Stress test a Mac Pro

[ohio_grad_06]

Ok, so I've got a Mac Pro here, haven't messed with Macs a lot recently, used to have my apple certs, but do not have the more propietary software for testing them. I do however have a copy of parted magic.

So this Mac Pro had this issue of shutting off. It spends it's life in a recording studio, barely used. It's got a Intel Xeon W3565 CPU installed, 1TB Hitachi disk drive, and I am unsure exactly how much ram. Basically it would sometimes shut off randomly. I looked at it before, reseated graphics card, reseated ram, etc. Could not get it going. One day they go to use it and it magically works? I'm asked to look at it again to test stability.

I can't get it to shut off again.

I booted into Parted Magic, ran the quick drive test which says it's clean, ran System Stability Tester to stress the CPU I ran it 6 turns with 8 threads on the Borwein Algorithm, opened up the temp monitor, max temps of 84-85 degrees celcius, but seems to idle around 40-45 celcius. Getting ready to fire up memtest, may leave that run overnight, I know they use software called propresenter on it. Maybe the graphics card is overheating?

Any ideas?

 

[Vicenarian]

Stress test a Mac Pro? Make it run Windows.

 

[Markverhyden]

How are the fans running? All out? Many of those had temperature calibration issues. Also, when it was not turning on did you check the power supply to see if the 5vdc trickle was present? I remember that being an issue with the G5's but can't remember if that was the case once they switched to Intel. I may have some discs. What is the SN and Apple Model Number?

 

[ohio_grad_06]

I'm gone from the office now. It is only about 2 years old I think. Now that you mention it I don't think the fans really kicked in much. When it did it's act before, I remember it trying to not, but as you tried to boot it up, you could do less and less with it, so wonder if it was overheating.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Ok, so ran the system on memtest all night. It ran probably 15-16 hours with no errors showing. However, system did seem to have some warm air coming through the exhaust fan during memtest when I came in, but fan didn't seem to be running that much.

SN: CMVHX16DF4MC
Don't see a System Model #

Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro5.1

It was purchased in 2012, unfortunately AppleCare not purchased it seems.

This is actually for my 9-5 job. But I'm tempted with the Hitachi hard drive to replace that just because it's Hitachi. Not that Hitachi products are bad, but my personal experience has been on their hard drives that whenever I get their drives, they seem to go out sooner or later. And to check into the fan issue.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Looking further into this, remembering my older days, I downloaded smcfancontrol and installed on this MacPro, temperature is running about 33 degrees celcius at in the Mac system itself.

The hard drive did not show errors under gsmart control, but did show some items as prefailure. Could I have a potential drive issue? Though it should have at least powered on before.

Opened the case, all fans seem to be running fine.

Also, a little googling revealed the yes command.

http://osxdaily.com/2012/10/02/stress-test-mac-cpu/

I ran this through terminal, and forced it to run about 8 different threads. Thus far I've got the CPU at almost 100% constant usage, temp is 63 degrees celcius under full load, climbed up to 64 degrees, it is slowly climbing up, it's at 69 now after about 5 minutes, but the cpu is literally throttled at 99+% useage.

I think we are going to order a new hard drive for it however and I'll attempt to clone it using clonezilla, as well as airdust the case. All fans running as stated. One note, I did install smcfancontrol, which allows you change fan speeds, set profiles, etc, even with 100% load, I told the system to kick the exhaust fan up to max, and even backed it down, the temp instantly dropped to about 52. Maybe the system is not running ramping up the fans as it is supposed to?

 

[Digital Sage]

My bets are on the graphics card

 

[altrenda]

My bets are on the graphics card

That's where I would look. Is the fan on it working OK? As you mentioned in the OP, could be a heat issue. I didn't see where you stressed the graphics, may have missed it.

I am not sure about the hard drive. If this was a Windows machine, shutting down would make you look more at the GPU, mobo, or PSU than a bad drive. Not that different on a Mac.

Looking forward to your findings.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Graphics certainly does not seem out of the realm. I know they do use this for propresenter, outputting to multiple screens etc, I think it's the default graphics card that came in it, Radeon 7770 if I'm not mistaken. Need to check on that. Anyone know a reliable gfx stress test in mac? In Windows I would normally use furmark. Would not think the PSU is bad if it's holding up under CPU stress tests and what not, hoping not as this machine looks like a pain in the rear end to take anything apart, the way apple puts things together is another reason I hate working on macs, but this one was kind of thrust upon me lol.

 

[Markverhyden]

Yep, I don't think powering down would not be a HD issue. Especially when it would not power up again as in the past. Can't say I have seen video cards cause a machine to turn off. But certainly motherboards and power supplies.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

See what was weird, and what leads me toward thinking heat somewhere is the fact the fans no matter how hot the cpu gets, never seem to ramp up, even if the cpu is pushing 70 degrees celcius. I remember troubleshooting before, when I would try to boot it, it would get so far and die. As I kept trying to work with it during the same session, it would let me do less each time, not want to power on again etc, which makes me wonder if it had overheated and was not cooling down efficiently. But could be power supply as well.

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

Run several instances of chess and grapher. Chess preferences should be set to computer vs. computer and strongest. Launch activity monitor to make sure the CPU usage is maxed. Set system prefs/energy settings to never go to sleep and never put hard disks to sleep. Check the heat sinks to see if they are full of crap as people set these towers on the floor and the fans suck in every dust bunny within several feet. Check console logs for any shutdown events to see if it is something the system is doing.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Still working with this as I've had time. Found what seems to be a tool similar to furmark for mac. Running this now, according to Temperature Monitor, looks like the temps on the PCIe slot are about 91-92 degrees celcius. Which if that's the gpu temp, that temp is acceptable correct?

Chess test gets to be next.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Let it finish the graphics test, stable after about 15-20 minutes. Have run CPU tests on it and no shutdowns. Let it run memtest all night one evening and no faults detected after about 15 hours. Anymore ideas? Power supply?

 

[Markverhyden]

Can't say what is a "correct" temp for a GPU. But 90C does sound a little high. What I find interesting is that the previous time you could not get it to power up. Have you loaded 10.9 on it so you can get the latest firmware updates?

Certainly sounds like you've put it through the wringer. What do they plan to use it for?

 

[ohio_grad_06]

See I thought 90 was considered acceptable if not a little high, I'm a gamer, but my cars does not get that hot that I know of. This computer is used in a recording studio for pro presenter to put backgrounds on multiple screens at a time etc.

Looked it up, looks like the max card temp is 90ish. Wonder if the card is just not powerful enough for what it's being asked or if it just needs better cooling.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Got looking into this more, I was mistaken. This system has a 5770 1gb card, not a 7770 like I thought previously. We use software called Pro Presenter and can have this card pushing images to multiple screens, all the connections the card is capable of really. I did run a furmark type of program on the card to stress test it, but I'm wondering if the card in this machine is underpowered for what it's being asked to do?


As I look more at it, running some more tests, there appears to be a hot spot above the video card. That is to say that I was using smcfancontrol to individually spin the fans up and down and I can't seem to get the card to cool off like I want. It seems like the power comes directly from the motherboard to hard drives, like they are wired on the back side. Wondering if I can purchase a female sata adapter that will convert to a molex male plug, and install a pci slot cooling fan above the video card....

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Update, never could get system to act up again. They are going to try it again to see if it acts up again.

 

[Markverhyden]

Maybe you scared the gremlins off......