Mac Pro 3.1 black screen, loud fans

Hello community,
I have a Mac Pro 3.1, 2008 dual 2.8ghz computer. I bought it cheaply as the original owner claimed it had a problem where it would randomly sleep, and a hard reset was neccesary in order to restart the computer. On turning on the computer myself I soon saw what he meant, all of a sudden, quite randomly the screen would drop out entirely and about 8 seconds later the fans go on full whack. This could happen before the computer boots, or could happen 15 minutes later. Sometimes it would happen more often when say I watched a youtube clip on full size in 720/1080p. This shut down can only be stopped by hard resetting the unit.
Originally i thought it might of been the graphics card (Nvidia 8800 GT) which upon researching had found out there have been issues with this graphics card for other people in the past, however they speak of glitchy graphics, over-heating and 'baking' the card. I tested the temps on the gfx card and they were not abnormally high at all. Infact on monitoring all the temperatures when the computer was on i noticed no abnormality with any temps apart from maybe the north bridge which was max 62 C when idling. But my macbook pro hits 75 C on the CPU when using intensive software (logic pro etc). I also tested the gfx card in both available pcie slots aswell as cleaning out excess dust from the gfx card using compressed air.
The computer has a WD velociraptor 128gb 10k rpm HDD installed. I tested the computer with a 128gb SSD which i know worked. I managed to install snow leopard from a DVD onto it before a crash and the computer worked for maybe 20-25 mins then it blacked out again. Not the hard drive then. Tested all the ram (6gb), moved them around etc, no red dimm lights on either board. Not the ram.
The only main components left really are the power supply and the logic board. I have no red leds on the logic board lighting up, so no obvious failures. And when the computer is on it works a treat.
Does this sound like the PSU is dying/dead? I thought this could be an easy software fix, but am now chasing the hardware train....
Any help would be greatly appreciated and thanks in advance!
Cheers!
Catro

I had a similar problem. Old mac pro and randomly the monitors would go black.
Replying to this incase anyone else has this problem…
Tried all the restarts under the sun, reset the board only to get temporary fix. It got to the point where the monitors would black out repeatedly after a few minutes of resetting.
My final solution (May not work for everyone): Remove the graphics card and check to see if the copper fins in the heat sink are "caked in dust". On my ATI card i can see this from the bottom end. I took the hoover and placed it at the opening and the bit of the hoover nozzle that stuck out I covered that with my finger for maximum suction, I repeated this process from the opposite side where the air exits, after a few seconds the suction was enough to clean out the heat sink and the fan started to spin with the power of the suction.
I have replaced the card and now my mac is running very quiet for the first time in years. On removing the graphics card I noticed the bay was very hot including the card. I'm guessing the card cuts out to protect itself from overheating.
Don't forget to wear an anti-static wristband or discharge yourself first. Using a hoover was a drastic last step. Don't think an air duster would solve the problem as well as suction.

Similar Messages

Mac Pro will not boot, constant loud fan noise and nothing else

hello,
earlier tonight,i put my mac pro on sleep, then later on, when i wanted to take it off sleep and use it, it made the loud fan noise, which it always does but goes away, but this time it the fan wount slow down and the loud noise stays and i dont see anything on the screen. im guessing the fan noise is the ATI x1900 card...
any help please..i just bought it 2 months ago...

Hi, here are the steps I would go through. I would unplug the Mac Pro completely from everything and look at the video card's fan intake to make sure it isn't plugged and just make sure everything "looks" correct. I would then plug the machine back into one monitor/keyboard/mouse (leave all the other peripherals disconnected. Once that is done push the power button. Does anything happen? If not then if you have another mac and an external hard drive, make a copy of the OS on the drive and see if you can get the Mac Pro to boot off that drive. If the video card doesn't work then it will not show anything when booting off an external drive. If the external boot does work then I would suspect that you have a bad hard drive (or it crashed). At that point I hope you have a back up of all your data and such.
Mind you these are steps I would go through. What a nightmare. One other thing to check, make sure your monitor didn't die.
Message was edited by: jlseattle74

