iMac Pro X299 - Live the Future now with macOS 10.14 Mojave [Successful Build/Extended Guide]

[kubusikan]

With VGTab you're only tweaking the fan speeds but the voltage stays the same.

Actually you can tweak the voltage too with VGTab.
Have a look at the dropdown field "Core Frequency: MHz" right under the graphs.

(...) the temp sits around 87°... Terminal reports 70° at the same time...Not sure who to believe anymore.

In this case 87°C is the hotspot temp and 70°C is the GPU temp. Hotspot temp is to believed measured between GPU and HBM (Memory) on the die package. It is also usually up to 10-20°C higher than GPU temp on air coooled models - this depends on the load and the way the card manufacturer applied thermal paste and installed the heatsink.

About the coil whine: it is worse if the frames per second rendered are higher. Say, at 30fps it is not audible and at 200fps it is.
I am very sceptical if it is even possible to reduce it to zero without sacrificing a whole lot of performance (or load the GPU significantly).

It may be possible to set the GPU in a way that it throttles early and isn't able to reach states where it generates much coil whine. But that would also mean that it would be severly limited in its performance.
I just tried lower settings but didn't succeed in reducing coil whine.

 

[kubusikan]

A rather crude way to have a look at parameters while tweaking is this little shellscript i found and modified.
Vega_Status.sh is attached.
Just unzip and drop it into a Terminal window.
Note: it might be required to make it executable by "chmod 777 Vega_Status.sh".
To do so, open a Terminal window, type in "chmod 777 " (without the quotes) and drop the File in the Terminal window. Mind the space after "777"!
To run the command simply drop the "Vega_Status.sh" in a Terminal window.

You could also just drop this one line into Terminal (this is what's inside of the shellscript):
while sleep 0.5; do clear;ioreg -l |grep \"PerformanceStatistics\" | cut -d '{' -f 2 | tr '|' ',' | tr -d '}' | tr ',' '\n'|grep 'Temp\|Fan\|Core\|GPU Activity\|Memory '; done


Regarding the differing temperature readouts of (at least my) Vega if found one interesting detail.
iStat Menus actually shows both temperatures of my Vega 56.
It depends if you click on the temperatures in the menubar or the "graph thingy". If these both are available depends on your config of iStat Menus.

See screenshots attached.

 

[PurdueRph]

With all the talk about GPU fan noise and Coil Whine, made me wonder if there was another way to combat these besides trying to eek out better performance from a notoriously power hungry card that has exhibited coil whine in the past. No, not all RX Vega 56 and 64 have these problems, but there is another way to combat excessive noise that nobody has mentioned.
https://www.howtogeek.com/297166/what-is-coil-whine-and-can-i-get-rid-of-it-on-my-pc/

One solution you might want to try is to get a different case. Cases can vary on the amount of built in
sound suppression they have. This sound suppression will help eliminate fan noise and coil whine.

Case selection is a very personal thing. I myself chose the Fractal Define R6. This case gave me a real silent case with decent thermals and expansion capabilities. Here is a PC enthusiast website with reviews testing thermals and sound suppression. https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3397-best-and-worst-pc-cases-of-2018

@ddsmith11111993 , I know this not the answer you were probably seeking, but sometimes I find it does help for someone to state the obvious answers just to give people a different perspective to help them find their own personal solutions.

Good luck in finding yours, Happy New Year!

 

[ddsmith11111993]

Actually you can tweak the voltage too with VGTab.
Have a look at the dropdown field "Core Frequency: MHz" right under the graphs.

In this case 87°C is the hotspot temp and 70°C is the GPU temp. Hotspot temp is to believed measured between GPU and HBM (Memory) on the die package. It is also usually up to 10-20°C higher than GPU temp on air coooled models - this depends on the load and the way the card manufacturer applied thermal paste and installed the heatsink.

About the coil whine: it is worse if the frames per second rendered are higher. Say, at 30fps it is not audible and at 200fps it is.
I am very sceptical if it is even possible to reduce it to zero without sacrificing a whole lot of performance (or load the GPU significantly).

It may be possible to set the GPU in a way that it throttles early and isn't able to reach states where it generates much coil whine. But that would also mean that it would be severly limited in its performance.
I just tried lower settings but didn't succeed in reducing coil whine.

I tried around for a while and settled on DisableFanControl=1, the fans actually turn off completely when idle that way

A rather crude way to have a look at parameters while tweaking is this little shellscript i found and modified.
Vega_Status.sh is attached.
Just unzip and drop it into a Terminal window.
Note: it might be required to make it executable by "chmod 777 Vega_Status.sh".
To do so, open a Terminal window, type in "chmod 777 " (without the quotes) and drop the File in the Terminal window. Mind the space after "777"!
To run the command simply drop the "Vega_Status.sh" in a Terminal window.

