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iMP fan control utility
- Thread starter mossback
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Why would you want to override the iMac Pro's con trolling the fans as part of the system software?
If you are experiencing problems take it straight back for exchange.
If you are experiencing problems take it straight back for exchange.
By controlling the fan speeds one can increase the cooling affect to lower the Processor temperature and thus reducing the amount of frequency throttling. Apple has been conservative by running the fans slower for noise control at the expense of performance. That in itself isn't a bad goal/strategy but for a user that doesn't care much about noise they can get better performance by overriding the stock fan speed software.
Yes, not all reviewers are savvy or smart enough to realize that computer cooling is a design compromise. Do you design for optimum noise control or for optimum performance? Apple typically has always gone with the former. This allows, and does not disallow people who would like to optimize for performance to have a 3rd party after-market solution to override Apple's fan/cooling design by controlling the cooling themselves with a fan-control program.
Some people want to get the last ounce of performance out of a computer.
I think Apple's machine cooling design approach meets the expectations of the majority of iMP users.
Yesterday we were using our iMP and running it flat out using all 10 physical and logical cores in the machine. There was no noise at all (nice) and the Processor frequency was holding pretty darn steady between 4.0 and 4.2 GHz. The temp was held below 90ºC and would fall off a bit and then climb back up some. Could we have done better getting better performance if we were to have run the fans faster and keeping the temp lower by say another 10 or 15ºC to avoid too much frequency throttling and have a higher GHz..... I dunno, but if there was a 3rd party program that controlled the fan speeds we could have experimented to find out.
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All ten cores were running at the stated boost frequency for running ten cores, what’s to test out? It’s doing a brilliant job exactly as advertised. I can’t see why you would muck around with it. If you want overclocking and customisable cooling buy a pc or wait for the upcoming Mac Pro, if you buy an all in one you deal with the limitations of a set power supply and cooling solution as with all all in ones.
Yes, but the frequency drops off/lowers because heat builds up. Controlling the fans (i.e., running them at a higher RPM) to avoid this heat build up stops the frequency being throttled so frequently so it stays higher for longer periods rather than going up and down with the default built-in fan control software. Thus a slight improvement in performance can be achieved. Apple designs the fan speed controller for a 'general case' scenario. They can't design for a specific workload case such as I've just explained. So it's up to the user + 3rd party to step in to address the special cases where a little more performance can be squeaked out of the machine.
Mac Fan Control is also a useful tool for Bootcamp, and very useful during gaming (makes overclocking the GPU possible while keeping temperatures in check). Apple changed their SMC specs for the first time in 10 years, so Mac Fan Control presently doesn't support iMac Pro. The software maker is trying to fix it, but is stumped atm. Here's the link, if anyone can help: https://github.com/crystalidea/macs-fan-control/issues/11
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I would not be surprised if fan speed is now controlled by the T2 chip. If so perhaps that might explain why MFC cannot read / control it.
Yep things are starting to 'fall out' with the introduction of the T2 security enclave. I just received a note from SoftRAID that explains why the new SoftRAID version 5.6.4's drivers cannot be successfully installed on some customer's iMP machines. The fix is to disable "Full Security" if it's enabled as a temporary work around.
There's a new beta of Mac Fan Control, that's supposed to work with iMac Pro:
https://github.com/crystalidea/macs-fan-control/issues/11
https://github.com/crystalidea/macs-fan-control/issues/11
TG Pro has been updated to work with the iMac Pro. I use it just out of curiosity about fan speeds and component temperatures, with standard system fan control (not using their custom controls) https://www.tunabellysoftware.com/tgpro/
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Thanks for letting everyone know about TG Pro and iMac Pro compatibility! We recently updated the app to be compatible with the new beast and we're able to show the temperature sensors, fan rpm and allow boosting of the fan speeds as well. If anyone is interested in trying it out, there's a free trial at the link.