MP 1,1-5,1 Radeon RX 580 8 GB fans spinning fast for approx. 10 secs on boot.

[Physalia]

My apologies for this long post, this next paragraph is the central issue, the rest is just details in case you are interested. Thanks!

I'm lost with this, some say the fast fan is normal on boot, but for how long? Was not like this 3 days ago. Don't want to damage the Radeon. Maybe this is how it should be all the time in the first place, I’m lost! Also this behavior happens after selecting a High Sierra while using the boot selective drive (option/alt) on startup/restart AND also happens when after selecting a new startup drive on System Preferences. The issue is not there while switching between Mojave boots. Drives check good on disk utility's first aid. Any clues for this not-so high-tech-newbie? Thanks in advance for listening!

Details:
I've tried researching this to the max the entire day today.. experimented with my Mac Pro 5,1 with different boot drives, flashed a good fresh BootROM file, and I can't figure out this NEW behavior.

So once upon a time (3 days ago) life was good with my Mac Pro. I have multiple internal boot drives 3 HDD 1SSD 1 NVME-Switched with startech adapter. Running Mojave on the SSD, NVME, and one HDD; and running High Sierra on 2 different HDD. I have the latest EnableGop and 144.0.0.0.0 BootRom.

So a little bit of history, I believe or I have been believing that an unusual long fan rev on boot was something tweakable because of my success using the SMC reset (shutdown/power cable off 20 sec/ power up) resolving this issue for as long as I can remember, a long lasting solution (for months) until now.

The strangest of this behavior is that as long as I boot from one Mojave boot drive to another, there is absolutely no problem. There is a slight 1/2 second pulse at the end of the boot and that's it -normal! However, as soon as I go to the High Sierra drives, the first boot is normal, but any subsequent boot including restart on the same drive, will give a loud 10 second spin on the Radeon fans.

Going from High Sierra to Mojave has this issue as well. It is not until after going back to the Mojave boots that the issue resolves itself.

I do have a readout for the fan speeds and these are the Radeon's and not the cheese grater's. I know I will get the long high speed fans on the boot because during the shutdown I can see some white and red dots on the display, another mystery, is 100% predictable, very consistent.

The only 'unusual thing' happening during these few days was a QNAP tech tweaking issues (while on one of the High Sierra drives) trying to solve some uncommanded restart issues on the TS-231. He disabled 'Watchdog monitor' and updated accordingly. I removed all drives except the High Sierra bootable drive before he started working with TeamViewer and video taped the whole thing. I've disconnected the TS-231 from the Mac Pro, and made no difference.

I reinstalled High Sierra on both drives that had the High Sierra (not clean install) maybe I should do a clean/full install?

 

[mode11]

Breaking the question into paragraphs would make it easier to digest; it may help you get responses.

 

[Macschrauber]

I dont read such walls of text :-(

from the title this is normal until the driver loads.

 

[Physalia]

Breaking the question into paragraphs would make it easier to digest; it may help you get responses.

Good advice! Thanks. Changed the post into paragraphs while explaining the central issue first. Hope this helps.

 

[Macschrauber]

For all weird things what have to do with the power management, booting, rebooting, sleep suffers check the rtc battery beneath PCI Slot 1.

You can measure it built in, should give minimum 3 Volts, plus on top side, minus on a good chassis point.

 

[Physalia]

For all weird things what have to do with the power management, booting, rebooting, sleep suffers check the rtc battery beneath PCI Slot 1.

You can measure it built in, should give minimum 3 Volts, plus on top side, minus on a good chassis point.

Thanks Macschrauber! Brand new BR (vs CR) battery installed 2 months ago. Change it every 2 years, scheduled on my calendar. I’m aware of the ‘weirdness’ with low volts, but I can confidently rule this out. I appreciate your input though! I use the High Sierra drives as for ‘utility’ and don’t carry any day-to-day business in them. I’m thinking about erasing/wiping these out and doing a clean install. Whatever is going on, seems to be during ‘shutdown’ while in High Sierra (white/red dots on display,) maybe the Radeon is trying to tell me something with this behavior. I’ll post the results when I’m done. Thanks again.

 

[Physalia]

Just FYI,

Item 1 below- 1st clip:

Here are the moving 'dots,' always the same when rebooting ***from*** High Sierra only. Today I had instances of high speed fans without these dots. I'm booting from High Sierra to the same High Sierra using the select boot alt/option.

Item 2 below- Picture:

When restarting without login these dots appear on the out of focus stage while login out as in the picture below.

