iMac Pro 10.13.4 Update Changed The iMac Pro's Fan Behavior

[SRLMJ23]

I can’t speak for that person specifically, but a balance between silence and performance is useful to people who work with audio. Me personally though, I’d rather see it as a setting like I suggested above.

Agreed, and good point. I just would not want ANY of my computing products performance to be lowered in there reported performance specs so it runs more quiet.

We pay Apple real good money for the machines we get, and I personally prefer performance over the noise the fans make. I do think it is a little absurd that a great company like Apple STILL cannot seem to develop a basically silent thermal system regardless if the machine is being pushed to its max, or is sleeping!

 

[Macshroomer]

Now I can't let it sleep and have to shut it down when I step away, but that is an entirely different issue in of itself due to SoftRAID no longer working properly with the iMac Pro and High Sierra. (There's a workaround for the SoftRAID issue, but it requires about 5 minutes of work every time I restart the computer.)

Wait...are you saying that the security enclave is reverting back to quarantine with SoftRAID on restart? Crap...that might be why my 4TB SSD RAID-0's write speed plummeted after awhile. I am out of town on a shoot so mine is shut down but I actually RMA'd those 4 drives because of this.

Apple better get their s__t together, this is the opposite of "Pro".

 

[SecuritySteve]

Update on this issue:

I disconnected everything from my iMac Pro last night, and when I checked on it in the morning, the CPU / GPU was a cool 80 degrees F. I think this is related to some kind of external device causing the iMP to behave oddly during sleep. To anyone else experiencing this issue, try disabling network wake and power nap, as well as disconnecting all physically connected devices. I suspect that this may be related to a NAS or external drive causing some kind of infinite loop at a kernel level, which builds up in memory and eventually corrupts it - resulting in a kernel panic.

I'd like to find a minimal way to reproduce this effect. If I can present this as a security issue to Apple (easy reproducible kernel panics are) then we might get a fix sooner rather than later.

 

[ThatSandWyrm]

Just curious who the one person is who voted for the "Always as silently as possible, even if performance is lowered!" option?! Who wants their performance lowered on ANY machine, let alone a $5,000+ machine? Very odd to me.

Must be an audio editor.
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I had this issue yesterday too. I've also noticed my CPU / GPU are at 140 degrees F when I wake from sleep, and my fans are not turning on during sleep to cool down my CPU / GPU. I don't know why it needs to heat up so much, and I'm disconnecting devices during sleep to try and identify if this is an external device issue or a OS level issue.

Great. Just Great.

Currently all of my external drives (externally powered or not) are coming up with improper ejection messages after waking from sleep (Which of course makes Camera Raw freak out and fail to save any changes I had to 1000+ files). And NOW I have to worry about this thing deciding to start melting itself when it sleeps?

What. The. Hell. Apple.

Time for Cook to stop his political tour and start focusing on Apple's software QA real quick. I was happier with this machine 2 months ago when all I had to worry about was the video driver causing an app crash.

 

[SRLMJ23]

Must be an audio editor.
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Great. Just Great.

Currently all of my external drives (externally powered or not) are coming up with improper ejection messages after waking from sleep (Which of course makes Camera Raw freak out and fail to save any changes I had to 1000+ files). And NOW I have to worry about this thing deciding to start melting itself when it sleeps?

What. The. Hell. Apple.

Time for Cook to stop his political tour and start focusing on Apple's software QA real quick. I was happier with this machine 2 months ago when all I had to worry about was the video driver causing an app crash.

So sad that we all have to worry about our iMac Pros cooking themselves to death.

C'mon Apple, get your crap together!!!

Also, I think buy now that most of us know that Tim Cook does not care about Pro users. He cares about iPhone and iPad sales. I do not think he is the man that should be leading Apple...not even close!

 

[SecuritySteve]

As an update, I have determined that the issue is definitely related to external drives. I'm not sure exactly why, but when the system is asleep the kernel seems to need to talk to the external drive. This enters an infinite loop that can actually cause watchdogd (The daemon process responsible for making sure that progress is made in the kernel and user land) to trigger a kernel panic when it suspects the kernel hanging. This is why we see panics immediately after waking from sleep, and during sleep. I'm still trying to narrow down which process in particular is causing the infinite loop. I have ruled out network wake and power nap thus far.

