Mac Pro Trashcan overheating

[Curtis boggs]

Hi Gang,

Had an interesting day.

Had anyone had render problems from their Mac Pro trashcan getting hot?

I had a bunch of 8k r3d files I color corrected and was rendering prores files out of RCx
and the little round computer got very hot.
I had a bunch of renders that where corrupt with lines etc in the image.
Had to let machine cool down and re-render a bunch of them.

I've heard of issues with the GPU's over heating.

Curtis

 

[Chad Lancaster]

Did you open it up and dust it off? I've seen some videos of people cleaning them and it just being caked on dust. Maybe test all the fans to see if they are running.

I know there are 3rd party software that will allow you to manually control the fans...can't remember what it was called tho.

could always get a water cooled pc :wink5:

 

[Simon Dunne]

The MacPro 6.1 has well documented issues with teh D500 and D700 GPU's. There are 3 things you can do to help yourself;

-Install Macs Fan Control and bast the fans
-Limit your renders in DVR (not sure if this is possible in RCX) to no more than 10fps
-Buy a PC or use any other mac as your render machine.

I've had a few 6.1's where the GPU's have been swapped by Apple, but the issue is still present. There is no fix IMO.

 

[Misha Engel]

It's a known isseu.

Cheapest way to solve it:

Give a commen ground to both yourself and the computer chassis to prefent electro static discharge (ESD).
Clean the trash can, dust of the components and/or use a vacuumcleaner and compressed air for the parts you can's reach (inner heatsink).

Make sure the air intake is not hindered by something (carpet etc..)
Put a high air-flow/pressure fan (that has same or a bit smaller diameter, as the air opening on top) on top of the trashcan when you do compute heavy tasks with the Trashcan.
The cooling should be much better now and yes it makes more noise.

 

[Cameron McKinlay]

Hey Curtis,
Sounds like your GPU's are bad. Have you tried doing a render in media encoder using software render only? Does that fix the issue? I had my GPU's replaced 3 times and my entire mac pro replaced as well because I had glitchy lines in my footage.

 

[D. O'Bryan]

Interesting finding this at the top of the forum... my trashcan overheated last night and restarted, with a Machine Check Error dump (aka, hardware issue caused the restart).

I've noticed more and more often over the last months it'll power up and then immediately restart. This is round 2, previous MP with the D300's died, Apple swapped me for the D500 model which has been a champ for almost two years until recently.

Guess I'll be calling them again.

Anyone had issues with the latest 5k iMac? I hear they're the way to go for editing, at least until iMac Pro comes out.

 

[Marc Wielage]

I have had Apple replace my D700's twice so far, so I'm on my third set. All that has happened is that they've reduced the amount of GPU-related render glitches, not eliminate them.

Here are my tips on reducing glitches in renders in Resolve (which apply to other programs as well):

1) install Macs Fan Control (a free utility), which will keep you advised on internal temperature.
https://www.crystalidea.com/macs-fan-control

2) shut the machine off for about half an hour and let it cool down. Reboot and the displayed temperature should be about 90°F.

3) Launch Resolve and ramp up the Macs Fan Control fans to 1800RPM (close to maximum).

4) render out the material at a low fps setting, say around 10fps or so to minimize stressing out the GPUs.

5) run no apps in the background and do not do any other operations while the renders are running. You may get slightly better performance by choosing "Minimize interface updates during playback" in General Options.

I can generally get 20-30 minutes of material rendered before the temperature exceeds 140° and the glitches begin. If that happens, I do a pickup edit and join the files together as a separate operation and a final pass.

Be especially wary of GPU-intensive operations like Noise Reduction and OFX effects, which tend to cause more stress and more heat for the GPUs. I totally blame AMD for making GPUs that don't react well to the lack of ventilation in the Mac Pros.

My opinion is that 8K is going to crush most 6.1 Mac Pros out there, and you're better off transcoding to a 4K format like DPX or ProRes 444HQ and dealing with these in the post workflow. If you're unwilling to do that, be prepared to spend a fairly large amount of money on significantly-better hardware.

 

[Dominik Muench]

Anyone had issues with the latest 5k iMac? I hear they're the way to go for editing, at least until iMac Pro comes out.

