Fan speeding up infrequently

Question

Level 1

5 points

Fan speeding up infrequently

I enjoy for many years my Mac Pro - 4,1: Early 2009 version

Configuration:

2 Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors
16 Gb of memory, Samsung SSD 840 EVO 1TB and WDC WD6400AAKS-41H2B0 649 Gb
ATI Radeon HD 4870

Since sometime the fan of the video card starts to speed up but not to a constant higher mode; it varies up and down without any specific cause other than perhaps the room temperature is a bit high (25 Celsius).

Does someone has similar experiences or perhaps even solutions for this?

Thnx!

MacPro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Jul 26, 2015 4:12 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

lllaass

Level 10

210,411 points

Jul 26, 2015 8:48 AM in response to Bas Alias

Try resetting the SMC and NVRAM/PRAM

Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)

About NVRAM and PRAM

Install a temperature and fan speed monitoring app and see if y are getting high temps and if your heard fan speed corresponds to what the app shows.

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Answer 2

Bas Alias Author

Level 1

5 points

Jul 27, 2015 3:00 AM in response to lllaass

Hi, I tried resetting the SMC; so far so good.

Resetting of the NVRAM I tried before without the desired result.

Do you have a suggestion for a good and comprehensive monitoring app?

Thnx!

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Answer 3

lllaass

Level 10

210,411 points

Jul 27, 2015 3:09 AM in response to Bas Alias

iStat

https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/

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Answer 4

Bas Alias Author

Level 1

5 points

Jul 27, 2015 5:47 AM in response to lllaass

Hi,

problem re-occured: tried resetting SMC again without desired result. The tried resetting NVRAM: did not do the trick.

Will try a monitoring app to see whether I can find out in more detail what's going on. Temperature seems not to be too high at this stage.

Thnx for replies so far ;-)

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Answer 5

sinoue

Level 2

236 points

Jul 27, 2015 11:34 AM in response to Bas Alias

If this behavior is new it could be a warning sign of hardware failure. Be sure to do backups while you can still use the screen! Maybe turn on remote access so you can login via another machine if your video display gives out.

If your graphic card checks out fine you might check your main power supply too.

My Mac Pro Tower's main power supply had to be replaced because I couldn't get it to goto sleep or wakeup reliably.

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Answer 6

Bas Alias Author

Level 1

5 points

Jul 28, 2015 8:49 AM in response to sinoue

Hardware failure might be the case but than of the graphic card as the main power supply has been replaced recently.

Good suggestions btw; will enable remote access to my workstation

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Answer 7

Bas Alias Author

Level 1

5 points

Jul 28, 2015 8:52 AM in response to lllaass

I installed iStat; pretty comprehensive :-)

After another reset of SMC and NVRAM the problem seems to solved

Why 'seems': I thought I solved it some months before this way and yet it re-occured

I am still not sure whether it is a hardware problem or a software problem because I know some intel processors have issues with virtualisation which I use ...

Anyway; iStat gives great inside to monitor the hardware so let's see how things enfold

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