Resolved ATI Radeon HD 5770 in Mac Pro 4.1 NOISE

Fastsavage said:

I just installed my new ATI Radeon HD 5770 graphics card into my Mac Pro 4.1 (early 2009) and discovered, like lots of others the expansion slot fan speeding up to around 2000 rpm and creating excessive noise.

I reset SMC, tried istat and SMC Fan Control, Open GL test, etc etc.......
- expansion slot fan now at 1100rpm and quite.
.....

Click to expand...

I wonder if that is normal for the PCI fan to run at 1100 rpms. Mine is normally 800 rpms. I don't have the 5770, though.

Hopefully some people with 5770 will contribute their fans speed information of PCI fan for your comparison.

I see this solution a lot. I wish there was an explanation for it because it makes no sense to me.

I agree with Studio K. 1100rpm still seems a bit high.

Which power plug on the logic board are you using? My understanding is that each one corresponds to a slot. The SMC can override that for cards that require both plugs but i can only do that because the Slot 1 plug is connected to a Slot 1 card. If you have a single plug card in Slot 1 and plug in power from the Slot 2 port it can make the system act funny.

jaxhunter said:

Which power plug on the logic board are you using? My understanding is that each one corresponds to a slot. The SMC can override that for cards that require both plugs but i can only do that because the Slot 1 plug is connected to a Slot 1 card. If you have a single plug card in Slot 1 and plug in power from the Slot 2 port it can make the system act funny.

Click to expand...

I never thought about that. Which one is power plug 1? Do they read from left to right? Plug1=left, Plug2=right?

I'm using a single plug card in slot 2. I don't remember which motherboard power connector I connected it to. I've not seen any strange behavior, though.

jaxhunter said:

Which power plug on the logic board are you using? My understanding is that each one corresponds to a slot. The SMC can override that for cards that require both plugs but i can only do that because the Slot 1 plug is connected to a Slot 1 card. If you have a single plug card in Slot 1 and plug in power from the Slot 2 port it can make the system act funny.

Click to expand...

I really didn't believe the post above, but after checking in the Apple Technician Guide, jaxhunter is 100% correct.

This could explain why so many foks are having issues. Thanks MUCH

Lou

^^^^According the the diagram I posted above, the LH connector is for PCI slot 2. Why not move the card back to the double wide slot, where it should be and move the connector to the A receptacle.

Lou

Fastsavage said:

OK swapped to slot 1 and power connector into back (RH connector) and revs are 1800 - so that didn't work....

Click to expand...

Just to be clear, for some damn reason that image is upside down. So the LH connector in the image is the RH connector in your case, and so forth.

^^^^So now all is well? Card and Cable are in correct position and work as they should?

Lou

Fastsavage said:

OK and just to test the theory I swapped the power connector into the other slot PCIE AUX B - (see image above) - no significant difference still running at 1050 rpm

So card in slot 2 and power in PCI AUX B

Click to expand...

It's all very strange, though. 1800 rpms in slot 1 is, of course, way too much fan speed.
But, 1100 rpm, while an improvement, is still faster than normal, I think. Should be 800 rpm.

This is an Apple OEM card, so one would expect everything to be running properly. Installing the card in Slot 1 should be no problem at all and is what Apple would recommend.

Did you do SMC reset? And NVRAM reset?

Studio K said:

This is an Apple OEM card, so one would expect everything to be running properly. Installing the card in Slot 1 should be no problem at all and is what Apple would recommend.

Click to expand...

I assume Apple wouldn't recommend the card at all; Apple's requirements for the 5770 are 5,1 and newer, whereas OP has a 4,1.

Strangely enough, Apple's requirements for the Apple 5870 are 4,1 and newer.

That being said, people have used them without the fan problem on all models of the MP.

Have you tried stressing the card briefly then seeing if the fans throttle back to normal speeds?