Mac Pro (early 2008) black screen after 2015-004 Mavericks security update

Hi,
My Mac Pro (early 2008) does not start up after 2015-004 security update last week. I can't
get anything on my monitors. I can hear it starts booting, but not sure if does so fully, because the screen
stays black. Have tried all the different booting options, e.g. safe boot, but no effect. Is there a way to revert
the update or even do a clean OS install, even if I can't see anything on the monitor?
I just noticed that Apple has released a supplemental update today for Yosemite 10.10.3,
"that will fix video driver issuesthat will prevent your mac from starting up when running certain apps that capture video"
I am wondering if this is my problem, even if I use Mavericks. Any thoughts?

Try booting to Recovery and repairing the the startup disk via Disk Utility.
OS X: About OS X Recovery - Apple Support
Next try resinstalling the OS
OS X Mavericks: Reinstall OS X

Mac Pro Early 2008 - Black Screen problem

Set-up
Mac Pro 3,1 (Early 2008)
Processor 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Memory 32 GB 667 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM
Graphics ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB
Storage 2 TB SATA Disk , 2 x 500GB SATA Disk , 128GB Solid State SATA Disk
Display LG 19LS4D-ZB
Operating System Mavericks (10.9.4)
Hi,
I received this mac yesterday from an eBay seller. Everything once booted is running well, I spent most of the day yesterday installing various softwares such as the Adobe Creative Suite (CS6). Then all of a sudden, after around 8 hours of using the machine and editing some video content on Premiere Pro, I get this black screen (with absolutely no warning). The computer didn't change tone or anything with the way it was running, it sounded the exact same as it was. It wasn't like there was no signal coming from the graphics card, there was a signal, it was just a black screen (no cursor or anything). Eventually, I had to turn off the computer using the button on the front.
I have messaged the person who sold me the computer about this, and he has said "The problem is very simple: VGA card goes to sleep. You can change the 'go to sleep time' as Windows system, but don't know where this is with a mac". I've googled to the end of the earth but can't seem to find anything on it!
I've attached these screen shots too just in case...
Any help would be greatly appreciated or happy to answer any questions,
Thanks,
Sam

Try booting to Recovery and repairing the the startup disk via Disk Utility.
OS X: About OS X Recovery - Apple Support
Next try resinstalling the OS
OS X Mavericks: Reinstall OS X

Mac Pro (ATI X1900) black screen at boot

Hey there,
I've been seeing some problems with my early Mac Pro when booting. Upon the first boot of the day, the machine sounds like it's starting up however the display remains black for upto 15 minutes before kicking in.
The problem used to happen occasionally but it's just been getting worse over the last 6 months.
It's got to the stage that if you put the machine into sleep mode, then come back 30 minutes later I'll have to wait for another 15 minutes before I can log back in.
If the machine has been running for a while and you perform a regular reboot, you can see the system booting and the login window comes up straight away.
I've tried a fresh install of Leopard on an external drive, problem still exists.
I also tried hooking up another display to the system just to check it wasn't the existing monitor and sure enough the problem remains.
Recently the display has been blanking for a few seconds when I've been using the system.
Searching to forums seems to suggest a whole bunch of issues with the ATI X1900 card, which is installed in this system.
Does anyone think the ATI card is the fault here?
In addition, I know the system is out of its initial years warranty but it seems like the ATI card has some known problems, so what's the likelyhood of Apple helping me out here?

