High Sierra Random Freezing

[jaraheel]

- Prime95 is not enough because it will not reach all your CPU functionalities and will not randomly mess with them. I'd strongly encourage you to conduct further testing with Cinebench 20-50x in a row (keep hitting that Run button) on both Windows and MacOS. It happened on many occasions to me that my OC was rock stable with Prime95 running for hours, but would immediately crash after 5-6 runs in a row of Cinebench.

- Regarding the RAM I can't really tell honestly. I've never had bad memory sticks, but I've conducted several memtests both in Windows with a memtest app and also by booting on a memtest ISO, always passed.

- Make sure to uninstall Nvidia too, even if that means having a non-functional GUI with lags for a few days. The idea is to have your system up and running with the minimal third party stuff. That's the only way you'll be able to find where the issue is coming from.

- For GPU testing, Heaven and Valley are really not enough. I couldn't get my system to freeze with them, even after running them for 24h... The only app that I found could trigger my system freezes almost instantly is a free game called Fortnite, because this game uses the latest GPU-related instructions and functionalities that were barely supported by Nvidia drivers (and effectively they were indeed buggy).

- Honestly I highly doubt my EFI has hidden magic. Like I said, things should be pretty straightforward now with the latest Nvidia drivers (now that they are finally working properly).

@Thireus You know something really weird happened. I moved to Ubuntu and it's been running well. Just today Ubuntu 18.04 popped up on my radar, so I thought I will upgrade to it from the current 16.04. Interestingly, when I boot from the Ubuntu USB, it freezes the exact same way as it does in MacOS! The weird thing is the system runs rock stably under Ubuntu 16, and Windows 10 (yuck!). I am not sure if it is a hardware issue, but it seems both Ubuntu 18 and MacOS don't like my machine

EDIT: ok I downgraded to BIOS 1102 and things are back to normal - windows and ubuntu are solid. MacOS seems to be running fine too (but I suspect it will crash/hang soon). So it seems my problem was a buggy patched BIOS.

 

[neliuz]

Unfortunately i have the same problem. I get this freezes and some apps crash randomly whenever i use my 10.13.4 install.
I did follow the extensive guide from KPG on how to make iMac Pro. MY AVX in BIOS is set to Auto since i dont OC my cpu.
I did run memtest and it turned out just fine! A bit stuck here.. Cause this freezes are a bit annoying since it happends 2-3 times everyday.. I also did upgrade the nvidia drivers to the newest one.

Thanks you

 

[jaraheel]

Unfortunately i have the same problem. I get this freezes and some apps crash randomly whenever i use my 10.13.4 install.
I did follow the extensive guide from KPG on how to make iMac Pro. MY AVX in BIOS is set to Auto since i dont OC my cpu.
I did run memtest and it turned out just fine! A bit stuck here.. Cause this freezes are a bit annoying since it happends 2-3 times everyday.. I also did upgrade the nvidia drivers to the newest one.

Thanks you

Try doing stability testing under Linus/Windows. That did the trick for me (found my CPU cooler was not properly installed), at least for now.

 

[neliuz]

Try doing stability testing under Linus/Windows. That did the trick for me (found my CPU cooler was not properly installed), at least for now.

Hmm.. Interesting.. I did run windows 10 for 3 months before installing Mac High Sierra.. With no problem. Never did have something like that.. So i dont think it is the hardware but could be related to the .kexts i have .. dno..

 

[neliuz]

Hmm.. Interesting.. I did run windows 10 for 3 months before installing Mac High Sierra.. With no problem. Never did have something like that.. So i dont think it is the hardware but could be related to the .kexts i have .. dno..

Is there any chance that i can read what caused the kernel panic from the information that i get ? When you get a window that you can report to apple. Can one see something there ?

Thanks

 

[neliuz]

PS, here is the report that i get from kernel panic. Attached in this post!

Thank you

 

[Thireus]

PS, here is the report that i get from kernel panic. Attached in this post!

Thank you

"TIMED-OUT WAITING FOR NMI-ACK, PROCEEDING"

Have a look at my previous posts on this thread. I've had similar reports and resolved my issue. AVX set to Auto are most likely not going to like MacOS, you need to manually adjust this offset (even if you're not OC).

 

[neliuz]

"TIMED-OUT WAITING FOR NMI-ACK, PROCEEDING"

Have a look at my previous posts on this thread. I've had similar reports and resolved my issue. AVX set to Auto are most likely not going to like MacOS, you need to manually adjust this offset (even if you're not OC).

Thanks, yes i did set it to 3, lets see how that goes..

 

[jaraheel]

"TIMED-OUT WAITING FOR NMI-ACK, PROCEEDING"

Have a look at my previous posts on this thread. I've had similar reports and resolved my issue. AVX set to Auto are most likely not going to like MacOS, you need to manually adjust this offset (even if you're not OC).

what memory are you using?

 

[spackley]

Probably not related at all but I have been having random freezes that seem worse over the past few weeks. I have Skylake i5 CPU, 32GB RAM and AMD RX 560 4 GB and High Sierra 10.13.4. Screen freezes, no Bluetooth Magic mouse, Apple Bluetooth keyboard or Bluetooth Magic Trackpad, all seems locked. Only thing to do was hard restart. Happened twice today but when you push the power button the Restart, Sleep, Shutdown, Cancel dialogue pops up suggesting the machine isn't frozen. Last time I connected a Microsoft wireless mouse and everything worked fine except Bluetooth connected devices. On my machine it seems Bluetooth sleeps/freezes causing the appearance of a frozen machine.