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Mid 2010 Mac Pro upgraded to x5650 having overheating issues months later

S

SuperDuperCruzr

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 26, 2012
10
0
Here's the current specs:

Mid 2010 Mac Pro
Processor 2 x 2.66 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon (x5650)
Memory 32 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC (2 OWC 16GB Sticks)
Graphics ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB

I've been running this setup since January without any problems then suddenly I started getting the spinning ball & lock-ups. Installed iStat to monitor the temps and found I was way out of the limits of these CPU's. Any ideas? I've attached the screen shot of the iStat readings.

CPU Hot.jpg
 
SuperDuperCruzr said:
Here's the current specs:

Mid 2010 Mac Pro
Processor 2 x 2.66 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon (x5650)
Memory 32 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC (2 OWC 16GB Sticks)
Graphics ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB

I've been running this setup since January without any problems then suddenly I started getting the spinning ball & lock-ups. Installed iStat to monitor the temps and found I was way out of the limits of these CPU's. Any ideas? I've attached the screen shot of the iStat readings.
Click to expand...

Did you upgrade anything since then? Very vanilla set up. Is this stock set up, or is it a processor upgraded?
 
The processor board is upgraded from a 2010 single CPU to a 2010 dual CPU board

There's an 480GB SSC (OWC Mercury Accelsior_E2) and this processor board was upgraded from a single cpu board to a dual cpu board with x5650's swapped in for the quad cores. The system was pretty rock steady for months till just recently. I primarily use this as a media computer with home sharing setup to my other apple devices.

----------

5770 ATi Radeon is a reflashed pc card. I have been using this in a 2008 mac pro without issue and liked the hdmi port. So, I kept this one for my 2010 mac pro and sold the 2008 mac pro with the Apple 5770 ATi card.
 
I am quite confident that the reading is in Fahrenheit. In this case, the temperature looks good to me. And the fan speed is also normal.

May be you can do some simple maintenance job and try to fix the issue.

1) Upgrade to the current OSX if not yet done.
2) Clear all caches
3) SMC reset
4) PRAM reset
5) Boot into recovery mode, and then repair disk + permission.
 
Last edited:
SuperDuperCruzr said:
Here's the current specs:

Mid 2010 Mac Pro
Processor 2 x 2.66 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon (x5650)
Memory 32 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC (2 OWC 16GB Sticks)
Graphics ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB

I've been running this setup since January without any problems then suddenly I started getting the spinning ball & lock-ups. Installed iStat to monitor the temps and found I was way out of the limits of these CPU's. Any ideas? I've attached the screen shot of the iStat readings.

View attachment 474682
Click to expand...

Your temps and fan speeds seems normal. The spinning ball may be caused by something else. Whenever the spinning ball occurs, try jotting down what activity you are doing and find a common denomator
 
I thought it might be F instead of C too, but saw other postings where C was the unit of measure. I cannot find the procedure to switch. So, maybe someone with more experience then I have with iStat will chime in. I've always used smcfancontrol until migrating from the 2008 to the 2010 Mac Pro. Ever since the system restore from Time Machine backup, I cannot run or install a working version of smcfancontrol. Perhaps I will retry it once I follow the suggested smc reset, pram reset & permission restore. I'll post the results shortly.
 
SuperDuperCruzr said:
I thought it might be F instead of C too, but saw other postings where C was the unit of measure. I cannot find the procedure to switch. So, maybe someone with more experience then I have with iStat will chime in. I've always used smcfancontrol until migrating from the 2008 to the 2010 Mac Pro. Ever since the system restore from Time Machine backup, I cannot run or install a working version of smcfancontrol. Perhaps I will retry it once I follow the suggested smc reset, pram reset & permission restore. I'll post the results shortly.
Click to expand...

Open the iStat Menus application.

ScreenCap%202014-06-03%20at%2012.01.23.jpg



~ Cheers
 
Last edited:
if you temps has suddenly started going up, I would remove the heatsinks off the CPUs and reapply the paste. Something like Arctic silver 5
 
What's odd is one cpu was getting hotter than the other...

When the lockups occurred most, the right cpu heatsink was physically much hotter to the touch than the left (from the perspective of the side with the case open.) After some trouble shooting (removing hardware to the essential) and installing iStat, the lockups occurred less frequently and the cpu was slightly warmer to the touch and according to iStat by 10 Degrees F. I realize my hand is not an accurate measure, but there was a big difference earlier. I was worried I had cooked the CPU.

I was using mkvmerge both times the computer completely locked. Recently, I've been having issues with iTunes locking up the computer although less frequent.

