Does your Mac Pro run silent?

[mattlong1978]

I've found my mac pro to be the quietest system I've ever owned all the previous pc cases with several fans was always going to be noisy. It's been even better since i replaced my Raptor for an SSD drive and the 8800GT for a 285GTX if only all computers where built this way

 

[Ploki]

There ARE exceptions. Usually some guy operating up at the North Pole but hey...
Also sometimes "never seen" means never looked.

im doing less than 45 degrees
okay, ram is at 59... everything else is about 30-35.
currently cpu is topping at 38% from time to time, average about 25-30%
cpu a & b temperature 39 degrees celsium when logic is at 350%
been doing this for 15minutes (constant load)

i just realized that i am running a project in logic at the smallest buffer size, a project that CANNOT PLAY on my mbp at highest buffersize... (not to mention that this projects heats up mbp so much its hard to touch)

heh, i do notice i have page outs. i think its time to reinstall my system and upgrade ram. well, just in time for snow leo...

 

[seisend]

im doing less than 45 degrees
okay, ram is at 59... everything else is about 30-35.
currently cpu is topping at 38% from time to time, average about 25-30%
cpu a & b temperature 39 degrees celsium when logic is at 350%
been doing this for 15minutes (constant load)

i just realized that i am running a project in logic at the smallest buffer size, a project that CANNOT PLAY on my mbp at highest buffersize... (not to mention that this projects heats up mbp so much its hard to touch)

heh, i do notice i have page outs. i think its time to reinstall my system and upgrade ram. well, just in time for snow leo...

On which frequenzy do you record? - 44.1/48/96/192 (or anything else) HZ?

 

[SydneyDev]

I don't like the way the fans rev when you turn it on. I'm sure it's for a good reason, and I don't mind the fact of it, just the quality of it.

I mean, visually and tactilely the Mac Pro screams quality, so when it makes a sound it should sound like it's engineered to the Nth degree, like a Ferrari sound. But it doesn't. The sound doesn't match the sight.

 

[OZMP]

silent unless in summer and my house is over 33deg C, but normally the aircon is going near the MP and i bump the fans up

 

[SolidGun]

My MP sits next to a PC with 12 fans running inside. So I only hear the startup sound and that is pretty much it. But I have heard a legend that speaks of a fan that runs constantly on MP during its normal operation.

 

[Ploki]

On which frequenzy do you record? - 44.1/48/96/192 (or anything else) HZ?

88.2

buffersize doesnt make much impact on cpu usage. few percentup/down.
i see now why it doesnt run on a dualcore (330% on my 8core..)

 

[Tesselator]

im doing less than 45 degrees
okay, ram is at 59... everything else is about 30-35.
currently cpu is topping at 38% from time to time, average about 25-30%
cpu a & b temperature 39 degrees celsium when logic is at 350%
been doing this for 15minutes (constant load)

Yeah 59°C is a little high - still within the limits tho. I think most DDR2 is like -40°C to +80°C which is pretty close to the same as the xeons.

I notice no one is mentioning HDD temperatures. For me this is the most important sensor reading. If RAM gets too hot probably the system will just crash or crash more easily. The CPU is a Xeon so it eats heat for breakfast. If it gets too hot it will automatically scale back it's clock speed and if that doesn't work it will shut itself down. Hard drives have no such protections built in. If you run them constantly on the hot side they die sooner. If you overheat one much beyond it's spec you're asking for permanent damage or immediate breakage. For me it's drive temperatures that are the reason for wanting my system to run as cool as possible. Well that and crashing. I (maybe) can't prove it but I get all my crashes when the CPU is over 35°C and the RAM is also hot. If I start seeing 40°C I get nervous.

On the drive thing again you want them as near to room temperature as is possible - assuming your room is comfortable in a t-shirt and shorts. Some of the newer drives designed in 2009 are better but when the data sheet says 55°C max operating temperature and Apple's default cooling has them at 45°C ~ 58°C there is a definite problem! Mine are pretty much always under 30°C no matter what else is going on. BTW running drives too cold is actually worse for them than running them a little hot. Statistics show that most catastrophic failures (where the drive breaks) happen at under 24°C. I assume most of those would be way under but the doc I read wasn't specific.