One curiosity I have - does everyone else who has this issue also have an Apple Watch that can unlock their mac? The reason I ask is sometimes when I walk by my system I notice my peripherals power on, and their LEDs come on. I suspect there is a pseudo-wake event going on here, and perhaps during this time the external drives get accessed improperly, triggering an infinite loop.

 

[ThatSandWyrm]

One curiosity I have - does everyone else who has this issue also have an Apple Watch that can unlock their mac? The reason I ask is sometimes when I walk by my system I notice my peripherals power on, and their LEDs come on. I suspect there is a pseudo-wake event going on here, and perhaps during this time the external drives get accessed improperly, triggering an infinite loop.

No Apple Watch here.

I have so far (knocks on wood) managed to prevent my external disks being ejected during sleep by disabling my WD RAID's own sleep feature (that I didn't even know it had). Probably a driver incompatibility of that RAID software causing the kernel panic that was causing all of my drives to be ejected.

 

[SecuritySteve]

Just updating that the new security update as of 4-24 did not affect this issue, and it still persists.

 

[SRLMJ23]

Just updating that the new security update as of 4-24 did not affect this issue, and it still persists.

Absolutely ludicrous!

 

[ThatSandWyrm]

Absolutely ludicrous!

Yes it is. What's also ludicrous is that my $9K iMac Pro now shuts down if it's put into a monitor-off or sleep mode for longer than 10-15 minutes (shorter intervals each time). I'm re-installing MacOS as I write this because I can't get any real work done on the damn thing. It had some bugs when it was first released, but at least I could work around them. This last OS "update" rolled back fixes to previous bugs and introduced a crapload of its own.

Combined with the "Linus Situation", I can no longer recommend this machine to anyone. Even assuming I can roll it back to a working state, it's now known that Apple STILL does not have a workable repair support system in place if I have a hardware failure. I'd be better off going back to my Hackintosh.

 

[SecuritySteve]

I'd be better off going back to my Hackintosh.

That right there scares me. Apple is doomed in the pro market unless they figure this out.

 

[ThatSandWyrm]

That right there scares me. Apple is doomed in the pro market unless they figure this out.

Yes, I have about zero faith that they'll figure it out short of a massive drop in Mac sales across the board. Especially since 10.13.4 seems to have broken Macs across all lines, not just with the iMacPro.

Their CEO is more concerned with pushing his own personal political issues than focusing on quality control. The rep on the phone isn't even sure that I'll be "allowed" to roll back to 10.13.3 via network recovery. The fact that neither of the two reps I talked to today attempted any defense of Apple with my issues is a stark departure from previous interactions that I've had with support. Yet they're telling me to post a list of bugs on the support forums "because the engineers will see them there". What? They don't collate and parse through the documentation of issues from their support calls? More BS.

If I have to explain to one more rep that I don't have a Time Machine backup because 10.13.4 forced me to reformat my time machine drive to make it functional again, I'm going to blow an air-horn through the phone.

 

[SRLMJ23]

Yes it is. What's also ludicrous is that my $9K iMac Pro now shuts down if it's put into a monitor-off or sleep mode for longer than 10-15 minutes (shorter intervals each time). I'm re-installing MacOS as I write this because I can't get any real work done on the damn thing. It had some bugs when it was first released, but at least I could work around them. This last OS "update" rolled back fixes to previous bugs and introduced a crapload of its own.

Combined with the "Linus Situation", I can no longer recommend this machine to anyone. Even assuming I can roll it back to a working state, it's now known that Apple STILL does not have a workable repair support system in place if I have a hardware failure. I'd be better off going back to my Hackintosh.

How did the reinstall go?

 

[ThatSandWyrm]

How did the reinstall go?

Currently on the 5th try using different key combinations (given to me by the support tech) to get into network recovery mode. Hoping to get the stock MacOS that the iMP shipped with installed (because it's a custom fork), and then update it to 10.13.3. Just wiped the disk using the command line, which I dimly remember working to get my old iMac to install the stock OS version instead of the current one.