I've had overheating issues with EVERY SINGLE MAC I ever owned.

My macbook pros over the years overheated all the time. my current one sits on a cooling pad and has a desk fan sitting right next to it on medium power, otherwise it would get too hot and the performance goes down the drain.
Granted, Queensland gets pretty hot and humid but still.

My current 5K Imac starts ramping up the fans within a few minutes after booting up. If I know I have a full day of editing ahead, I need to fire up the aircon at the office. Its a common issue that Apple has neglected for years across their entire mac product range. Its still a really good and powerful all in one editing machine, 8K footage no problem. The new Imac Pros will be killer !!! But yeah, you need cooling if you live in a warm climate area.

 

[Scot Yount]

My opinion is that 8K is going to crush most 6.1 Mac Pros out there, and you're better off transcoding to a 4K format like DPX or ProRes 444HQ and dealing with these in the post workflow. If you're unwilling to do that, be prepared to spend a fairly large amount of money on significantly-better hardware.

My MacPro has the D700 cards and I have never had a single problem. Sounds like I am just lucky? I often shoot 3 camera stuff, with one MX at 4kHD and an Epic-W at 8KHD as well as my Weapon, shooting 8KHD. I edit in multicam, never transcode and still have not yet had a problem. I use FCPX and Resolve. The multicam stuff I only do in FCPX, have not tried doing anything like that in Resolve FWIW. I think after reading this thread I will clean my machine to avoid any trouble.

 

[Saumene Mehrdady]

I had similar issues, had the GPU's replaced by Apple in 2016 and everything has been working fine since. Considering moving to imac pro or even just a regular 27" imac early next year.

 

[Nick Morrison]

It's a known issue, especially on LONG transcodes.

That's why a lot of Colorists skipped the trashcans, in favor of 5.1 Cheesegraters with powerful GFX cards - or even abandoned Mac OS entirely for immensely more powerful PC or Linux towers.

 

[Sam Petrov]

Mac Pro (2013) GPU Issues

Mac Pro (2013) GPU Issues

I had this exact issue with my late 2013 Mac Pro a few months ago. I thought it was the software because it only happened in Resolve. Then it started happening in Premiere. I brought it to the Apple Store. They used their proprietary hardware testing algorithms and it "passed with flying colors." So I figured it was software still. But the issue persisted, even after updating software and testing different versions. After months of frustration, I took it back to the Apple Store. This was after I found an extensive Adobe forum thread (still unresolved to date) spanning like four years that discusses the exact problem with the computer, even though it's Apple's onus, not Adobe's. Weird thing is, it doesn't seem to happen with FCPX at all that I've seen—just third party apps (probably because of how the software handles the hardware I'd guess).

My theory: Firstly, the industrial design is not made to handle the heat capacity of such extensive transcoding tasks (e.g. 4k, 8k, etc.). The longer the high resolution render or transcode, the more likely the issue happens. What happens is the graphics cards are not able to tolerate the heat in the machine, and thus go bad. It doesn't really matter what your room temp is (I mean it does, but unless you're rendering in a freezer, any reasonable edit bay temp will be too hot.) That's why you hear people who get the graphics card replaced and then the issue occurs again later; how much later depends on how much they've been running the machine since the hardware swap and how hot the replacement graphics card gets. At a certain point it simply breaks again and the issue returns.

My advice for anybody in this boat: 1) Get a different computer if possible. Wait for the next gen and see if issues persist. Jarred Land sounds like he has a hand in at least the fundamental design of the next gen Mac Pro, so hopefully it won't overheat from 8k workflows. 2) If you must keep this machine for now, bring it to your Apple Store. Bring the online evidence that documents the dozens of others who have the same issue. Look at the Adobe Forums. It's all there for the taking. Retail employees will reject the online evidence as it is not credible to them due to their triage training, but have the online evidence ready anyway. Try even talking to manager and just explaining the situation as genuinely as possible and tell them your work depends upon your machine. I got my graphics card replaced and have a functioning machine... for now. I'll definitely bring it back when it overheats and breaks the GPU again. I transcode 8K so it'll happen eventually. Also, insist that the issue is covered under warranty since it's a design flaw. 3) If solutions one and two don't do it for you, PM me. I can get you an Apple HQ contact who should be able to resolve the issue and has more power than those at the retail level.