You are chasing down the wrong rabbit hole is my best guess, as bad as the X1900 might be.
Rule out marginal RAM, Seagate drives, 3rd party USB/FW devices, controllers (other than X1900), even modem/router. All it takes is a bad USB or FW (or probably RJ45) cable.
No need to reinstall. Now that you have, clone your system for backup and testing with SuperDuper and run Disk Warrior, too, and try that. Might want to rerun the last combo update. And I always run the combo update from another drive than the system being updated.
SuperDuper forces the newly cloned system to rebuild all the temp files, logs, caches and such that are best done by itself when first booted.
Other things to try are reset the SMC RESET button on pre-2008 Mac Pro (on 2008 model, leave it unplugged overnight, no cables attached to clear or reset the SMC) and then zap NVRAM on cold boot.
See this article:
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20060131080021235

Macbook pro 15 2011 - blank screen loud fan

my laptop shut down unexpectedly. ( just before I had plugged an external hdd to find a photo, I never saw the hdd in finder)
it was dead, I left it for 30 hours, nothing. I left it a further 24 hour and the battery light showed it was charging and when I tried to start it, it started the fan (loud) beeped once, nothing on the screen .
What could be wrong/ what can I do?
m

Try resetting the SMC. If that does nit help, take it in for diagnosis.
Barry

Mac Pro (Early 2008) black screen on startup diagnostic LED #3 lit (ERR B)

Hi All
I turned on my macpro this morning saw some bizzare lines on my cinema display and then I immediately tried to reboot and then my display went black. No video was being displayed. Keyboard and mouse are unresponsive. I have done some research and did all suggestions (resetting pram) resetting power/ unplugging etc. I finally opened up my computer and noticed that the red diagnostic light #3 was lit (ERR B). Which is as far as could find and instructional error.
I brought it down to the base configuration, removing extra ram and hard drives but still nothing. The computer does turn on, fans are whirring but no output to display no keyboard response nothing.
(The monitor works fine, I connected it to my laptop and it works, so I already ruled that out)
Unfortunately I don't have apple care and my warranty ran out as of last July. I'm about to take it in to apple store but I'm curious as to if anybody had a similiar experience and what it could be. My best guess is that it could be the video card (the stock ATI Radeon 2600XT) but could it be something more serious?
This computer is my lifeblood and work. And I have seen the service manual to find out what and why my diagnostic LED #3 is lit (ERR B)
Any suggestions or advice will truly be appreciated.
Thanks.
And also I cant even open the dvd drive to boot up from system disk or run diagnostics, or is there some other way?

Hi vkim125,
Welcome to Apple Discussions.
After some searching I've found that LED #3 is associated with video display. But could bevelop into a Logic Board error. (Which would mean you would have to replace the computer's motherboard.
Therefore.
I suggest you reset the System Management Controller (Which is reponsible for a number of core processes, video included.)
Follow the instructions from this Knowledge Base article.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1806
Hopefully that should help you resolve the issue> If not post again here; I'll look more into the issue and see if I can get you more detailed information.
Kind regards,
Peter.

When I power up my 2008 Mac Pro I get the "welcome", chime, fan goes on, a light goes on on my Apple monitor and then nothing - black screen. Whats going on?

When I power up my 2008 Mac Pro I get the "welcome chime", fan comes on, a light comes on on my Apple moniter and then nothing - black screen. What,s going on?

what you describe as the "welcome chime" is the indicator that your Mac has passed the Power-On Self test, and if a suitable source of software can be found, booting is likely.
If the screen stays dark, the most likely explanation is a graphics card failure. But it could also be caused by a backlight failure in the LCD, so be sure you try shining a bright light at the screen to be check whether the picture is there, but just not illuminated.
Graphics card failure will end the boot-up process in some cases, and not have an impact in others. Two external indications you can use when your display is not working are: The Caps Lock key, which is under the control of Mac OS X, and the Control-Eject dialog box shown below. Note that the default is Shutdown, so a Mac that shuts down in response to Control-Eject followed by Return is working fine.

My Macbook Pro has a black screen when running in Bootcamp Windows 7. Since I updated the mac side my windows side now starts up with completely black screen - no prompt, nothing, Cap keys still light up as does mouse and DVD drive seems to run.