PCI Fan also at 1100 in my 5,1 12-core 3,33 (with Sonnet SSD, 680 GTX, Caldigit USB/SATA PCIe cards and 3 harddisks)

With 2 cards and no card in slot 1 (lower slot) the fan goes down to 900.

Does anyone know, where the temperature sensor for the PCI section is?

I'm drawing a complete blank...

TzunamiOSX said:

PCI Fan also at 1100 in my 5,1 12-core 3,33 (with Sonnet SSD, 680 GTX, Caldigit USB/SATA PCIe cards and 3 harddisks)

With 2 cards and no card in slot 1 (lower slot) the fan goes down to 900.

Does anyone know, where the temperature sensor for the PCI section is?

Click to expand...

Not sure of the location of temp sensor for PCI fan, were you doing heavy CPU-GPU tasks at that time? Do you recall the PCI fan speed before you upgraded the CPUs?

pastrychef said:

Have you tried stressing the card briefly then seeing if the fans throttle back to normal speeds?

Click to expand...

This thread prompted me to have a look at my setup.

I've got one card--a GTX 650 in slot 2 (that I knew for sure), but discovered it was plugged into power plug A. According to one of the earlier posters, this was not the way to go since A should correspond with Slot 1.

So I moved the card to Slot 1, and, upon powering the system on, noticed the PCI fan behaving a bit differently. It was spinning at 950 rpms initially, but then slowed to 840-ish. It would fluctuate between 820 and 850, which is not dramatically different than usual in fan speed, but I'd never seen fluctuations before.

Then I followed Pastrychef's advice and stressed the GPU (with Heaven benchmark). Rpms shot up to 2100, then immediately dropped to 799. And they've been at 799 ever since.

My previous setup yielded little in strange fan behavior. It was 800 almost all the time except Luxmark would run it up to 1000 rpms (and there it would remain until I restarted the system). Mavericks DP would also run it up to 1000 rpms. Neither of these things occur now that I am in Slot 1 powered by Plug A. Fan speed is always 799.

So mabye there is something to the Service Manual's suggestion to pair your slot with the correct power source. I've only got one card, so having multiple cards may produce different fan behavior.

This is a very intriguing and useful thread. I moved my 5570 to the second slot and the correct power socket. The PCI fan seems pretty unpredictable - at the moment with just an audio sequencer running it's showing 1800. But if run the graphics stress thing it drops to 800. I wonder if there's a way to automatically trigger the Unreal Heaven thing at bootup...

grame said:

This is a very intriguing and useful thread. I moved my 5570 to the second slot and the correct power socket. The PCI fan seems pretty unpredictable - at the moment with just an audio sequencer running it's showing 1800. But if run the graphics stress thing it drops to 800. I wonder if there's a way to automatically trigger the Unreal Heaven thing at bootup...

Click to expand...

Do you have an Apple OEM 5770? Are you using a Mac Pro 5,1 or 4,1 (or other)?
I would not have expected your PCI fan speeds to fluctuate like that in Slot 2. But, if you are using a 'supported' card, then perhaps Apple insist you have it in Slot 1.
I use an unsupported card, so I see odd fan behavior in Slot 1, but not in Slot 2.
Another Forum Member (Actionable Mango, I think) mentioned in another thread that this is known phenomenom. Unsupported cards will produce odd fan behavors in SLot 1, but you can get around that with certain 'tricks'. One trick is using Slot 2. The other is stressing the GPU with a benchmark so the PCI fan throttles back down to a steady 800 rpms.
The Stress-test trick does not survive a reboot, however, and you PCI fan will start fluctuating again.

In the end, I just returned the GTX 650 to Slot 2 where fanspeed is predictable and steady. It blocks access to SLot 3, but I've got no other cards in there.

I forgot to mention that Mango stated that some users of Mac Pro 4,1 have reported the fanspeed fluctuations with an Apple 5770 (which is not 'officially' supported on that model Mac Pro).