Help: iMac Retina 5K Freezes Randomly

[dasx]

Hi!

Sooo, I have this weird issue where my iMac (specs at the end) randomly freezes completely. It usually happens when using FCPX, either editing or exporting, but since I do video editing most of the day... I don't really know if that's the cause really.

System suddenly drops speed to like... i don't know, like when a game goes down to 1-2fps and you know something is wrong... then it freezes. Doesn't matter what I do, it won't respond, I have to hold the power button until it shuts down and manually turn on again.

My work consists on FCPX and the library is in an external Thunderbolt RAID0. So far none of this freezes have cause a data loss or similar, but it scares me...

Any ideas what might be going on?
Thanks!

* Specs: 5K Retina iMac end-2014, i7 4GHz, 32GB RAM (16GB original from Apple, 16G installed by me), 512GB SSD original from Apple, Radeon R9 M295X.

EDIT: This had never happened to me before. I formatted and installed Sierra from scratch 1 month ago or so (I was still on Yosemite... yeah). Didn't start on day one, maybe 1 week ago.

 

[MinEderPlayz]

Could it be related to FCPX 10.3 or 10.3.1? I've experienced similar crashes twice on my iMac.

 

[JustMartin]

It might be worth running activity monitor all the time and see if you can switch to it when the system is slowing to see whether it's something hogging CPU.

 

[briloronmacrumo]

The 2014 iMacs are known to throttle the CPU/GPU when they start overheating. See the following video:

One suggestion with a two-pronged goal: install fan speed software such as smcFanControl ( https://www.eidac.de/ ). This will allow you to (a) monitor the temperature to see if it is an issue and (b) mitigate higher temperatures with a faster fan speed. Good luck.

 

[dasx]

Thanks for the replies guys.

Could it be related to FCPX 10.3 or 10.3.1? I've experienced similar crashes twice on my iMac.

Could be. I haven't had any crash since I posted this thread, however that day I had like 8. Also, sometimes FCPX just quits. Like CMD+Q but instant. I can launch it again like if nothing had happened, thank god it's still Apple. Can't imagine how much work I would've lost if this was Windows + Premiere, for instance.

It might be worth running activity monitor all the time and see if you can switch to it when the system is slowing to see whether it's something hogging CPU.

Mmm, once it slows down, i usually have time to send one or two more orders. The iMac usually takes like 1 minute to complete them, then it freezes completely. I could give it a try, maybe hotkeying it? Mmm.

The 2014 iMacs are known to throttle the CPU/GPU when they start overheating. See the following video:

One suggestion with a two-pronged goal: install fan speed software such as smcFanControl ( https://www.eidac.de/ ). This will allow you to (a) monitor the temperature to see if it is an issue and (b) mitigate higher temperatures with a faster fan speed. Good luck.

I have always installed iStat, which shows temps and fan speeds in the menu bar. I don't think that's it to be honest though. Exporting doesn't seem to make it worse, actually it only happened once while exporting, and it was at the same time I opened up photoshop, during PS load. Other times I can just be trimming video... minimum load on either CPU or GPU.

I don't know, I hate when I can't even find under which circumstances it happens. As I said, at least I haven't lost any work.

Again, thank you all!

 

[briloronmacrumo]

Maybe check for any failure messages in the Console log ( Applications/Utilities/Console.app ) the next time it happens( use Console's search box to limit output to say FCPX ); it might provide a clue. A full sysdiagnose ( can be run via Onyx on the "info/diagnostic" tab ) might be helpful after it happens. A full run of Etrecheck is always a good idea and it outputs a nice report that could be posted here for others to help ( versus sysdiagnose which is verbose and technical ). Let me know if you need links. These tools can be easily found with a search engine and are free.

 

[dasx]

Maybe check for any failure messages in the Console log ( Applications/Utilities/Console.app ) the next time it happens( use Console's search box to limit output to say FCPX ); it might provide a clue. A full sysdiagnose ( can be run via Onyx on the "info/diagnostic" tab ) might be helpful after it happens. A full run of Etrecheck is always a good idea and it outputs a nice report that could be posted here for others to help ( versus sysdiagnose which is verbose and technical ). Let me know if you need links. These tools can be easily found with a search engine and are free.

I will definitely check that out. Is it a diagnosis tool which can be ran anytime? Or do I need it to be running in the background so I can "check it" once I've had a crash?

Thanks!

 

[briloronmacrumo]

I will definitely check that out. Is it a diagnosis tool which can be ran anytime? Or do I need it to be running in the background so I can "check it" once I've had a crash?

It can be run anytime but right after a failure would give it access to the most recent failure data.