Item 3 below- 2nd clip:

The end of boot just before the login page (that does appear.)
Timed the high fan duration, is actually 20 seconds and not 10 seconds.

I'm making these notes before erasing and full installing both instances of High Sierra. Let's see how it goes. Maybe this can help someone in the future. Thanks for your patience.

 

[Physalia]

(continued) was having issues loading Item 3 (following up from message above.)
I cut the video shorter without the full 20 second fan rev to spare your from the noise and save you time.

 

[tsialex]

The dots/squares are common when transitioning from the EFI frame buffer to the macOS driver (when past the halfway at the loading bar), but mostly when rebooting with some AMD GPUs and some macOS releases, High Sierra and RX 580 is a common one, when the GPU driver unloads to the EFI frame buffer again. To me this always seemed a VRAM buffer that was not cleaned, I’m not sure.

Sometimes happens even with late-2013 Mac Pro.

 

[Physalia]

Very interesting! Thanks tsialex as always! I'll be doing the clean installs today or tomorrow, lets see how it goes. BTW, do you think all these 20 sec high speed events could eventually damage the RX580? Mr. Paranoid here again! Thanks again!

 

[tsialex]

Very interesting! Thanks tsialex as always! I'll be doing the clean installs today or tomorrow, lets see how it goes. BTW, do you think all these 20 sec high speed events could eventually damage the RX580? Mr. Paranoid here again! Thanks again!

The GPU fan algorithm is more or less like this:

1. At power up, the GPU always run the fans,
2. The GPU firmware starts to measure the temperature sensors, the sensors need some time to equalize and detect the correct temperature, this is done repeatedly for X seconds (changes from model to model),
3. If the GPU temperature is below 80ºC (some cards have the threshold at 85ºC, some models have it lower), shutdown the fans.
4. When the temperature gets to the programmed level that the fans are needed, the fans are powered on again until the cards cool down,
5. Go back to 3 and repeat.

This is done this way because the card needs to know if it's a warm reset, like when the card is at full blast, you shutdown and power on immediately/or when there is an instantaneous power cut/etc. The card needs the fans to provide refrigeration or you can overheat in these type of situations, it's a safety measure.

In resume, it's normal that the RX 580 have have the fans running medium/full blast at power on for 10/20 seconds.

 

[Physalia]

Thanks again tsialex! I feel a lot better knowing that I'm not breaking the RX 580, but maybe there is something else 🙈:

As an attempt to try to bring back the short 1/2 sec. fan pulse (vs 20 sec high speed spin) I proceeded with the plan I mentioned 2 messages ago and made a full/clean install for both instances of High Sierra since the 20 sec high speed fans only happened after booting with High Sierra.

Results immediately after the High Sierra installations:
The bootpicker (alt/option at restart) started to show a High Sierra recovery drive that I didn't have before, but I believe this is normal since this is the first full/clean install since installing EnableGop. For most of the boots (not all) the RX 580 behaved as in the past with the short 1/2 second fan 'pulse' at the end of the boot, so I thought, 'eureka,' I fixed it!!!

But after a while:
Unfortunately, after a few more boots with different drives using the bootpicker the 20 sec high speed fans came back occasionally and some additional weird behavior. At times the alt/option will do nothing and give me a restart on the same boot drive with no bootpick display. Other times restarts while in High Sierra the alt/option will send me to the original Mojave boot drive (still no bootpicker displayed,) and a few times had the white screen of death at the end of the boot and had to shot down with the start switch. And finally, eventually the bootpicker just disappeared. Good grief! I can still change the 'startup disk' on System Preferences, but the bootpicker is gone. Oddly enough, for the most part, the 20 sec high speed fans are gone, I'm getting the 'ol 1/2 sec pulse. Go figure.

I'm thinking about flashing the clean copy of BootROM with EnableGOP again, but this is just my gut instinct and have nothing in my brain to back this up. Maybe it is a good idea but there may be additional steps that I don't know about that may be helpful. Would appreciate any suggestions. Thanks for listening!

PD I'm not sure if this should be on a new thread, maybe is safe to say that I'm still troubleshooting the high speed fan issue, although is not going to break anything on the RX 580, but all this has led to other issues it seems. Would appreciate any suggestions on this as well! Thanks!

 

[throAU]

The fans will spin at max/high speed on the card (basically, the on board firmware runs them in a "safe" speed zone) until initialised by the OS driver and the temp sensor is monitored properly and the fan controller is under direction by the OS driver.

If macOS has changed the order in which drivers are loaded, or some other driver is ahead of the RX580 in the boot sequence it will change when the fans spin down.