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Fan Issue on New Mac Pro when RAID card installed

N

noisegeek

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 18, 2009
18
0
OK Ive been searching the forum trying to find a suitable thread to read to give me some answer but I cant find one :(

Anyway......

Mac Pro runs sweet as. Today I "attempted" to install Apples RAID Card into the machine. Despite the instructions being for the older Mac Pro's, it was pretty easy ( well except the ipass cable thing which is no where to be seen on the new mac's ).

Everything powers up fine, computer see's the raid card etc... But the problem is my FAN.

As soon as the computer starts to boot, the fan kick into 5000rpm. I checked all the temps etc and everything is running fine, but for some reason the fan wont slow / switch off.

Now, if I remove the RAID card, the fan returns to normal use.

Rinse and repeated this a few times and the fan only goes into overdrive when the RAID card is installed.

Any thoughts, observations, ideas?
 
Which fan? There's several. And 5k rpm? That's a little hard to believe for the expansion bay fan (a 120mm). Does the RAID card have a fan on it?
 
Sorry,

Theres no fan on the RAID card itself, the problem is with the main cooling fan for the mac itself ( big one mounted infront of the pci slots ).

As reguards the fan speed, iStat says its the pci fan running just above 4500rpm

All temps are quite normal ( nothing above 36C )

:confused:
 
noisegeek said:
Sorry,

Theres no fan on the RAID card itself, the problem is with the main cooling fan for the mac itself ( big one mounted in front of the pci slots ).

As regards the fan speed, iStat says its the pci fan running just above 4500rpm

All temps are quite normal ( nothing above 36C )

:confused:
Click to expand...
Has the fan actually gotten really loud?

I ask, as 120mm fans usually have a max limit of 2500rpm, and usually ~40dBA (quite loud). Even at these speeds, they can move ~110CFM of air. So I'm thinking more along the lines the RAID card is corrupting the SMC report data, but not actually making the system go haywire.

Have you tried contacting Apple about this? There may be a patch out, or on the way. It might be as easy as reinstalling an update (to get the missing fix), as presumably, it was done prior to the card installation.
 
Compatibility

Which Mac Pro do you have and which Apple Raid Card do you have? The 2009 Nehalem Mac Pros require the new 2009 Apple Raid Card (with no ipass), the older machines require the last gen card which has an ipass connector to bring the hard drive bays to the raid card. As far as I know, these cards are not interchangeable for different machines. Not so sure about the 2006 Mac Pro computers, but I think they have iPass but EFI32bit instead of EFI64bit, so that may also cause compatibility problems.

Noushy
 
noisegeek said:
Sorry,

Theres no fan on the RAID card itself, the problem is with the main cooling fan for the mac itself ( big one mounted infront of the pci slots ).

As reguards the fan speed, iStat says its the pci fan running just above 4500rpm

All temps are quite normal ( nothing above 36C )

:confused:
Click to expand...

4500rpm? Did your Mac Pro lift up off the ground? :eek: :D :p
 
noushy said:
Which Mac Pro do you have and which Apple Raid Card do you have? The 2009 Nehalem Mac Pros require the new 2009 Apple Raid Card (with no ipass), the older machines require the last gen card which has an ipass connector to bring the hard drive bays to the raid card. As far as I know, these cards are not interchangeable for different machines. Not so sure about the 2006 Mac Pro computers, but I think they have iPass but EFI32bit instead of EFI64bit, so that may also cause compatibility problems.

Noushy
Click to expand...
Some good news has shown up.

MaxUpgrades has a means of allowing a 3rd party RAID controller to use the drive bays. Not cheap ($165USD), but it works, according to Rob-Art on barefeats.com.
 
Fan Issue

Well lo and behold, my Mac Pro decided to do the same thing. One of the drives went down on the Highpoint controller, had to shut down hard (my wife did it since the beeping was driving her crazy). Tried to reboot, and nothing, just the startup chime and a white screen. Pulled the apple raid card, and now machine boots, but fans on max. Restart and the same result. Thank god for my friend who works for Apple. First reset the PR ram, (option-command-p-r), and things got better but still fan on max. Next shut down, pull the power cord, and hold the power button in for about 10 seconds. Now plug the computer back in, restart, and reset the PR ram. Voila, fans back to normal. Something about resetting the power management controller. Anyways, repeated the above after reinserting the apple raid card, and everything works fine again.

Peace,
Noushy
 
Sorry been overseas and lack of internt for a bit.

Yeah the fan gets crazily loud, otherwise it wouldnt really bother me ( mac is used for audio recording )

yeah I got one of the 2009 Nehalem Mac Pros and the RAID card doesnt have the ipass on it ( despite what the manual says, as they havent released the new one yet, lol ).

Im off to apple on tuesday to see what they say, so will keep you updated
 
Fan Issue on New Mac Pro when RAID card installed

Not sure if you have solved this problem or not, but I had the same issue and the reason was very simple, the raid card must be installed in slot 4, I had installed in slot 2 and the fan ran non-stop.

Hope this helps

Smyle
 
yeah the card is in slot 4 :(

Got to finally see someone at the apple store ( after a 3 day wait for an appointment ) and have to say it was as useful as a frog in a box.

They didnt have any macpro's they could test the card on, they dont stock the raid cards in store.

Time to ship it back
 
Do a PM reset

The way I fixed mine was simple, first restart and do a clear PRAM (option-command P-R) and when it restarts let it shutdown. Then unplug the computer, hold down the power button for like 15 seconds. Then restart, and all should be well. If not, do a second PRAM reset. This fixed my computer both times, and YES, the raid card is in slot 4. It is pretty obvious, when on the motherboard it says Raid Card next to slot 4.

Noushy
 
noushy said:
The way I fixed mine was simple, first restart and do a clear PRAM (option-command P-R) and when it restarts let it shutdown. Then unplug the computer, hold down the power button for like 15 seconds. Then restart, and all should be well. If not, do a second PRAM reset. This fixed my computer both times, and YES, the raid card is in slot 4. It is pretty obvious, when on the motherboard it says Raid Card next to slot 4.

Noushy
Click to expand...

Ah sweet as, Ill try this in a day or so when Im reunited with said macpro :)
 
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