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MP 1,1-5,1 RX580 Fan Control & Viewer

M

MrRedfield

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 8, 2019
30
4
Hello,
I have a MVC RX 580 and when I have both my monitors on, the card fan goes on and off continuously (seems about every 12 seconds or so). Once I turn off the second monitor, it no longer does it.
So I'm looking for a software for MacOS that will allow me to view and control the fans on the card. Anyone know of any software that can? Mac Fan Control doesn't show the GPU.
 
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The latest version of iStat Menus (6.4) now displays GPU wattage (dubious as to its accuracy though) in addition to GPU processor usage. You can’t adjust the GPU speed or other functionality but you can view how it’s performing.
 
MrRedfield said:
Hello,
I have a MVC RX 580 and when I have both my monitors on, the card fan goes on and off continuously (seems about every 12 seconds or so). Once I turn off the second monitor, it no longer does it.
So I'm looking for a software for MacOS that will allow me to view and control the fans on the card. Anyone know of any software that can? Mac Fan Control doesn't show the GPU.
Click to expand...

You can't control it via any software. However, it's possible to inject a PowerPlay table for RX580 to build your own fan profile, or downvolt the card, or even OC the GPU.

CMMChris should created an Excel file for generating the PowerPlay table. You may try to Google for it.

P.S. corrected by CMMChris
 
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Sharky II said:
Are you running two 4K monitors?

Do all Sapphire Pulse 580 RX's do this when two monitors are connected?
Click to expand...

AFAIK, MVC flash the PULSE RX580 with a MSI RX580 ROM. Quite a few parameters changed which include fan profile, max RPM, Acoustic limit, etc...

So, this fan noise issue shouldn't happen on PULSE RX580. At least, when I connect my PULSE RX580 with two monitors, there is no such fan noise issue.
 
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h9826790 said:
AFAIK, MVC flash the PULSE RX580 with a MSI RX580 ROM. Quite a few parameters changed which include, fan profile, max RPM, Acoustic limit, etc...

So, this fan noise issue shouldn't happen on PULSE RX580. At least, when I connect my PULSE RX580 with two monitors, there is no such fan noise issue.
Click to expand...

Thank you!
 
Sharky II said:
Are you running two 4K monitors?

Do all Sapphire Pulse 580 RX's do this when two monitors are connected?
Click to expand...

I have dual 1920x1200 monitors, and the fans always run slowly under Sierra. Under Mojave, they don’t run after boot to desktop, until you start doing stuff. Seems to correspond with pci fan high rpm - in Sierra it always goes away after peaking at around 2090rpm ~40seconds, in Mojave it will just keep trucking at the high rpm indefinitely.
 
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I just got a 580RX and while I'm enjoying much more quiet vs my 5770 (PC), I do notice a noise every couple of minutes, which I am assuming is the fans ramping up at a low RPM, every now and then.

I'm talking about while the machine is essentially idle, just web browsing and a couple of youtube videos, so I don't think the card is being taxed. I usually have my PCIe fan running at 1000rpm because I can't really hear the difference between 1000 and the default 800, but changing that up or down makes no difference.

I do have a USB3 card in slot 2 and as such, it's blocking some of one of the fans.

I also am in a (music) studio environment so it's very quiet and I am hyper aware of any noises, I don't think most people would care or notice it, hehe.

I will open the side up to confirm that it is the 580RX making the noise.
 
The noise you hear is the card exiting ZeroRPM mode. The fans are turned off until the temp exceeds a threshold temperature. Fans start spinning until a specific temperature is reached and then turn off again. If this is annoying to you can try to increase the threshold temperature or disable ZeroRPM which will result in permanent (slow) fan spin. This of course needs a VBIOS mod.
 
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Thank you - I realise that the fans are off for the majority of the time, when idling. But does spin up/exit ZeroRPM mode even though nothing is suddenly taxing the card?

Surely you'd expect that if I put the Mac Pro's PCIe fan at a faster speed, it would decrease the frequency of this spin up?
 
Without the fans spinning the temp does slowly rise until the threshold is reached and fans start spinning to cool it down again. That's normal behavior of all cards with ZeroRPM support.
 
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I'd actually be curious if there's a way to disable ZeroRPM, on the basis that it seems to be what causes / extends the PCI fan spinup on boot.
 
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h9826790 said:
I wrote done how to disable ZeroFanMode, or how to modify the start / stop threshold at here.

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...dy.2133607/page-4?post=26991818#post-26991818
Click to expand...

Probably a bit more involved than I wanted to be - I was hoping for an actual utility to do it, or a defaultswrite command.

Still, given High Sierra broke quicklook's image behaviour for me, and Sierra seems to spin the GPU up from boot, and the pci fans don't get stuck on, it's a problem i don't have to deal with... yet.

but then capture one 20 isn't supported in Sierra. :/
 
mattspace said:
Probably a bit more involved than I wanted to be - I was hoping for an actual utility to do it, or a defaultswrite command.

