New(ish) iMac crashing.

[SpittingImage]

Hi, hoping to get an idea on the best way to identify the problem of my iMac crashing.

It's few month old 2019 iMac 27 inch, it came with 16GB but I changed it to 64GB OWC memory not long after I bought it. Most of the time I'm using Capture One 12 to edit photo's along with Affinity Photo. It crashes and reboots a lot when using them, not necessarily at the same time or even open at the same time.

I've ran the Apple Diagnostic and it doesn't find a problem.

I'm going to remove the OWC memory at the weekend and reinstall the supplied 16GB. Is there a better of way of narrowing it down?

 

[mikehalloran]

Try it but don't be surprised if it isn't the problem.

Do reinstall the OS.

Do a Safe Boot and reboot. If any paths were corrupted by later installations, this will rebuild and reset caches to default. Hold the Shift key down and log in when prompted. After your desktop icons have rebuilt, reboot normally.

 

[SpittingImage]

Thanks for that. I didn't wait for the weekend I just removed the OWC memory and reinstalled the original 16GB memory. I'll see how that goes first before I reinstall the OS.

I appreciate the advice.

 

[mikehalloran]

No problem. If you take it to the Apple Store, the first thing they will do is a complete reinstall of the OS. Ok, that's the second thing. The first is make you sign papers swearing that you have a complete, recent backup. An OS reinstall isn't supposed to touch your user data but just in case, they want to cover their butts (also, if they find a hardware issue, they will wipe your data). It will be through the Repair partition: Boot with the Command r keys held down and navigate to Reinstall OS — speed will depend on your internet connection.

Then they'll do a Safe Boot.

They may also reset the NV RAM

These are things you can do where the Mac is which is more convenient, of course.

If you have to take it in, then you have to but the above often fixes the problems.

 

[Fishrrman]

VERY FIRST THING TO DO:
TAKE OUT the RAM you added.
Try running it for a few days using only the factory-installed RAM.

Does that make a difference?

 

[Sam Marks]

I experienced the same random restart behaviour in my brand new iMac 2019 27". With only 10 days old it started to crash and restart randomly. Exactly as you described. It was not related to the new RAM I added (Timetec), as the computer continued restarting randomly after removing the new RAM modules, leaving the original 8GB. It did not show any kernel panic report after the random restarts. After increasing the restarting frequency soon it reached a point when the new iMac completely died, being impossible even to turn it on again (it does not power up). I followed the diagnostics of an Apple expert over the phone and nothing, the machine was dead (almost on arrival). I had backup of everything. In my opinion, the logic board is the defective part, but it could be the PSU or the GPU, who knows.

It is clearly a manufaturing failure in my case. I asked the reseller for a full money refund and they sent a carrier to pickup the computer. Now I am waiting for the refund because of this defective machine. I have been over a month without the computer (or the money). I hope that the reseller can give me my money back soon. They say that they are processing my request.

I hope that your case is different than mine and your computer eventualy would not die, but when I saw your post it was too familiar for my the description of the new computer crashing randomly.

 

[SpittingImage]

After reinstalling the original 16GB ram it hasn't crashed so far, so looking good. I'll give it a little longer before making my determination and I'll give OWC Tech Support another call.

Thanks for the advice people. I'll let you know how it goes.