Otherwise I'll have to hope they can do it at the Apple Store. If I had an installer (or could download one) for 10.13.2 or .3, that would be a huge help. But I can't find anything but updaters on Apple's site. And yes, the iMP has its own updaters.

 

[SRLMJ23]

Currently on the 5th try using different key combinations (given to me by the support tech) to get into network recovery mode. Hoping to get the stock MacOS that the iMP shipped with installed (because it's a custom fork), and then update it to 10.13.3. Just wiped the disk using the command line, which I dimly remember working to get my old iMac to install the stock OS version instead of the current one.

Otherwise I'll have to hope they can do it at the Apple Store. If I had an installer (or could download one) for 10.13.2 or .3, that would be a huge help. But I can't find anything but updaters on Apple's site. And yes, the iMP has its own updaters.

Sorry you have to go through all this BS just to POSSIBLY get your $9,000.00 iMac Pro to work as normal.

Please do keep us updated though, as what you are going through now could be the fix for all of us!

Goodluck sir!

 

[ThatSandWyrm]

Sorry you have to go through all this BS just to POSSIBLY get your $9,000.00 iMac Pro to work as normal.

Please do keep us updated though, as what you are going through now could be the fix for all of us!

Goodluck sir!

No matter what I did, network recovery installed 10.13.4 on my iMac Pro. I then went ahead and updated it fully.

But... it’s now gone through 24 hrs of 8+ sleep/wake cycles without a problem. The first 18 hrs without anything but the Ethernet cable plugged into it, and the last 8 with all of my peripherals (RAID, Backup HD, Sonnett eGPU w/RX580, two Dell 5K monitors, and a 27” Wacom 1440p Cintiq) attached.

Still reinstalling apps/drivers (slowly, to catch problems), but so far, so good. My #1 suspect for the previous kernel panics was my Western Digital RAID utility. But that drive seems to be working fine without the utility, so I’m not going to install it again unless I need to reconfigure the RAID (not likely).

Fingers crossed.
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No matter what I did, network recovery installed 10.13.4 on my iMac Pro. I then went ahead and updated it fully.

But... it’s now gone through 24 hrs of 8+ sleep/wake cycles without a problem. The first 18 hrs without anything but the Ethernet cable plugged into it, and the last 8 with all of my peripherals (RAID, Backup HD, Sonnett eGPU w/RX580, two Dell 5K monitors, and a 27” Wacom 1440p Cintiq) attached.

Still reinstalling apps/drivers (slowly, to catch problems), but so far, so good. My #1 suspect for the previous kernel panics was my Western Digital RAID utility. But that drive seems to be working fine without the utility, so I’m not going to install it again unless I need to reconfigure the RAID (not likely).

Fingers crossed.

Spoke too soon. Just had a sleep reboot.

Guess I'll be hitting the Apple Store tomorrow.

 

[fusionid]

I'm getting imac pro replacement unit this Thursday. This thread scares me

 

[SRLMJ23]

No matter what I did, network recovery installed 10.13.4 on my iMac Pro. I then went ahead and updated it fully.

But... it’s now gone through 24 hrs of 8+ sleep/wake cycles without a problem. The first 18 hrs without anything but the Ethernet cable plugged into it, and the last 8 with all of my peripherals (RAID, Backup HD, Sonnett eGPU w/RX580, two Dell 5K monitors, and a 27” Wacom 1440p Cintiq) attached.

Still reinstalling apps/drivers (slowly, to catch problems), but so far, so good. My #1 suspect for the previous kernel panics was my Western Digital RAID utility. But that drive seems to be working fine without the utility, so I’m not going to install it again unless I need to reconfigure the RAID (not likely).

Fingers crossed.
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Spoke too soon. Just had a sleep reboot.

Guess I'll be hitting the Apple Store tomorrow.

Sorry nothing worked for you! If this would have been me I would have been steaming, and told Apple that unless I got a brand new machine I would tell them to keep the piece of garbage they gave me, until Apple actually has PRO level support for them!

