the random “snap” turned out to be coming from the Radeon HD 5770 graphics card/s. Bearing in mind that they had been a part of this system for roughly 7 years from brand new, a part of this could have been down to general age or wear and tear. The graphics cards appeared to work fine. I had no sporadic glitches or crashes either from within OS X or BootCamp. One thing I did notice however was how hot each card was running at (from idle, this could range from about 60-80 degrees C). I found that GPU monitoring was lacking within OS X so I began testing using MSI Afterburner from within Windows. Using graphically intensive software increased the temperatures to upwards of 100 degrees at one point. GPU usage was peaking at 100% however it looked as if the fans would not speed up on their own past a certain point (suspected faulty sensor?) leaving me to tweak the fan speeds from within Afterburner. I managed to get the temperatures under control, however this resulted in running the GPU fans at about 60-70% max (it was quite loud). I reapplied new thermal paste and pads to each card (they were a bit worn out) and repeated the test however this literally made no difference to the temperatures. As PCIE card fan control is not possible within OS X, I began looking into flashing the cards using Radeon BIOS Editor with the intention of matching the custom fan curve I created in Afterburner. Ultimately this didn’t work for me as it seemed like the Radeon drivers in BootCamp and OS X were overriding whatever custom settings I applied to the BIOS (there was a moment when the fans resembled the custom curve, however this was short lived when the login screen had loaded). Unfortunately I couldn’t find much information about this and what I did find went over my head so I decided not to continue with tweaking anything more at this point. I had tested my system using a combination of the two cards simultaneously, swapping them around, and using just one at a time in different PCIEx16 slots. Ultimately this didn’t present a drastic difference in performance and temperature. One thing I did notice however was that the card temperature was determined by the number of screens plugged into the card and their resolution settings. I honestly never considered this to be a contributing factor before, but basically running two 1600x900 resolution monitors would result in temperatures of roughly 60-70 degrees on idle. That would drop to about 50-60 degrees idle if using just a single monitor however it would rise to 70-80 when plugging in a 1920x1080 monitor. Running a HD YouTube video in full screen would see an increase of about 10 degrees as an example. I actually sourced a replacement ATI Radeon HD 5770 from a reputable Apple dealer to see if the problem was specifically with my cards. Though the card was roughly a few degrees cooler (nothing drastically different), the performance remained the same under both Windows and OS X. In the end, I actually decided to purchase a different card (an Nvidia GTX 960) to see if this made any difference. I lost the boot screen (not really bothered), but the results were extremely favourable. I now have a card that idles within the 40-50 degrees range and reaches maybe 60 degrees when under pressure. Not only that, I can now run three monitors from this single card without exceeding these temperatures (I never had any luck with getting three monitors running off a single HD 5770 in the past despite following instructions on using active adaptors). More importantly I haven’t heard a random “snap” in weeks since swapping out the cards, which leads me to believe that the HD 5770s were at fault after all. I guess they are pretty poor cards even by todays standards. [B]2) The PSU & fan noises [/B] There’s not really much I can say about this. Again, this may be obvious to some people, but for me I genuinely had no idea and wanted to try all I could to troubleshoot this problem. Basically, the fizzing sounds that emanate from a Mac Pro PSU are completely normal but can actually be amplified depending on whether the Mac Pro is drawing more or less power for certain tasks. I sourced a replacement PSU from the same reputable Apple dealer and can confirm that the performance was no different to the PSU that had been in my system for roughly 7 years. What I did notice was that the fizzing sound would get louder when my graphics cards were put under stress (at the temperatures they were running at, its no wonder that the PSU was fizzing like crazy at times). I can only assume that the cards were drawing a lot of power. Since replacing the two HD 5770s with a single Nvidia GTX 960, the PSU has been much quieter although it still produces a small amount of noise. This is barely noticeable though as the Mac Pro is located under a desk. I guess its safe to say that unless you are having obvious power related issues (random power outages or visual indications like smoke or sparks etc) then the PSU itself won’t need to be replaced. The fan sound is also normal however the speed (and therefore the pitch) it was running at was making it quite annoying. I basically increased the PSU fan speed slightly using Macs Fan Control and have found a sweet spot which doesn’t sound as intrusive as it was when running at a slower speed. I guess I could one day try to replace this fan completely to see if that makes any difference, but as I understand, its not as quick of a job as it should be and I’ll probably need to book time off work to do this. A massive thanks to everyone on the forum who contributed help. I really do appreciate it! Kind regards, Matt [/QUOTE]
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