Mac Pro 5,1 with Sapphire RX 580 random restarts?

[Jayson A]

So here's my story. I've had my RX 580 for a couple weeks now and it has been flawless. No performance issues in windows or macOS. However, I moved my Mac Pro onto my desk and now sometimes I hear a vibration happening. It's hard to figure out where it's coming from.

I took out of the front fan and cleaned it really well and put it back in and fired up the Mac. I noticed after a few minutes, the fan wasn't turning on, so I tried playing Resident Evil 7 at 4k to heat things up. The fan still didn't turn on so I turned if off and took the fan back out. Turns out, I had pushed the plug piece into the fan unit, so it wasn't making contact with the port on the mother board. So I fixed it and plugged it back in.

After restarting again, the fan came on immediately. Hurray! But after browsing the web for a few minutes, the machine completely froze (mouse and keyboard too) and then it shut off and restarted... no warnings and no kernel panic message.

This happened again a few minutes later and then I shut the machine off, unplugged it, and held the power button for 30 seconds. After booting back up in macOS, it froze again and restarted itself.

So I booted into Windows 10 and played some rocket league and some resident evil 7... no issues in boot camp, so I thought maybe it was a bad sector on my drive or something so I booted into recovery mode and did a repair on all my macOS drives. It said everything was ok.

So after I did that, I booted back into macOS, and watched some YouTube videos, did some browsing, played some rocket league... no freezes and no restarts. Weird. It hasn't happened since, but it kinda scares me a little bit.

I should note, last time I messed with that fan, my Bluetooth stopped being recognized as if there was no Bluetooth module installed at all. Doing a PRAM reset and holding power while unplugged brought it back to life and hasn't been a problem since.

Do you think my computer has fixed itself, or should I worry.

It could be my graphics card I guess, but it seems to not have any issues doing whatever I throw at it and since windows works fine, it seemed unlikely. Also, I've been watching the fans on the card and the computer and they all seem to kick on when needed. Also, all my freezes and restarts were while I wasn't doing anything that would stress the card.

Sorry for the long post, but does anyone think I'm good to go now, and it fixed itself like my Bluetooth did, or should I be worried?

Edit: Replaced my power supply and all is fine now. Thanks for the help everyone!

 

[MarkC426]

Do you have a dual mini 6pin to 8pin to power it?
Also what version of OSX are you running.
I have been running a 580 pulse for 9 months without any issue on Sierra.

 

[Jayson A]

Do you have a dual mini 6pin to 8pin to power it?
Also what version of OSX are you running.
I have been running a 580 pulse for 9 months without any issue on Sierra.

I was using a 16AWG dual mini 6 pin to 8 pin, but after the first restart, I switched it to 2 mini 6 pin to a dual 6 pin to 8 pin adapter and it still restarted itself. I'm also on 10.12.6 Sierra.

I'm starting to think it got too hot when the fan wasn't working, but I figured since i got the fan working, it wouldn't overheat, but maybe it was already too hot at that point.

Thoughts?

 

[h9826790]

If the card works fine in Windows, then shouldn't be hardware issue.

 

[crjackson2134]

If everything is working properly now, just monitor the temps and leave it alone.

Don't fix it until it breaks

 

[Jayson A]

It's happening again

I can run windows 10 fine for hours without a single issue but macOS Sierra freezes after 10 minutes of light browsing.

I downloaded istats to check temps and stuff and it seems to be in line with the temps I get on the same Mac 5,1 I use at work.

I don't think it's overheating.

Ugh. This sucks. I don't know what to do.

 

[crjackson2134]

Did you try making a different macOS user account for testing?

 

[h9826790]

A clean macOS installation rather than diagnosis what's wrong may save you lots of time

 

[Jayson A]

Okay, I'll try a clean macOS install. Also, is it worth noting that I'm using the display port on my RX 580? Could there be some sort of compatibility issue with the display ports?

 

[h9826790]

Okay, I'll try a clean macOS install. Also, is it worth noting that I'm using the display port on my RX 580? Could there be some sort of compatibility issue with the display ports?

display port should be the best choice

 

[Jayson A]

display port should be the best choice

Okay. This type of freeze and restart makes it seem like it's a hardware problem, but for some reason Windows is working great.

Question: If I re-install macOS will it screw up my Windows install? I have them both installed on the same SSD.

 

[Jayson A]

I'm assuming Apple Hardware Test won't display on my screen since I don't have an Apple ROM video card right?

macOS and Windows are on a 500GB Samsung 860 Evo in Bay 1
I'm also using an OWC SSD in Bay 2 to store steam games on.

I'm hoping I can get this figured out. Not sure what would've changed in macOS to make it freeze like that. I also ran disk diagnostics and it didn't find any faults.