Still, given High Sierra broke quicklook's image behaviour for me, and Sierra seems to spin the GPU up from boot, and the pci fans don't get stuck on, it's a problem i don't have to deal with... yet.

but then capture one 20 isn't supported in Sierra. :/
Click to expand...

There is no tool can control the graphic card’s fan in MacOS. Mod the ROM is the best (and probably the easiest) work around.

Also, what’s the problem of that “broken Quicklook”? I can’t quite recall that happened when I ran RX580 in HS.
 
h9826790 said:
Also, what’s the problem of that “broken Quicklook”? I can’t quite recall that happened when I ran RX580 in HS.
Click to expand...

nothing to do with the GPU - just the behaviour of quicklook was changed in HS & onwards, such that if you zoom & fullscreen an image in a quicklook window, the next image you select reverts to its native size in the middle of a black background. It breaks a workflow where, on dual screens, you can just put your image viewing quicklook on one display, and manually sort through images in a finder window on the other.
 
Sharky II said:
Thank you - I realise that the fans are off for the majority of the time, when idling. But does spin up/exit ZeroRPM mode even though nothing is suddenly taxing the card?

Surely you'd expect that if I put the Mac Pro's PCIe fan at a faster speed, it would decrease the frequency of this spin up?
Click to expand...

Yes! I noticed this with the RX580 too (Sapphire). IIRC, it's an issue with dual monitors. And I don't believe bumping up the PCIe fan helped at all. Not if you care about hearing the fan noise, anyway.

The RX580 drove me nuts (in my studio environment) so I returned it for an RX560 (4GB). Ahhhh. Much better. 👍👍
 
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Ah, thanks for your feedback. I'll unplug one of the monitors and see what that does to helps, and report back

It seems to kick in around 52 degrees for me, and then cool the card down to about 46, and then the cycle repeats.

I've swapped some cards around and now the noise is less noticeable (as one of the fan's isn't as blocked), but it would be swell if it just... didn't happen.

Still, much quieter than my old 5770!
 
Unfortunately, it's a matter of physics. As the fans spin up (or down), at some point when the RPMs get close to passing the RPM speed of another fan, they'll create an audible beating of waveforms. (Audible in a quiet, studio environment, that-is!)

This phenomenon is similar to the dissonant beating you hear when two guitar strings of the same pitch are close, but slightly out-of-tune.
 
Not really fan control, but the OpenGL Driver reports the specifics of the RX580 such as Watts, fan speed, Core Temp, and Core and Memory clocks.
 

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Hi, I’ve recently put a sapphire 580 Pulse in my Mac Pro 5.1 2010, 6 core 3.33 with 2 displays @ 2560 x 1440.

Was working fine on Mojave. Then I added 2 Sonnet PCIe cards: an allegro with 4 controlled USB-C ports. And a Fusion Dual 2.5 SSD RARD card (2 SSDs go on the card, but haven’t got them yet, so it’s just the empty card).

I had the Sapphire 580 at the bottom and then the fusion dual card (which is long - full length with about half an inch clearance to the Sapphire fans below it. Then I skipped a slot and put the USB-C card at the top.

It started up ok. Then a was installing Avid Media Composer 8, which completed and asked for a restart. However, on restart the displays stayed black. Restarted several times, moving the cards and GPU around in the slots, but no joy!

Swapped out the Sapphire for the original Radeon 5870 HD GPU and got it started into recovery (it won’t fully start on Mojave because the 5870 isn’t a ‘metal’ GPU).

I’m currently restoring the HD to High Sierra with time machine so that I can be certain it’s the GPU that’s broke and not an issue with the OS caused by the Avid install.

But coming across this thread I wondered about heat, with all those cards, and fan speed. I didn’t pay attention to fan noise, but the 580 was remarkably quiet - silent most of the time. Could I have fried the 580 by having 2 other cards in there with it (1 being full length)?

If so, When I replace it is there now any way of changing the 580 settings to fix this (like turning up the fan, I guess)?

Thanks
 
DCfilms said:
Hi, I’ve recently put a sapphire 580 Pulse in my Mac Pro 5.1 2010, 6 core 3.33 with 2 displays @ 2560 x 1440.

...

But coming across this thread I wondered about heat, with all those cards, and fan speed. I didn’t pay attention to fan noise, but the 580 was remarkably quiet - silent most of the time. Could I have fried the 580 by having 2 other cards in there with it (1 being full length)?

Thanks
Click to expand...
@DCfilms

I've had a RX580 8G Sapphire Pulse and 2 x AngelBird Wing Px1 in my cMP5,1 with a StarTech 4 x mSATA card in Slot 2 and it all seems to be ok. The Sapphire sucks air past the mSATA cards so I've not had any issues.

I've been driving 3 x Displays but perhaps not as hard as your vid work.

Post some istat Temps and I'm sure some others will chime in.

Here's my typical low load on Slot 2 mSATA card which is over the rear FAN on the Sapphire.

1597842470100.png
 
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