 

[Ploki]

thats memory modules temp, the top ones (A1 and B1). A2 and B2 are running cooler. ten degrees cooler actually...
how come? and i know that the A2 and B2 are aftermarket and A1 and B1 are stock.
memory banks are around 30(what is memory bank?)
but it is 20degrees hotter than the rest in average mostly.

hdd bays are below 30 degrees almost always in my computer.
it generally runs very cool.
probably because i only have 4 memory modules and 2 hard drives.

by the way, if i may steal, how come i started to get page outs and i didnt before? i mean, i am planning to completely reinstall my system when snow leo comes (also when ill upgrade my ram and HD), but i thought OSX is self cleaning? ive seen os' much worse than mine but why do i get page outs?
im almost certain it has something to do with the cluttered hard drive & system not just too little memory

 

[Tesselator]

thats memory modules temp, the top ones (A1 and B1). A2 and B2 are running cooler. ten degrees cooler actually...
how come? and i know that the A2 and B2 are aftermarket and A1 and B1 are stock.

Mmm, yeah it they are different manufacturers then that could be it I guess. If you have four matching dimms they are accessed in an interlaced fashion kinda like RAID0 works - if you know RAID0. So if true it wouldn't be because one was being used more or less. It could also be the physical location I guess but I wouldn't expect a 10°C difference.

memory banks are around 30(what is memory bank?)
but it is 20degrees hotter than the rest in average mostly.

A memory bank is the logical storage unit. It's hardware dependent tho. I think it's determined by the physical organization of the memory slots.

hdd bays are below 30 degrees almost always in my computer.
it generally runs very cool.
probably because i only have 4 memory modules and 2 hard drives.

But that's pretty good tho! I see so many people in threads posting their temps and 80% of them have their drives at over 45°C. There's a thread here at MR called "Post your Temps" or something like that, that shows it as I recall.

by the way, if i may steal, how come i started to get page outs and i didnt before? i mean, i am planning to completely reinstall my system when snow leo comes (also when ill upgrade my ram and HD), but i thought OSX is self cleaning? ive seen os' much worse than mine but why do i get page outs?
im almost certain it has something to do with the cluttered hard drive & system not just too little memory

Pageouts happen when an application can't store pages in RAM. Either user setting is limiting it, the app being 32-bit limits it, or there just isn't enough physical RAM for it to use.

 

[hellobye]

Does your Mac Pro run silent or do you often hear the fans?

I had 4 hard drives at one point for a huge project, it was loud then with all the plates/fans moving.

But on the day to day usage with 2 drives in it, its really quiet.

 

[EMKarelia]

think that the new Macs need to be silent proof.

 

[hehejames]

Yeah 59°C is a little high - still within the limits tho. I think most DDR2 is like -40°C to +80°C which is pretty close to the same as the xeons.

I though my machine wasn't doing too bad, but after hearing 59°C being referred as a bit too high I really should check my machine what's going on...

My machine currently has 8 x 2GB stick all same make/model, but 2 of them always seem to be hovering around 70°-75°c and the rest around mid 60°c

 

[Keniff]

Mine is very quiet, you can hear a very slight hum from the Graphics Card fan, or it could be an electricity source, but it's very very quiet.
I think my refrigerator and AC are louder!
The only time it makes a noise is when it first starts-up for a few seconds or when I'm burning CD's/DVD's.

 

[bozz2006]

not silent. but pretty quiet.

 

[ryan42]

Mine is quiet by itself, but I can hear the ATI graphics card's fan speeding up and down every few seconds.

 

[GoKyu]

My Mac Pro is the *most quiet* computer I've ever owned - Unless I put my ear next to the front grill, I can't hear the fans. And as others have said, usually some kind of minor background noise is loud enough that you wouldn't hear the fans anyway.

My last PC had a "silent" case and "silent" power supply...and for a PC, it really was pretty quiet...but my Mac Pro is next to silent in comparison

 

[Tesselator]

I though my machine wasn't doing too bad, but after hearing 59°C being referred as a bit
too high I really should check my machine what's going on...

My machine currently has 8 x 2GB stick all same make/model, but 2 of them always seem
to be hovering around 70°-75°c and the rest around mid 60°c

I think this is not so good. Even if things don't become unstable you essentially have two
little heaters in there heating up the rest of the system. I guess if you're exhaust fans aren't
drawing this heat away efficiently then it'll add 5 or 10 degrees to some of the other
components.

Is your ambient temperature higher than about 5 degrees above room temperature? It should
not be if it is. If any of these things bug you just install scmFanControl and mess around with it
till you're comfortable with the noise to temperature ratio and save it as a preset called idle.
Then maybe create another preset with the fans at a slightly faster speed (+500?) and call it
Working. Then you can select between the two as needed.

