My cooling fan won't stop kicking in on Mac Pro

Get some numbers.

iStatPro or Hardware Monitor, and also throw in SmcFanControl.

Keep such background task apps to a minimum, you really can have too many cooks and too much salt.

The only thing I would have done is SMC Reset, check your UPS is doing its job (if you don't have one, I would, a 1500VA).

Any other hardware? which model? The only Nvidia card I can think of that is not up to Lion, and definitely not FCP would be the 6 yr old 7300GT. The 8800GT though if you have one could be going. The GTX 285 (2008 and later) would be fine.

Not including hardware and just the fan (behavior and symtom).... how about an AHT Extended Test? Safe Boot? Without hardware but fact you use 3 x 8GB says single cpu 2009 or 2010.

Could be that your old memory is over heating. Try running with just the new 8GB sticks?

I read it as you removing the new memory and returning to using just the original RAM.

> I am fearing now that this may in fact be due to recent updates to Lion (10.7.3) or FCP X (10.0.3)

Only if the RAM is "defective" or "boarderline" would a new OS trigger an issue. But then someone else jumped to same conclusion when they upgraded to Lion recently and had been running Snow Leopard for awhile.

Every new OS brings some changes and some RAM will fail and fall to the wayside but the only way to know is trial and error; to get the vendor to replace and test.

Sometimes the RAM has been loosely seated. Sometimes the OS seems to be potential culprit (doesn't happen with clean install).

A USB or Firewire cable can be enough, too, even if just plugged and not attached to a powered on device.

You can even try two 8GB DIMMs and leave one out and see if process of elimination is of any value, or even boot wtih just a single DIMM. You don't need to have two or more.

But I would not mix 8GB with others, sounds like you had 3 x 2GB + 1GB, or 3 x 1GB + 4GB which would look and sound to be more iffy than your new set.

Btw, where did you get new set?

Andy Drefs wrote:

BTW: Mem card is NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 (OEM) and they said that it is definately not compatible with Lion.

And I don't know what an AHT extended test is...but I'll do it if it'll help.

The NVIDIA GeForece 120 is a video card not a mem card and it is definately compatible with Lion...

If its an Apple GT 120 card, support is built into the OS, no drivers from NVIDIA are needed. Should look like this...

Amazing Nvidia even responded to your inquiry. Usually anything Mac related they just ignore. Unfortunately their response is incorrect as the built in Lion drivers work just fine, tho for FCP X you did right by upgrading your card.

Up until very recently (November at least) the GT120 $149 was still being offered as an upgrade kit.

Pretty low requirement for FCP-X

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4664#

So "they" was.... Nvidia or its forum members? or here on Apple FCP discussions?

The following AMD, ATI and NVIDIA graphics cards support OpenCL in Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard and in OS X Lion:

NVIDIA

• GeForce 320M
• GeForce GT 330M
• GeForce 9400M
• GeForce 9600M GT
• GeForce GT 120
• GeForce GT 130
• GeForce GTX 285
• GeForce 8800 GT
• GeForce 8800 GS
• Quadro FX 4800
• Quadro FX5600

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4728

90% of the users and 90% fo the time OWC seems to be a good way to save on money and people are happy with results and support. I'm one of the 10%. So I stick with Crucial, which some others aren't happy with, which is fine by me.

I wish there was a GTX 590 but we know that isn't going to happen!! <g>

AHT is unlikely to detect an issue with a GPU, but it is good way to rule out some issues (a clean bill of no errors only means that didn't find things it tests for, though).

One other thing worth trying: go back or do clean install and all the 10.6.8 + 1.1+ updates.