I've reset smc, repaired permissions on the startup disk but, I haven't reset the pram since the firmware is password protected. I'll reset the pram when I have some more time and post any changes.
 
SuperDuperCruzr said:
When the lockups occurred most, the r

I've reset smc, repaired permissions on the startup disk but, I haven't reset the pram since the firmware is password protected. I'll reset the pram when I have some more time and post any changes.
Click to expand...

What are your temps under heavy CPU load?

That screen shot you posted shows that you were 120F and 143F from ProcHot. That is nowhere near overheating (quite cool actually) and is likely hour CPU temp when not under any stress.

The X5650s should not get within 10C of their Specified Upper limit (96C core temp). At least, that is my experience with that CPU. Handbrake and Prime95 could only bring it to 10C below ProcHot when the room temperature was 80F.
Try a stress test and lets see how high they get. CPU Temperature may not be the cause of your lockups.
 
I assumed the default was C but, I was wrong...

Since most CPU specifications state Celsius, I just assumed iStat defaulted to C. Glad I haven't cooked anything... I use the computer to manage my media and streaming throughout the house is daily (apple TV, airport express speakers, etc).

BDM STUDIOS NL said:
You're welcome! But, isn't C becoming a world-wide standard nowadays?
Click to expand...
 
SuperDuperCruzr said:
Since most CPU specifications state Celsius, I just assumed iStat defaulted to C. Glad I haven't cooked anything... I use the computer to manage my media and streaming throughout the house is daily (apple TV, airport express speakers, etc).
Click to expand...

No problem, very glad it worked out and that you haven't cooked anything! (let's leave all that to Nigella) :D

~ Cheers
 
SuperDuperCruzr said:
the right cpu heatsink was physically much hotter to the touch than the left
Click to expand...

I won't care too much about the hot heat sink, because it's design to absorb heat from the CPU and further transfer the energy to the air (or your hand in this case).

On the other hand, I will carefully monitor the cooler heat sink, make sure the heat from the CPU able to transfer to the heat sink. Otherwise, the CPU will shows thermal throttling, and may suffer from damage later on.

Anyway, the temperature difference most likely just because of the OS cannot evenly distribute the workload to the CPUs. You may able to get some hints in the activity monitor for this issue.

To test the heat sink. You can try to run handbrake or stress the CPUs by GeekBench, and then monitor the temperatures in iStat. They should be very close. If you use the native fan control, the CPU temperature may go up a lot as well, but it won't lock up, or auto shut down.
 
SuperDuperCruzr said:
When the lockups occurred most, the right cpu heatsink was physically much hotter to the touch than the left (from the perspective of the side with the case open.) After some trouble shooting (removing hardware to the essential) and installing iStat, the lockups occurred less frequently and the cpu was slightly warmer to the touch and according to iStat by 10 Degrees F. I realize my hand is not an accurate measure, but there was a big difference earlier. I was worried I had cooked the CPU.

I was using mkvmerge both times the computer completely locked. Recently, I've been having issues with iTunes locking up the computer although less frequent.

I've reset smc, repaired permissions on the startup disk but, I haven't reset the pram since the firmware is password protected. I'll reset the pram when I have some more time and post any changes.
Click to expand...

Normally CPU A runs warmer than CPU B. The temps on both cpus are never the same based from my usages of many dual processor Mac Pros.
 
Macsonic said:
Normally CPU A runs warmer than CPU B. The temps on both cpus are never the same based from my usages of many dual processor Mac Pros.
Click to expand...

Is that due to the air-flow passing over the first heat-sink and being pre-warmed prior to passing over the back heat-sink causing that temperature to be hotter?
 
hfg said:
Is that due to the air-flow passing over the first heat-sink and being pre-warmed prior to passing over the back heat-sink causing that temperature to be hotter?
Click to expand...

Hello Hfg. I also have no idea but yep maybe that is the case I've used dozens of dual cpus 2009-2012 Mac Pros from clients, friends and CPU A is always warmer.
 
Follow-up

Thanks for all of the input... I've had a chance to replicate the results that caused the overheating & system locking up. It seems as though there is a problem with running mkvtoolnix and muxing/writing to the system hard drive. I haven't had a problem with this in the past. Without issue, I was frequently converting bluray movies to mkv files via makemkv files while simultaneously muxing via mkvtoolnix. I did keep an eye on the temps and I cannot say if there's a rise or not since the system locks up.

After the hard shutdown (holding down the power button) and restart, I checked the HD and fixed permissions on the volume. It currently seems as though I'm okay as long as I'm not writing to the system hard drive (owc accelsior e2).
 
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