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Cooling in the new 2020 27" iMac?
- Thread starter miretogo
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Your intention on set up is the exact same way mine is.
and yes I got a 16 core Ryzen and run on 4K monitor with an Ampere once the reviews are out.
The CPU is great - no complaints whatsoever from me, and meets my needs nicely.
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I use Twinmotion a lot for architecture and interiors and about to move onto Octane.
also Rhino, Fusion 360, Revit etc
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AMD 3950 x Ryzen 16 core with water cooler on it.
RTX 2080 Super
64gb ram
all fast M.2 x 3 drives
Got an Asus workstation motherboard for better cooling and stability [plus no LED].
It’s not super hardcore at all really, but meets my needs nicely, and will look at a 3080 / 3090.
Pic attached
Attachments
Yes. Disable turbo boost with turbo boost switcher. Fans will never get close to maxing out and the processor will stay relatively cool throughout a long render. True the cores will stay at their base clock of 3.6, but honestly, with an 8 or 10 core system you're getting a shitton of performance anyway.
So for me, hyperthreading is permanently disabled, and then on demanding projects I turn off turbo boost using turbo boost switcher.
AMD 3950 x Ryzen 16 core with water cooler on it.
RTX 2080 Super
64gb ram
all fast M.2 x 3 drives
Got an Asus workstation motherboard for better cooling and stability [plus no LED].
It’s not super hardcore at all really, but meets my needs nicely, and will look at a 3080 / 3090.
Pic attached
Vey nice. I'm tempted by the 3950, I know the 4000 series is around the corner though, plus the new Nvidia!
I'm seriously considering this route over the iMac, especially given the state of the 5700XT.
*nods. Makes sense.
Octane is very popular. Something I've given a cursory look at. (Is it free? Or a free? Do you pay additional fees for more than 2 gpus etc. Did I hear they're going to support AS in due course?)
Rhino. 'Back in the day' I had a colleague on a 3D course that rated it very highly. Whilst we were on Lightwave 3D along with the course tutor, he was on Rhino.
Don't know much about Fusion 360 and Revit.
My 3D apps are Z-Brush, Lightwave3D, Poser 11...and the newly added Blender 3D (which I have to say I'm quietly impressed by. I was playing with the interface and it doesn't seem hard to learn at all. Seems very straight forward and reasonably intuitive to me.)
Azrael.
The next AMD chip with a 15%(?) IPC uplift is imminent. As is the availability of the Ampere.
16 cores of one and an Ampere of the other (3080...) will be a robust workstation. So yes, 'tempting.'
The 'state'(?) of the 5700XT? Not sure what you mean there. I find it very impressive and the fans slow to kick in. (It's down clocked though compared to mainstream PC XTs. But the price is reasonable considering it's 16 gigs worth of Vram. But it's a year late and a mid-range card. But the inclusion of it in an iMac breaks new ground for its relative performance?)
Azrael.
AMD 3950 x Ryzen 16 core with water cooler on it.
RTX 2080 Super
64gb ram
all fast M.2 x 3 drives
Got an Asus workstation motherboard for better cooling and stability [plus no LED].
It’s not super hardcore at all really, but meets my needs nicely, and will look at a 3080 / 3090.
Pic attached
Hard to argue with that.
Nice rig. Fast M.2 drives too.
'Super.'
(The Asus workstation runs cooler...?)
Azrael.
PS. I suspect many will be 'looking at' the 3090. £1500. Ouch.
Aye.
There's plenty of performance here to go around. I don't see the need to run it on the bleeding edge. It seems somewhat pointless given its an iMac. I'd prefer the iMac to keep its 'poise.'
Thankyou for the sage advice. I'll investigate.
Turbo Boost Switcher.
Turbo Boost Switcher for OSX / macOS
Turbo Boost Switcher for macOS. Save battery of your Mac, cool your CPU and reduce fans noise
www.rugarciap.com
This app?
So it's free. With some features for the 'Pro' version?
Azrael.
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My impression is that the cpu is the culprit. And the gpu will handle quite a bit before the fans have to intervene.
I had the audibly loud fans running Blender renders. GPU stuff has been very quiet.
Azrael.
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No high pitched noise.
Azrael.
Been following this thread with interest. Heavy Logic Pro user with massive orchestral template in fan-sensitive studio environment.
I bit the bullet and ordered an i9 10-core, due for delivery in 1-2 weeks. Total cost inc 3rd party 128GB RAM £3400.
But I've just been offered a 2nd hand iMac Pro 14-core, same HDD, same RAM for £4700. Beefy machine. Feeling torn!
I bit the bullet and ordered an i9 10-core, due for delivery in 1-2 weeks. Total cost inc 3rd party 128GB RAM £3400.
But I've just been offered a 2nd hand iMac Pro 14-core, same HDD, same RAM for £4700. Beefy machine. Feeling torn!
Yep. Thats the app.
Marco Armant loves it (he does the accidental tech podcast with John Siracusa).
