My intention with this post is not to have someone address all of my problems individually, but rather see if there is a correlation between them that would all point to one thing.
I bought a new Mac Pro back in April, 2015, and it's been nothing but headaches since day 1. Here's what ails me:
1. Graphic glitches across all three monitors. - Usually soon after startup. Just short horizontal glitches that mess up the picture for a split second. It comes and goes. I took it into the Apple store for this a week ago and they replaced "graphics board A", and that changed absolutely nothing.
2. Crash + Kernal Panic - Once or twice per week when I get up in the morning and the machine has been hibernating all night, I go to wake it and it crashes and restarts, and then gives me this kernal panic report: (Yes I know it's unusually short, but very consistently the same. I think I've gotten it maybe 10 times now)
That's the entire thing, minus the machine specs at the bottom. Didn't want to crowd an already lengthy post. Last time it happened it also reset my screensaver to the default option. For some reason.
3. CPU idles at 25% - Even when I have no open programs, all 8 cores are constantly going nuts. I know this because I have MenuMeters installed, but Activity Monitor confirms it. Screen shot attached in which you can see there are almost no programs using any CPU, like total it's less than 2%, and the system report at the bottom claims it's at 25% capacity. It never ever goes below that. The CPU temperature is always at least 140ºF shortly after startup and the fan is always running at about 1300rpms.
4. Massive latency in Logic - This is a can of worms on its own, because latency can be caused by a billion things, but it's odd that such a fast machine (allegedly) will start an open session with no latency, and then after a half hour or so will have an entire second of it. This includes MIDI input, as in there's a massive lull between when I hit a key on my keyboard, and when Logic will play back the appropriate sample.
5. SMC resets - Once or twice a month I wake up the machine and everything is running at about 1/1000th the normal speed. Literally. Even the mouse only refreshes about once per second. The only way to fix it is to shut down, unplug the machine and hold the power button down while it's unplugged to drain all remaining power from the unit, then restart.
6. Won't access the Audio Interface even though it's recognized - In System Preferences > Sound, it shows that my Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 is there, plugged in, but if I select it, it won't play any sound, and in fact if I select a WAV file on my computer and hit space (to have it "preview") it won't play at all. The only way I've found to get it to work is to open logic, and change the audio device setting back and forth between that and the built in output, usually after 5 or 6 times it starts working properly.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
-Stephen
MacPro 6,1
OSX 10.10.5
8-Core Intel Xeon E5 3 GHz
Number of Processors:1
Total Number of Cores:8
L2 Cache (per Core):256 KB
L3 Cache:25 MB
Memory:64 GB (third party - OWC)
AMD FirePro D700 6144 MB
Boot ROM Version:MP61.0116.B15
SMC Version (system):2.20f18
Attached hardware: 3 thunderbolt monitors, 3 external hard drives( 1 USB, 2 TB), Audio Interface (USB), Mouse, Keyboard.
I bought a new Mac Pro back in April, 2015, and it's been nothing but headaches since day 1. Here's what ails me:
1. Graphic glitches across all three monitors. - Usually soon after startup. Just short horizontal glitches that mess up the picture for a split second. It comes and goes. I took it into the Apple store for this a week ago and they replaced "graphics board A", and that changed absolutely nothing.
2. Crash + Kernal Panic - Once or twice per week when I get up in the morning and the machine has been hibernating all night, I go to wake it and it crashes and restarts, and then gives me this kernal panic report: (Yes I know it's unusually short, but very consistently the same. I think I've gotten it maybe 10 times now)
*** MCA Error Report ***
CPU Machine Check Architecture Error Dump (CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-1680 v2 @ 3.00GHz, CPUID: 0x306E4)
Core: 0
IA32_MC20_STATUS=0xFE200000000C110A
IA32_MC20_CTL=0x0
IA32_MC20_ADDR=0xA0660080
IA32_MC20_MISC=0xA0FC381602802086
Core: 0
IA32_MC21_STATUS=0xFE200000000C110A
IA32_MC21_CTL=0x0
IA32_MC21_ADDR=0xA0601440
IA32_MC21_MISC=0x88FC38160A802086
Core: 0
IA32_MC24_STATUS=0xFE200000000C110A
IA32_MC24_CTL=0x0
IA32_MC24_ADDR=0xA0660040
IA32_MC24_MISC=0xB0FC385610802086
CPU Machine Check Architecture Error Dump (CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-1680 v2 @ 3.00GHz, CPUID: 0x306E4)
Core: 0
IA32_MC20_STATUS=0xFE200000000C110A
IA32_MC20_CTL=0x0
IA32_MC20_ADDR=0xA0660080
IA32_MC20_MISC=0xA0FC381602802086
Core: 0
IA32_MC21_STATUS=0xFE200000000C110A
IA32_MC21_CTL=0x0
IA32_MC21_ADDR=0xA0601440
IA32_MC21_MISC=0x88FC38160A802086
Core: 0
IA32_MC24_STATUS=0xFE200000000C110A
IA32_MC24_CTL=0x0
IA32_MC24_ADDR=0xA0660040
IA32_MC24_MISC=0xB0FC385610802086
3. CPU idles at 25% - Even when I have no open programs, all 8 cores are constantly going nuts. I know this because I have MenuMeters installed, but Activity Monitor confirms it. Screen shot attached in which you can see there are almost no programs using any CPU, like total it's less than 2%, and the system report at the bottom claims it's at 25% capacity. It never ever goes below that. The CPU temperature is always at least 140ºF shortly after startup and the fan is always running at about 1300rpms.
4. Massive latency in Logic - This is a can of worms on its own, because latency can be caused by a billion things, but it's odd that such a fast machine (allegedly) will start an open session with no latency, and then after a half hour or so will have an entire second of it. This includes MIDI input, as in there's a massive lull between when I hit a key on my keyboard, and when Logic will play back the appropriate sample.
5. SMC resets - Once or twice a month I wake up the machine and everything is running at about 1/1000th the normal speed. Literally. Even the mouse only refreshes about once per second. The only way to fix it is to shut down, unplug the machine and hold the power button down while it's unplugged to drain all remaining power from the unit, then restart.
6. Won't access the Audio Interface even though it's recognized - In System Preferences > Sound, it shows that my Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 is there, plugged in, but if I select it, it won't play any sound, and in fact if I select a WAV file on my computer and hit space (to have it "preview") it won't play at all. The only way I've found to get it to work is to open logic, and change the audio device setting back and forth between that and the built in output, usually after 5 or 6 times it starts working properly.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
-Stephen
MacPro 6,1
OSX 10.10.5
8-Core Intel Xeon E5 3 GHz
Number of Processors:1
Total Number of Cores:8
L2 Cache (per Core):256 KB
L3 Cache:25 MB
Memory:64 GB (third party - OWC)
AMD FirePro D700 6144 MB
Boot ROM Version:MP61.0116.B15
SMC Version (system):2.20f18
Attached hardware: 3 thunderbolt monitors, 3 external hard drives( 1 USB, 2 TB), Audio Interface (USB), Mouse, Keyboard.
