I'm running MC2018.12.13 on a 2019 iMac, with AJA BoB for client monitor on one TB socket, external monitor on the other, and running Zoom all day. I'm getting a lot of fan noise- checked in Activitiy Monitor and Zoom is often taking almost 100% CPU energy, and MC taking 250% (whatever that means!). Is this set-up simply stressing the iMac too much? Is there a way round this? It's quite annoying as the fans are right in front of your face!
Would the situation improve replacing the iMac with a Mac Pro tower? Apart from the fsans being tucked away under the desk, would it actually cause less overheating?
Thanks for any advice.
Those iMacs aren't great at shifting heat and if you push them they will get hot and the fans kick in.
I've had some success pulling the screen glass off and cleaningt he fan assemblies of dust as well as refreshing the heat compound on the various CPU GPU chips.
A tower system by design hgas better airflow and can therefore shed heat easier so that would likley be better.
The percentage that you see over 100% is because the CPU power is multiplied by the cores. So if you have a 4 core machine you can get 400% CPU usage.
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Thanks Pat
This is a relatively new machine so I can't imagine that kind of maintenance can be necessary yet.
Is the spec of the current basic Mac Pro significantly stronger than what I have?
Is continued use of the iMac at this level of stress going to degrade my machine - other than being annoyingly loud?
The amount of dust injestion depends on operational environment as well as time used. If operating on a lap, fabric material, running all day, yes, cleaning would be advised.
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I've opened up quite a few of these iMacs and the sad fact is the cooling is pretty basic. One central fan which just sucks in the surrounding air and blows it out the back through a duct. Built into this duct is the heat exchanger with heat pipes that go to the GPU and CPU.
In any decent tower arrangement, the air used to cool the CPU/GPU would come directly from outside via a number of fans. In the iMac this air is being drawn directly behind the screen, which gets quite warm. This means the air blown over the heat exchanger is already warmed by the screen (and other components) and will be less effective in keeping the the CPU and GPU temperatures down.
Since even Apple can't ignore the laws of physics, the fan has to blow harder to keep critical components from overheating and throttling performance.
In most tower arrangments, you'll see multiple, large fans spinning relatively slowly to provide the necessary cooling. Being larger and slower means they will be much quiter. Compare this to the single small fan in the iMac and you'll no doubt appreciate why it has to work so hard. We all know this to be the problem with laptops with their small, high-pitched fans.
I suspect your iMac won't be too dusty being a 2019 model, but it really wasn't designed for continuous, heavy workloads.
Buying a Mac Pro tower will of course solve your problem. It has multiple fans and is known to perform silently, even with heavy workloads. If you have the money to spend on this sort of upgrade then it's a no-brainer!
Barring spending $6K+ on a Mac Pro, the only thing I can suggest is if you have a model with a spinning hard drive, to replace it with a SSD Sata drive. It will reduce the power requirements and the amount of heat generated, which might make your fan not have to work quite so hard. It's relatively easy to do once you successfully remove the (glued-on) screen. I would recommend a SSD upgrade in any case, as I've found it breathes new life into some of these older iMacs and speeds them up considerably.
One suggestion: Run Zoom on a different computer.Now that might not be as convenient as what you have now, especially if you are using Zoom to show a client what you are doing. There are a bunch of options out there to eliminate the need to have MC and Zoom running on the same box. Not always easy depending on budget and desk space.
Just a thought.
Jef
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Jef Huey
Senior Editor
Thanks for this - however screensharing the Avid with zoom has become central to my workflow.
I've just updated Zoom to the latest version - I wonder if that might help?
Bruno, Thanks for the long answer - much appreciated!
The drive is already SSD...
Would you know how the basic Mac Pro spec compares to the system I have? Ie - if I swapped out my iMac for the Mac Pro am I getting an upgrade as well interms of CPU / graphics/ oomph, or just a different case?
Thanks for any thoughts...
JamesG:if I swapped out my iMac for the Mac Pro am I getting an upgrade as well interms of CPU / graphics/ oomph, or just a different case?
Swapping out is probably not the term I'd use. Since $6K is the starting price for the Mac Pro it's more of a serious upgrade. You can certainly get workstation performance from these machines but I know pro users are spending more than double the base price to get something that's powerful and quiet.
And there is me looking at a fully spec'd refurb HP Z840 for way less than half that....
Stirring the PC verses Mac pot on a Monday morning Pat...?
Thanks all. Is anyone here equipped to comment on the spec of the base Mac pro compared to what I have, and also whether any of the upgrades to the basic model are necessary/recommended (offline machine only) - eg the small increase to the next level of graphics card.
In the past and currently MC has made little use of GPU and especially on a Mac so I'd say don't bother unless you intend to use somelike Resolve as well.
Nowadays I'd suggest min 32GB RAM but better with 64GB
SSD boot drive (but I suspect thats standard)
Bruno M: Stirring the PC verses Mac pot on a Monday morning Pat...?
Is there ever a safe time?
I can glance sideways and see my 21" iMac sitting there waiting to be powered on every now and then so it can report home. So its not like I don't have Macs around.
I've done a lot of Zoom-with-Avid stuff this last year, and found that some days it works fine, not much fan action, and other days it all gets very hot and bothered. No obvious major differences in what I'm doing to account for this.
Often I've found quitting and restarting Zoom to be the solution, and I've come to suspect it is the culprit. Some Zoom versions have been better than others, too.
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