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Mac Pro PCI Fan Speed in Mavericks

Studio K

Studio K

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 17, 2013
361
7
United States
I'm using an unsupported graphics card (GTX 650) in a 2009 Mac Pro running Mavericks Gold Master.

I've noticed that, after roughly one hour, PCI fan speed rises from the usual, default 800 rpms to 1000 rpms. It is a gradual process taking 20 minutes or so. Nothing in particular seems to trigger this.

This occurred in developer previews and continues in GM.

Rebooting back into Mountain Lion will bring the fan speed back down to 800.

Do any of you Mac Pro People experience this behavior in Mavericks?
 
Studio K said:
I'm using an unsupported graphics card (GTX 650) in a 2009 Mac Pro running Mavericks Gold Master.

I've noticed that, after roughly one hour, PCI fan speed rises from the usual, default 800 rpms to 1000 rpms. It is a gradual process taking 20 minutes or so. Nothing in particular seems to trigger this.

This occurred in developer previews and continues in GM.

Rebooting back into Mountain Lion will bring the fan speed back down to 800.

Do any of you Mac Pro People experience this behavior in Mavericks?
Click to expand...


I have not so far with an OEM 5870. I am preparing the partition to install the GM on it as it still has the last developer preview right now.
 
I've got 3 PCI cards. A GTX780, a Solo x2 with a Samsung SSD and a USB card. I have turned up my PCI fan to 1200 RPM, I've also turned up both sets of CPU Fans (for my W5590s). The light whirring is not objectionable, and the higher speed fans is keeping my stuff cooler.

I've noticed with the Gigabyte GTX780, a 3 fan model mounted in slot 1, that the shelf under the card acts like a thermal plate. It heats up when the card is stressed and cools down when the card is at idle.

Has the OP noticed this with his GTX650? I don't think a PCI fan speed of 1K RPM is anything to worry about, IMHO.

Lou
 
He is trying to see if the expansion slots fan is behaving differently under Mavericks for everyone.

The shelf is not a a thermal plate. Since it doesn't make direct contact with all the components, it is not transferring any heat to it and not helping cool anything.
 
flowrider said:
Has the OP noticed this with his GTX650? I don't think a PCI fan speed of 1K RPM is anything to worry about, IMHO.
Click to expand...

You are right, I think. 1000 rpms is not alarmingly high.

I've just noticed this behavior because I have iStat installed with some fan speeds displayed prominently in the Desktop menubar, so variations like this reveal themselves.

I assume that this is just some "Mavericks thing". It's possible that it may not occur with Apple OEM cards.
I've got my non-Apple card in Slot 2 since Slot 1 tends to produce some erratic PCI fan behavior in general (which is, again, only noticable because of iStat).

The PCI fan increase doesn't occur immediately in Mavericks. Only after the first hour or so.
 
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In Mountain Lion, when doing nothing particularly special in Finder, the fan is usually about 800-860. The fluctuations seem to have a direct correlation to ambient temperature.

In Mavericks, under the same conditions, it is around 860-905. I don't think I've seen 800 no matter how cool ambient temperature is.
 
Pastrychef -- have you had any issues with OpenCL using Mavericks' stock Nvidia drivers?
 
As far as I can tell, no. But when attempting the Luxmark benchmark tests, OpenCL is much slower under Mavericks. Looking at Luxmark shows that the OpenCL driver is dated August 2013 under Mavericks and April 2013 under Mountain Lion.

Room under Mavericks, 342. Room under Mountain Lion was over 380.
Sala under Mavericks, 676. Sala under Mountain Lion was 777.

To be fair, I had a few more apps running when I did the tests under Mavericks but nothing overly taxing. When I did the tests in Mountain Lion, nothing was running.
 
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Thanks. OpenCL Oceanwave gives me around 63 fps max (whereas under 10.8.5 it was ~540). I can get luxmark to run once (the first time after downloading), but subsequent efforts yield a 'Runtime error: Unable to open file scenes...'. Strange.
 
I have not tried Oceanwave. But I experienced the same errors with Luxmark. The solution seems to be the delete the whole folder and unzip the downloaded file again. This has to be done every time I want to run Luxmark again.
 
pastrychef said:
In Mountain Lion, when doing nothing particularly special in Finder, the fan is usually about 800-860. The fluctuations seem to have a direct correlation to ambient temperature.

In Mavericks, under the same conditions, it is around 860-905. I don't think I've seen 800 no matter how cool ambient temperature is.
Click to expand...

PastryChef,

Is your GTX 680 in Slot 1?
Is it Mac Edition or PC?

Your PCI fanspeed behavior sounds similar to what I witnessed when my GTX 650 was in Slot 1. It never quite settled down to 800 rpms, but instead fluctuated between 820 and 850 most of the time.
In Mavericks, the fan would be up over 1100 just after booting, but quickly settles down below 900 rpms.
Stressing the GPU with a benchmark would knock it down to 800, but this would only last until I powered the machine off. Turn it back on and speed fluctuates again.

I don't think that this is really a problem as these speeds are not excessive. It's just something peculiar I noticed. I've no idea what the fan does when an offical Apple card is in Slot 1. I never checked and haven't felt like testing it.

If you feel like it, check your PCI fanspeed in Mavericks just after you arrive at the Desktop after booting to see if it's up over 1100.
 
I wanted to see if Mountain Lion and Mavericks had any different effects on the GPU fan. So, I took out my thermometer and placed the sensor between two of the heat pipes on the video card's heatsink. I let it sit idle for a bit and also ran the Heaven benchmark. Here's what I got:
 

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pastrychef said:
It is in slot 1 and it is a flashed GTX 680.

What you described is pretty much exactly what I have witnessed with my system.
Click to expand...

I'm glad to hear that your experience is similar. I suppose that this is just the way it all runs.

With my unsupported graphics card moved into Slot 2, PCI fanspeed is 799 rpms from the moment I boot to the desktop (ML or Mav). And there it remains unless I run a graphics-intenvise app.

The only 'anomaly' I've noticed in Mountain Lion is that the PCI fan will gradually increase speed to 1000 rpms after running Luxmark. It remains at 1000 until I power off the system. I have not tested this in Mavericks yet because Luxmark won't launch.
 
To run Luxmark, delete the whole folder it is in. Then unzip the original downloaded file again. It will now run, but, once you quit, you will have to do the unzip again or it will not launch.

I noticed my expansion slot fan go up to 900 after launching Vmware Fusion and it has stayed there. Prior to launching Fusion, it was around 860.
 
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