You could also just drop this one line into Terminal (this is what's inside of the shellscript):
while sleep 0.5; do clear;ioreg -l |grep \"PerformanceStatistics\" | cut -d '{' -f 2 | tr '|' ',' | tr -d '}' | tr ',' '\n'|grep 'Temp\|Fan\|Core\|GPU Activity\|Memory '; done


Regarding the differing temperature readouts of (at least my) Vega if found one interesting detail.
iStat Menus actually shows both temperatures of my Vega 56.
It depends if you click on the temperatures in the menubar or the "graph thingy". If these both are available depends on your config of iStat Menus.

See screenshots attached.

View attachment 375826 View attachment 375827

Thanks for that info!

With all the talk about GPU fan noise and Coil Whine, made me wonder if there was another way to combat these besides trying to eek out better performance from a notoriously power hungry card that has exhibited coil whine in the past. No, not all RX Vega 56 and 64 have these problems, but there is another way to combat excessive noise that nobody has mentioned.
https://www.howtogeek.com/297166/what-is-coil-whine-and-can-i-get-rid-of-it-on-my-pc/

One solution you might want to try is to get a different case. Cases can vary on the amount of built in
sound suppression they have. This sound suppression will help eliminate fan noise and coil whine.

Case selection is a very personal thing. I myself chose the Fractal Define R6. This case gave me a real silent case with decent thermals and expansion capabilities. Here is a PC enthusiast website with reviews testing thermals and sound suppression. https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3397-best-and-worst-pc-cases-of-2018

@ddsmith11111993 , I know this not the answer you were probably seeking, but sometimes I find it does help for someone to state the obvious answers just to give people a different perspective to help them find their own personal solutions.

Good luck in finding yours, Happy New Year!

Cheers for the encouragement! I'm actually in a Fractal Define R6 too...

Happy new year to both of you and all!

 

[matt82]

Swapped the Designare EX to Prime Deluxe II and all is well

Hi Izo...I have not been here for a looong time, can you tell me if you had to flash the bios too or is the MSR lock integratet?

 

[izo1]

Hi Izo...I have not been here for a looong time, can you tell me if you had to flash the bios too or is the MSR lock integratet?

Prime Deluxe II has a MSR disable/enable in the BIOS. I have it disabled.

 

[izo1]

I do not recommend to use the VGTab kext in line with the Vega SSDT. VGTab can create a loadtable directly to be implemented in the Vega SSDT with copy and paste. Absolutely no need for the kext. The VGTab loadtable does not only account for fan speed settings but also allows the modification of GPU frequency and voltage during different GPU load conditions. In fact the idea is to choose a proper combination of GPU frequencies, voltages and fan rotations.

Good luck,

KGP

While true, each GPU coolers are different from one another, for example for me, I have to control the fan speeds in macOS because they are all over the place even with a proper SSDT.

If your SSDT is not helping that user in terms of fan speeds, I would still recommend the VGTab method.

You have a looped water cooled system which is more straight forward and less dealing with fluctuating fans.

 

[izo1]

Actually you can tweak the voltage too with VGTab.
Have a look at the dropdown field "Core Frequency: MHz" right under the graphs.

In this case 87°C is the hotspot temp and 70°C is the GPU temp. Hotspot temp is to believed measured between GPU and HBM (Memory) on the die package. It is also usually up to 10-20°C higher than GPU temp on air coooled models - this depends on the load and the way the card manufacturer applied thermal paste and installed the heatsink.

About the coil whine: it is worse if the frames per second rendered are higher. Say, at 30fps it is not audible and at 200fps it is.
I am very sceptical if it is even possible to reduce it to zero without sacrificing a whole lot of performance (or load the GPU significantly).

It may be possible to set the GPU in a way that it throttles early and isn't able to reach states where it generates much coil whine. But that would also mean that it would be severly limited in its performance.
I just tried lower settings but didn't succeed in reducing coil whine.

I know, but I personally wouldn’t use it to change the C states. I had issues with VGtab. It might be buggy.

You can try experimenting in Windows with WattMan and bring over the settings.

Imo it’s too much work and trial/error. I just recommend fan speed adjustment and flipping the onboard switch to “standard” mode so you get less noise/less heat.

Otherwise do what @kgp does and water cool it.

 

[ddsmith11111993]

I know, but I personally wouldn’t use it to change the C states. I had issues with VGtab. It might be buggy.

You can try experimenting in Windows with WattMan and bring over the settings.

Imo it’s too much work and trial/error. I just recommend fan speed adjustment and flipping the onboard switch to “standard” mode so you get less noise/less heat.

Otherwise do what @kgp does and water cool it.

I cba watercooling it, but I might slap a Rajintek cooler on it and control the fans from the mobo

 

[izo1]

I cba watercooling it, but I might slap a Rajintek cooler on it and control the fans from the mobo

I’ll be repasting my Vega FE with Grizzly Thermal Paste. Will post results.

I’m not a huge fan of open loop water cooling, it’s too expensive and too much cleaning/maintaining. I don’t mind closed loop coolers, though.