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Mac ProBlems

You may remember that we had some serous issues with one of our Mac Pros. Sudden crashes, weird general behaviour urged us to test it thoroughly. Back then we found a bad RAM. If this would be a Disney film, then I could say everybody lived happily after… but of course life is not like that.

Nasty issues

After we changed the RAM, certain issues still popped up without any serious evidence what causes them. CPU spikes, wide variety of different errors, sudden crashes and even kernel panics. The question was: what the hell again? We found the bad RAM, and thought that was the source of our problems. But now it seems that was only one from the unknown number.

We’ve tried to make this beast sweat to see if we have some hardware related issue. Geek-benches, RAM tests (yet again), other methods to max out CPU usage. The really disconcerting thing is that we couldn’t identify the root of the problem. However, as soon as we try to use it with our sessions in Pro Tools, it is literally unusable.

mac pro inside

Going through the cycle again

I already tried to update and reinstall certain things, now the last step is to boot onto a Sierra install USB stick, format the MacSSD and start over with a brand new system.

If we’ll have issues than we can send this machine to a Apple certified service centre for further and hopefully more serious investigation. I know it sounds strange, but in Hungary these services are still in their infancy, you have to run many circles to prove your point even if we are talking about a Mac Pro, not an iPhone charger of something like that. To some extent I can understand they want us to go through the basic possibilities, but for us it’s time and labour, removing people from important tasks. Anyway, this is the only way we might find the good solution.

mac pro ports

One thing is for sure, I’ve never seen anything like this before. If I could choose, I’d choose a simple but more brutal problem like a blown fuse or something else. Than at least I’d be sure what causes our ongoing issues. But in my opinion this is the most filthy of all as it constantly haunting and pops up in the most unexpected ways rendering the whole workstation unusable.

Hopefully we’ll find the root of the issue soon.


  1. Marco Bernardo


    Theres a hidden program to change all Mac Pro graphic cards.

    After they change everything start running smooth again.
    I’m not saying that you have the same errors as my machine, but what the tech support told me is when something is weird is happening 99% is a defect graphic card.
    I already got some mac pros that the logic board need to be replaced too. But the problem was the loose TB ports.


  2. Thanks for the information. I’ll try to convince them, but it’s very hard here in Hungary. For some reason they desperately try to deny every issue…

    • Marco Bernardo

      Its sad that is happening…
      It’s free. no cost for anyone.
      They need to do the normal report and then report it that the mac pro has issues that can’t be detected and the Graphic cards were never exchanged.

      I live in Portugal and we still have that problem with another type of gear. Is just a bad custom support.

      I hope they resolve the issues.

  3. Thanks, I really try to push it through. Now you made me even more determined!

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