In this image you can see that from A ~ D the Apple scheme is employed and the temps climb.
As the temps stop climbing the fans actually reduce their speed even though the temp is still
too high. It's like Apple only recognizes heat while it's on the increase. Weird.

At D I engaged smcFanControl at 1800 RPM (I think for all fans?) and you can see the temps
normalize to a much more appropriate level - even though the machine was doing exactly the
same amount of work from A ~ D as it was from F ~ G. You might also notice that the drives
under Apple's fan scheme kept getting hotter and hotter and would have continued till they
probably broke. Under control of smcFanControl during heavy usage the drives actually
continued to cool off.

The relationship of the various fan speeds are interdependent on one another. So in the 2006
~ 2008 machines anyway what you think you're setting may not be the actual rotation speeds.
Here's a graph that shows the relationships:

The Fan name abbreviations followed by an = followed by a number is what I set them to and
the graph area around there is the result of that set of settings - in smcFanControl. There is
also another utility called just FanControl but I don't like it so much. Others swear by it. I guess
it's a matter of preference.


.

 

[Ploki]

Mmm, yeah it they are different manufacturers then that could be it I guess. If you have four matching dimms they are accessed in an interlaced fashion kinda like RAID0 works - if you know RAID0. So if true it wouldn't be because one was being used more or less. It could also be the physical location I guess but I wouldn't expect a 10°C difference.

i have 4x1gb same spec'd dimms.. so i dont know why would upper two run hotter.
i just turned it on 10minutes ago and only used safari, and tis
51 and 45 A1 A2
55 and 46 B1 B2
Wierd,huh?

But that's pretty good tho! I see so many people in threads posting their temps and 80% of them have their drives at over 45°C. There's a thread here at MR called "Post your Temps" or something like that, that shows it as I recall.

cool its pretty stable. i mean, kernel panic stopped with the Audio Firewire fix with 10.5.3.
hadnt had a single one. also never runs hot, thats why i dont use fancontrol.

i do use it on the MBP, because its scary when you see your cpu hit 100 and fans dont give a damn bout it.

Pageouts happen when an application can't store pages in RAM. Either user setting is limiting it, the app being 32-bit limits it, or there just isn't enough physical RAM for it to use.

i think its physical..with big projects the interface alone eats up 0.7gb of my ram.

 

[J the Ninja]

Tesselator, aren't you the one who had a Mac Pro 1,1 upgraded with some Clovertown CPUs? You aren't still using the old Woodcrest heatsinks, are you? As I recall, those sinks are designed for 65W CPUs and are missing some (big) heatpipes that are in the 8 core machines.

 

[milk242]

My MP is dead silent except for the WD cavier blue drive. I'm contemplating putting in a samsung spinpoint since I heard those were quiet.

 

[seisend]

88.2

buffersize doesnt make much impact on cpu usage. few percentup/down.
i see now why it doesnt run on a dualcore (330% on my 8core..)

well, double the frequenzy - double the CPU load.

 

[Ploki]

well, double the frequenzy - double the CPU load.

yes and half the latency.

i dont think its that linear though, because most of plugins oversample and when you have 192khz you dont have to oversample that much/at all << less cpu load

although i do believe that given the goal medium 4x sample rate is still a bit overkill.

 

[Tesselator]

Tesselator, aren't you the one who had a Mac Pro 1,1 upgraded with some Clovertown
CPUs? You aren't still using the old Woodcrest heatsinks, are you? As I recall, those
sinks are designed for 65W CPUs and are missing some (big) heatpipes that are in the
8 core machines.

Mmmm yeah, wow! Excellent powers of observation!

Yes, I upgraded from the 5150 (x2) to the 5355 (x2).

5150 http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=27218 65W
5160 http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=27219 80W
5355 http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=28035 120W
5365 http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=30702 150W


I asked about this at the time on the Apple support forums and everyone told me
the parts were identical and not to worry about it.

2006
Mac Pro Quad 2.0GHz
Mac Pro Quad 2.66GHz
Mac Pro Quad 3.0GHz

2007
Mac Pro Quad 2.0GHz
Mac Pro Quad 2.66GHz
Mac Pro Quad 3.0GHz
Mac Pro 8-core 3.0GHz​

I just assumed from that, that Apple was using the beefiest HS for all models to
make production easier/cheaper or something. How sure are you they're different?

 

[bozz2006]

I've done this processor swap as well. Even if the heatsinks are different, I'm not at all worried about it. On idle my processors are around 88-90 degrees farenheit, and under full load on all cores (rendering), I've never seen the temps go over 133 degrees farenheit.