 

[orph]

you can do a clean install of osx on to a usb stick or external HD for testing if you want.

just grab a usb stick/SDcard + usb dongle/external HD that is over 16GB.
if you use a usb stick you will have to format it as hfs+ (empty the stick before using) as it will be FAT formatted.

install OSX on to the dongle then boot from dongle, update osx then do some testing, worth trying to stress the gpu/cpu/ram if you want to be super safe.

may be worth re-seating things to fan/gpu for luck.

also from your boot usb dongle you can run disc utility on the old install for luck & always worth trying a safe restart.

as mentioned as windows seems to be working ok (if it can play games it's stressed and working) it sounds like the OSX install has goofed out.

also try re seating the SSD encase it was bumped as it's just above the fan

ps i use SD cards with a usb 2 dongle for troubleshooting

 

[Jayson A]

you can do a clean install of osx on to a usb stick or external HD for testing if you want.

just grab a usb stick/SDcard + usb dongle/external HD that is over 16GB.
if you use a usb stick you will have to format it as hfs+ (empty the stick before using) as it will be FAT formatted.

install OSX on to the dongle then boot from dongle, update osx then do some testing, worth trying to stress the gpu/cpu/ram if you want to be super safe.

may be worth re-seating things to fan/gpu for luck.

also from your boot usb dongle you can run disc utility on the old install for luck & always worth trying a safe restart.

as mentioned as windows seems to be working ok (if it can play games it's stressed and working) it sounds like the OSX install has goofed out.

also try re seating the SSD encase it was bumped as it's just above the fan

ps i use SD cards with a usb 2 dongle for troubleshooting

I think I may have figured out the problem. One of my RAM modules was reporting ECC errors, so I took them out and blew some compressed air into the slots and put them back in. Now the errors are gone. Guess I'll wait now to see if the error comes back. If that's all it was, that's an easy fix. Maybe Windows is more forgiving with RAM problems than macOS.

Also, good point about bumping the SSD. I think I did hit it a few times trying to finagle the fan out

 

[bsbeamer]

Did you happen to see any red lights from the front of the case? A RAM error SHOULD have given you a red light warning, either disabling that module/slot on next reboot or basically a panic/restart if it was not recoverable. Depending on how many modules and total RAM in your system, it may have just occasionally hit that limit and presented the problems.

 

[orph]

well fingers' crossed it was just the ram was knocked out of place when you pulled out your fan and clean/reinserting it will fix the problem.

 

[Jayson A]

Well, I got the RAM to report correctly, but it just restarted again. Damnit

 

[MarkC426]

I wonder if it’s something to do with 4k?
What monitor’s do you have connected?

 

[Jayson A]

I wonder if it’s something to do with 4k?
What monitor’s do you have connected?

ASUS PB278Q 1440p 60Hz monitor

 

[MarkC426]

In your first thread you said you where playing resident evil at 4k......!
But do you only have a qhd display attached (1440p).
Have you tried connecting to the other dp.

 

[Jayson A]

In your first thread you said you where playing resident evil at 4k......!
But do you only have a qhd display attached (1440p).
Have you tried connecting to the other dp.

In Resident Evil 7, you can choose the game's output resolution and then it scales to fit your display. Super Sampling.

Also, yes, both displayports were tried and the computer still restarted itself.

However, I took my new video card out and put in the HD 5770 and it was good... no restarts... then I took that card out and put in the RX 580 and now I'm using DVI instead of DisplayPort and it's still good. Weird. It should've restarted by now.
[doublepost=1527795179][/doublepost]Spoke too soon. It's done it again. I've taken out every drive in my Mac except for my boot drive and it still restarted itself. Now I've taken out half of the RAM to see what that does.

 

[MarkC426]

Also try the 580 in slot 2.
It is a 580 pulse and not a nitro?

 

[Jayson A]

Also try the 580 in slot 2.
It is a 580 pulse and not a nitro?

It's a Pulse. Would it work okay in slot 2?

 

[Jayson A]

Also try the 580 in slot 2.
It is a 580 pulse and not a nitro?

Okay, so I don't know if this is going to totally fix it, but I just found out that I still had Nvidia web drivers installed. The control panel said they were disabled, but who knows. I uninstalled them anyway.

 

[h9826790]

Okay, so I don't know if this is going to totally fix it, but I just found out that I still had Nvidia web drivers installed. The control panel said they were disabled, but who knows. I uninstalled them anyway.

For Windows, this can be an issue.

But for macOS, I bet the Nvidia web driver won't load at all with the AMD card. Shouldn't cause any problem. I used to use my 7950 as the "emergency card" (when my 1080Ti can't display anything), and the web driver never cause any problem.