But that is just me...


You dealt with it better than I could have ever happened too!

 

[SecuritySteve]

This last update has been utter garbage. I haven't been able to do long term studies because of the thermal issues and random panics. Thank goodness I have two other jobs that don't require me to have 100% uptime on my machine. Apple is losing the reason I respected it and liked it in the first place: stability. I had less kernel panics and random issues over the course of my 3 year old PC's lifetime than I have had with my two month old iMac Pro.

Apple you're doing this to yourself.

 

[ThatSandWyrm]

Sorry nothing worked for you! If this would have been me I would have been steaming, and told Apple that unless I got a brand new machine I would tell them to keep the piece of garbage they gave me, until Apple actually has PRO level support for them!

But that is just me...


You dealt with it better than I could have ever happened too!

I do what I have to in order to get my work done. Believe me, the phone support people got an earfull, and they didn’t try to sugar coat things like they usually do.

I’m too busy with work this week to make it over to the Apple store, but that is supposedly my only option for downgrading the machine. The sleep reboot happened shortly after connecting my eGPU, so it’s unplugged, and I haven’t had another kernel panic since.

Given that it’s the same Sonnett enclosure that they were selling to developers last summer, it would be crazy if it’s actually the culprit. Especially since this was supposed to be the “final” release of their eGPU support. Time will tell.

 

[ThatSandWyrm]

Update:

It's been a bit over 2 weeks now since I re-installed 10.13.4, and the culprit is definitely the external GPU box. Which is annoyingly the same Sonnet box that Apple was selling to developers last summer.

Overall stability (without the eGPU attached) is a bit better than before. I only have to reboot 1-2 times a week instead of the old 3-4 to fix the odd glitch. But there have been no auto-reboots or drives dropped during sleep. There have been fewer glitches on my external Dell 5K monitors too, with only one instance of a monitor losing synch and having to be unplugged/plugged-in to reset it properly. No sound glitches anymore, which is a relief.

 

[SecuritySteve]

Update:

It's been a bit over 2 weeks now since I re-installed 10.13.4, and the culprit is definitely the external GPU box. Which is annoyingly the same Sonnet box that Apple was selling to developers last summer.

Overall stability (without the eGPU attached) is a bit better than before. I only have to reboot 1-2 times a week instead of the old 3-4 to fix the odd glitch. But there have been no auto-reboots or drives dropped during sleep. There have been fewer glitches on my external Dell 5K monitors too, with only one instance of a monitor losing synch and having to be unplugged/plugged-in to reset it properly. No sound glitches anymore, which is a relief.

I also have been doing some experimenting with my "random" kernel panics. Turns out, having Razer Synapse open and minimized in the dock can lead to kernel panic. Not sure who to blame for that one. Definitely seems like non-Apple devices cause issues with the iMac Pro.

Still doesn't solve the thermal issue that happens with sleep mode and connected drives. That's entirely on Apple's side.

 

[ThatSandWyrm]

I also have been doing some experimenting with my "random" kernel panics. Turns out, having Razer Synapse open and minimized in the dock can lead to kernel panic. Not sure who to blame for that one. Definitely seems like non-Apple devices cause issues with the iMac Pro.

Still doesn't solve the thermal issue that happens with sleep mode and connected drives. That's entirely on Apple's side.

I still haven't encountered that thermal issue, and I have 2 always-connected external drives. One of which is a WD RAID.

 

[SecuritySteve]

I still haven't encountered that thermal issue, and I have 2 always-connected external drives. One of which is a WD RAID.

Interesting, I have a OWC Thunderblade V4. Maybe it's an OWC issue ...

 

[ThatSandWyrm]

Interesting, I have a OWC Thunderblade V4. Maybe it's an OWC issue ...

I was having other sorts of goofy problems (like false error reports) with my RAID before the re-install.

Since the RAID's been working fine without the driver/monitoring software, I didn't install it this time. I should only really need it if I want to reconfigure the drive to a different RAID type, which has a 0% chance of happening.

Maybe you could use the RAID without whatever monitoring/config software OWC uses?