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It would be surprising to me if they had fixed this issue because it's been pretty clear now for over a decade that Apple doesn't design most of their systems to run at full capacity (currently just the MacPro and iMac Pro). But there are some additional steps you can take in addition to running the fans all the way up (although, you definitely want to do this too). 1) Download the patched AMD drivers for Bootcamp so you can run the full video drivers for your GPU, these typically include much better controls for temperature management. 2) Use Riva Statistics Tuner to manage your frametimes/framerates to the minimum acceptable for any title. This will limit your GPU and CPU usage in most titles and generally let your system run much cooler. Many games and the AMD software have built-in tools to do the same thing, but Riva does a much better job in many cases I've found. I don't know why, but for example limiting a game to 30fps, or 45fps, or Xfps, using AMD's control panel might result in obviously laggy or choppy performance. Limiting that same title in Riva might result in a buttery-smooth experience. Every title is different of course, so that leads of lots of "fun" experimenting if (like me) you generally try to squeeze the maximum out of every title. But as long as you manage your thermals manually, and you aren't trying to push titles to maximum possible FPS all the time, you should be able to get some very respectable gaming performance out of the new iMacs. (BTW, I've found that the Retina displays do such a good job of scaling that often you can get way with a LOT less AA than you could with older displays. I rarely have to go beyond 2XAA to make a title look nice and smooth and crisp as well. Of course, many titles don't even support traditional AA anymore, so then you get into all kinds of other issues, like being forced to choose between always jaggy or unacceptable blurry (FO4, looking at you here). If you haven't used ReShade or ENBs much yet, and you want the eek out the best experience possible, be ready to learn those tools.)
The latest Mac Tech compares iMac 2020 vs iMac Pro and Logic Pro X ends up being able to handle many more tracks than the 131 of the iMac on the iMac Pro. They claim this is due to quad channel memory, but I have no way of confirming.
Yes I've watched that, more than once! I'd be pushing it streaming Kontakt instruments rather than large track counts, but I'd assume the increased performance is reflected in that area too.
What made it worth it (for me...) to buy the Pro version is that with the Pro version, I could set Turbo Boost Switcher to disable Turbo Boost at startup. I decided that I didn’t benefit enough from turbo boost to risk overheating. This is especially true now that I have a 2020 27” iMac with an i7 processor. That’s fast enough for what I do.
So far the only thing that has the fans revving up for me is when I rendered a lot of standard previews in Lightroom. CPU usage on all cores went up to 100%. I’m guessing that the same thing will happen when I do large exports from Lightroom (that drove my 2015 27” iMac to the point that I literally couldn’t do anything else at the same time).
Given your ‘fan sensitive’ environment would not the deal in the Pro be better choice?
Oh yes. The 'random' glitch spikes. Yes. Had a 'few' of those. They don't happen 'too often' but they have happened.
Keeping an eye on it.
Azrael.
I'd do some eBay shopping and get the measure of iMac Pro 2nd hand prices. You'd get one cheaper than that.
Or try some resellers who are offering good discounts.
The iMac 2020 will bring some pricing pressure to the iMac Pro.
You'll be fine with the i9 10 core and 128 gigs of RAM. The performance of the new iMac 2020 is impressive. It's just a shame Apple's lazy cooling didn't match the performance leap. But it depends on what you're doing. What work task or app. How far you're pushing the iMac. 3D rendering seems to be the task that unsettles it.
Should make for a sound Logic Rig. The iMac is generally quiet.
If I try to run WoW in 5k at max '10' settings or render Blender 3D render benches it's fan take off time. Any substantial 3D render fast...and the fans kick up. That's the context for hearing any major fan noise for me.
The rest of the time it has the iMac 'quiet poise.'
The only things I'm investigating are when I get random fan pulses just for opening and doing 'nominal' everyday tasks my iMac 2012 could do without sweating. ie. Opening Z-Brush and it's project menu without the fans pulsing in. (So for me, that's odd behaviour...)
Might be a good idea to check YouTube for other Logic users who have bought the 2020.
Azrael.
Hey Azrael, thanks for the input. Yes I have been keeping an eye on iMP prices and I'd say for the souped up config (14-core 128GB) that's a good price. But maybe they will drop further as the new iMacs get out in the wild.
Yes I'm encouraged by yours and others' reports about the iMac fans being generally quiet. Yet I see the occasion post from people saying "I'm a film composer running a bit template and the fans were blazing so I had to return it". Also all the MaxTech Logic benchmarks are showing iMP beating iM by some margin, which is weird since it's the other way round for pretty much every other test. But I think my best bet is to take delivery of the i9, put it through its paces and return if it's too noisey. Really hope it works out.
Yes I'm encouraged by yours and others' reports about the iMac fans being generally quiet. Yet I see the occasion post from people saying "I'm a film composer running a bit template and the fans were blazing so I had to return it". Also all the MaxTech Logic benchmarks are showing iMP beating iM by some margin, which is weird since it's the other way round for pretty much every other test. But I think my best bet is to take delivery of the i9, put it through its paces and return if it's too noisey. Really hope it works out.
When resuming from sleep and then being idle, my temps are down to 34-36 C, which is nice to see. It's definitely settled down a lot from the 60+ it was at earlier, likely due to indexing and Photo Library stuff.
If doing a cold boot, the idle temps are usually at about 40 C.
I stand firmly by what I said earlier though - the fan at idle/1200RPM is noticeably louder (albeit, in no way is it 'loud' or 'annoying') than the fan in a 2017 iMac. They may well have changed the fan design.
If doing a cold boot, the idle temps are usually at about 40 C.
I stand firmly by what I said earlier though - the fan at idle/1200RPM is noticeably louder (albeit, in no way is it 'loud' or 'annoying') than the fan in a 2017 iMac. They may well have changed the fan design.