kernel_task near 100%

[LL7]

This is regarding my first hackintosh. I have an i7-6700 on a GIGABYTE GA-Z170X-UD5 TH motherboard, 64GB RAM, and a SSD boot drive, with NVMe Samsung 950 SSD with my user data directory (not booted). OS-X 11.5

The issue is I have kernel_task running at near 100%. Over the last few days I have sporadically worked on the system and didn't notice when the issue first started. I think it was running fine at first. Recently I have gotten iMessage working. I have also installed smcfancontrol (from homebrew) in order to see if I could just set the base fan speed a bit higher to keep it from fluctuating as the cpu usage changed. I think this may have been the start, but again I'm not sure. With smcfancontrol I set the fan to 2000RPM, which seemed to work (audible). I then tried to set it to 1500 RPM and it didn't respond. At that point I uninstalled smcfancontrol and rebooted. The speed still seemed high which is when I looked at the activity monitor and noticed the high cpu usage for kernel_task.

When researching this I found it can sometimes be caused by poor cooling, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I have installed HWMonitor and the CPU seems to be at ~35C and the fan is at 1350RPM.

Does anyone know if smcfancontrol installs something that may have corrupted my build? Other ideas? I haven't taken a backup since I setup iMessage and I'd hate to restart that process again.

 

[nobodynose]

This is regarding my first hackintosh. I have an i7-6700 on a GIGABYTE GA-Z170X-UD5 TH motherboard, 64GB RAM, and a SSD boot drive, with NVMe Samsung 950 SSD with my user data directory (not booted). OS-X 11.5

The issue is I have kernel_task running at near 100%. Over the last few days I have sporadically worked on the system and didn't notice when the issue first started. I think it was running fine at first. Recently I have gotten iMessage working. I have also installed smcfancontrol (from homebrew) in order to see if I could just set the base fan speed a bit higher to keep it from fluctuating as the cpu usage changed. I think this may have been the start, but again I'm not sure. With smcfancontrol I set the fan to 2000RPM, which seemed to work (audible). I then tried to set it to 1500 RPM and it didn't respond. At that point I uninstalled smcfancontrol and rebooted. The speed still seemed high which is when I looked at the activity monitor and noticed the high cpu usage for kernel_task.

When researching this I found it can sometimes be caused by poor cooling, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I have installed HWMonitor and the CPU seems to be at ~35C and the fan is at 1350RPM.

Does anyone know if smcfancontrol installs something that may have corrupted my build? Other ideas? I haven't taken a backup since I setup iMessage and I'd hate to restart that process again.

SMC Fan Control is designed for real Macs, especially (but not limited to) laptops; it isn't designed for hackintoshes, and I'm not sure it's a good idea to run it on one. Your motherboard has automatic fan control built in to the BIOS, which will adjust the CPU and case fans (as long as they are 3-pin, speed adjustable fans) as needed to keep things cool; you can usually set the BIOS for maximum cooling, maximum silence, or a balance between the two. The CPU fan's speed is designed to fluctuate with CPU usage.

If I were you, I'd uninstall SMC Fan Control immediately.

 

[LL7]

SMC Fan Control is designed for real Macs, especially (but not limited to) laptops; it isn't designed for hackintoshes, and I'm not sure it's a good idea to run it on one. Your motherboard has automatic fan control built in to the BIOS, which will adjust the CPU and case fans (as long as they are 3-pin, speed adjustable fans) as needed to keep things cool; you can usually set the BIOS for maximum cooling, maximum silence, or a balance between the two. The CPU fan's speed is designed to fluctuate with CPU usage.

If I were you, I'd uninstall SMC Fan Control immediately.

Thanks. I already uninstalled it (through homebrew) but I'm not sure if it left any pieces around or permanently modified something that's causing this issue.

I guess I'll need to dig into the install process and see exactly what it modified.

 

[nobodynose]

Homebrew is usually pretty good about not leaving stuff behind that was installed - it generally installs stuff in /usr/local/brew and then symlinks individual files to the more "standard" locations, and symlinks are quite easily removed.

 

[LL7]

SMCFanControl's FAQ says that all it installs is the application and you can simply remove it to cleanly uninstall. So now I need to find what is the culprit. Guess I'll back it up, restore from my old backup and carefully install all the changes I know I've made.

 

[LL7]

Ok, this is getting odder. I couldn't boot to my install USB drive for some reason, and the Boot Menu (F12) didn't ever load. This happened once before and I needed to go into the Clover UEFI Shell to remove boot entries (followed http://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/g...boot-entries-prevent-further-problems.175274/). On a whim I decided to boot back into the buggy install. Well wouldn't you know it, but kernel_task is now at 1%.

I do not understand what is going on. UEFI is all new to me, so I don't really understand it. Could that have been it. The other option I can thing of is I tried power cycling the system (not reset) to see if the boot loader would work (it didn't ). Could the power cycle have "fixed" something? Any ideas.

 

[LL7]

I got the boot entries to stop appearing by following the steps here. This should probably be in it's own thread.