Z Brush for Mac and the iMac 2020.

[Azrael9]

Hello fellow Mac luminaries.

Are there any fellow Mac Z Brush users who bought the new 2020 iMac?

I'm getting 'odd' behaviour for just opening up the 'Light box' (it's a menu...) and browsing projects. ie. the fan on the cpu will pulse in. Not something I ever had on my 2012 iMac.

That's hardly strenuous, is it?

My config' is the flag ship 10 core/5700XT. 32 gigs of ram. Running Catalina ofc.

Azrael.

 

[chrfr]

Hello fellow Mac luminaries.

Are there any fellow Mac Z Brush users who bought the new 2020 iMac?

I'm getting 'odd' behaviour for just opening up the 'Light box' (it's a menu...) and browsing projects. ie. the fan on the cpu will pulse in. Not something I ever had on my 2012 iMac.

That's hardly strenuous, is it?

My config' is the flag ship 10 core/5700XT. 32 gigs of ram. Running Catalina ofc.

Azrael.

I wouldn't automatically assume that just browsing in Zbrush isn't strenuous. The app uses an entirely custom interface.

 

[Azrael9]

Thank you for your reply.

However, my 2012 made light work (no pulsing fan) of this 'strenuous' interface.

The 'Disable Turbo Boost' app does show the cpu % does bounce around a lot.

I'm wonder if this is more to do with the Turbo Boost being engaged and thus the fan is 'forced' to kick in.

Azrael.

 

[Azrael9]

I've sent a support issue to Pixologic.

The fan was at moderate (distracting whilst working) whhhhrrrrr.

When I closed ZBrush the fan noise went away.

Azrael.

 

[Azrael9]

I'm going to try running Z-Brush on Windows 10 to compare.

My support question got an answer from Pixologic.

Enabling [Preferenceserformance:Reduce Mac Fan Activity]

and...

disabling [Preferenceserformance:Optimal] then Setting the [Preferenceserformance:MaxThreads] to one less than the maximum available on their system

Deactives multidraw when not sculpting to stop the Mac fan from running constantly. (Tool tips says...in the app.). It's pretty embarrassing when an App has to have a button for that.

The noisy fan bursting in for inconsequential stuff has now disappeared.

It was hyper irritating. A low poly dog and the fan was going off on one.

It might well be down to the hyper threading and turbo behaviour. (I have the app to monitor that...but the app gives no indication that turbo boost has been turned off. I wish Apple would give users the choice to run a 10 core machine at a much lower clock. So we could get the spread of work advantage...but there's no point for the fan to be in hair dryer mode. You're just running the machine at the limit. And how long will an iMac stand that level of heat before it fries in its juices?)

I'm unimpressed with the thermal measures Apple took with this machine. Matt screen? I wish they'd bothered to put proper cooling in. A bit of under volt trickery. Lower clocks. But I don't understand ramming cpus to high clocks only to cut them down moments later as the fan kicks in. It's very distracting from what is a quietly poised machine. What's the point. Burst performance? For how long it lasts? Why bother?

Azrael.