This is probably the most frustrating postproduction experience I have had to date, and I've been editing for years. First of all, trying to figure out the cause of the problem, and second of all, trying to convince the right party it indeed is their problem to handle. There are three parties involved: The software manufacturer; the GPU manufacturer; and the computer manufacturer. This one's a computer issue for sure and will be best handled by the computer manufacturer since they have the ability to actually do something about it.

Good luck. I know how aggravating this is for sure.

 

[Johnny Friday]

D700's here and my machine is a SNAIL and my macbook pro can do a better job....have to take it back to Apple to replace the GPU's....i would have very much liked to have skipped this $10k trashcan...but a good word for it in fact.

 

[Scot Yount]

D700's here and my machine is a SNAIL and my macbook pro can do a better job....have to take it back to Apple to replace the GPU's....i would have very much liked to have skipped this $10k trashcan...but a good word for it in fact.

Curious what software you are running when the SNAIL happens.

 

[Kyryll Sobolev]

i have a macpro (late 2013)
it has been performing admirably, because it is underpowered for 4k renders (12Gb ram, x2 D300)
so this isn't a complaint from me, but just to put the info out there

i've been rendering 4k UHD files from .mxf original to .mov h.264 final in resolve 14
on 3-6 hour runs i get a message from resolve "Timeout when waiting for frame XXXX for recording, frame dropped". but the render finishes, and output frame count matches source.
on occasion macpro will re-start itself, which i can only assume is due to overheating.

 

[Curtis boggs]

So much help here, .. thank you all very very much!

I re-rendered and had no issues with the new renders. Let the machine cool down and it was fine.
But I wonder if the GPU's are "broken" now?
Did a few renders and they look fine.

Of course my big question being if I'm doing colorgrading and have a feature to do and have to render
out all of those file what should I be using for a machine???

I do not like Windoze but if it's required to get a box that will handle that work so be it!
At least Resolve has a Windows version.

Curtis

 

[Misha Engel]

Of course my big question being if I'm doing colorgrading and have a feature to do and have to render
out all of those file what should I be using for a machine???

I do not like Windoze but if it's required to get a box that will handle that work so be it!
At least Resolve has a Windows version.

Curtis

Have a look over here http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?160544-Video-card-for-custom-PC-build/page2, it's a pretty much optimized all-round workstation with a lot of value for money I think.

 

[Johnny Friday]

Curious what software you are running when the SNAIL happens.

Unusually LONG render times in FCPX....but most relevent is taking a file from my DJI drone and just playing it back on my desktop (4k @48fps to 60fps)....it stutters through the entire event....take that same file and play it on my 2010 macbook pro and it plays perfectly. This has been an issue i've been chasing for weeks now and after days with Apple on the phone, i am bringing it back to Apple for them to check out...and i had NOT known about the GPU issues until digging into this problem, but engineer i spoke to suspects this is the problem.

 

[Jaimy Soares]

Just had a conversation about this 2 months ago with a colorist. He had his trashcan replaced by apple 4 times. Apple indeed said as stated in this tread before, this to reduce max render for the card. So they run at about 80%. He just bought a hackingtosh and he's the happiest man ever now.

 

[Bill Nichols]

To echo this -

Apple over the past year replaced my ManPro (2013 trashcan) twice due to GPU's and issues.

First one was a 6 core, 64GB ram Dual D500's - issues, both GPU's replaced, still issues (screen tearing, random reboots, etc) - finally they replaced the unit.
Unit two, within two weeks, same issues, even on just the background image without anything running the screen was jittery, etc. Could render out our Adobe Media Encoder (corrupted) - replaced with an upgrade to an 8 core with Dual D700's
Unit three, fresh build, renders were faster, YAY, stuff seemed to be working. Anything in photoshop though and it wouldn't draw properly, clone stamp would only clone in half tone type color, then I started getting audio pops, then random reboots and the unit ran hot as hell.

Ended up getting the new iMac, loaded, 27" and all is good. Faster in many renders, 64GB ram, and much happier.