My Macbook Pro has a black screen when running in Bootcamp Windows 7. Since I updated the mac side my windows side now starts up with completely black screen - no prompt, nothing, Cap keys still light up as does mouse and DVD drive seems to run.
Will not show up in safe mode, will not show when started from Windows 7 DVD.
I suspect the Mac update wiped out my PC video drivers but can not think of a way to re-install?
Can see the PC volume from Mac side with files.
I've looked at all the online solutions so far and have tried most of them without success. Please help!
Specs:
2009 Macbook Pro, 3.06 GHz Intel 2 core, Max 10.6.8.
Model Name:          MacBook Pro
Model Identifier:          MacBookPro5,2
Processor Name:          Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed:          3.06 GHz
Number Of Processors:          1
Total Number Of Cores:          2
L2 Cache:          6 MB
Memory:          4 GB
Bus Speed:          1.07 GHz
Boot ROM Version:          MBP52.008E.B05
SMC Version (system):          1.42f4
Serial Number (system):          7302300GANE
Hardware UUID:          B2D4B4B4-CD92-5C7A-BDC2-527D30DD8DF3
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State:          Enabled

EDIT: RESOLVED
For anyone else who finds their way here like I did, this link did it for me: https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/527599/windows-8-issues-solved-please-r ead-if-you-39-re-having-black-screen-and-or-flickering-/
Specifically, the posts by Dunsany and valkyr did the trick. I booted in safe mode, uninstalled and deleted the Nvidia driver, disabled automatic driver installation, and restarted normally. I then manually downloaded and installed the previous Nvidia driver for my graphics card (which at the time of this writing was 335.23, rather than the latest which was 337.88), and everything is now bueno!
Two hiccoughs along the way: First, when I tried to uninstall the Nvidia driver the first time, when I restarted I got the login screen (which was a good sign), but it quickly went black again. I powered down, restarted in safe mode again, and repeated the uninstallation process, and it worked the second time. Second, when I started the manual install of the 335.23 driver, the computer played a sound similar to the one for disconnecting a USB device, and the screen went black. I'd seen a lot about trying to increase the brightness (though it hadn't worked up to this point; but if you haven't tried it yet, might as well); I tried it, and it worked! So far I'm back up and running. [/fingers crossed]
Hope this helps someone else!

Macbook pro-Freezes with black screen at start up.

Macbook pro-Freezes with black screen at start up. I've tried inserting the Mac OS X install disc to run the hardware test(Restart and hold down D), But it still does nothing. Just the black screen. Now I can't get the disc out. I've tried holding down the track pad key upon start up but that doesn't work neither.
What do I do??? Please help.

Remove the battery to find your serial number in the battery bay. Then you can look your MBP up on EveryMac.com:
http://www.everymac.com/ultimate-mac-lookup/
That will give you all the information on your Mac.
This is assuming that you have the MBP with the removable battery and not the unibody. The unibody has different graphic chips.
Good luck!
Message was edited by: S.U.

Mac Pro display remains black after start up.

My 2008 Mac Pro display remains black after start up. It is plugged in properly and the light comes on, but the screen stays black. It first started doing this about a week ago, but after a manual restart or two, it would start up properly with the display working. Today the display has remained black every time I've tried to start up. Any suggestions for troubleshooting would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Safe Mode uses a very simple way of talking to the screen -- it does not even load the screen driver, and it uses a very common low resolution.
If it does not work that way, it simply does not work. You need a replacement graphics card.
User Tip: Mac Pro silver tower (2006-2012) Replacement Graphics cards

What is better Mac Mini or Mac Pro and 4K 40" screen or iMac 5K for work with Exel

I am working on Macbook pro retina for around 16 hours a day, it is ok but the screen is to small. I am opening about 25 - 30 EXCEL windows, 20 - 25 safari windows at the same time. Excel windows are small, they only show 40 rows and S column Now I am considering buying iMac 5k ( but the screen is only 27", however a very high resolution but I think that fonts and digits displayed may be too small ). I am also considering Mac Mini or Pro with 40" 4K TV ( 4k computer monitors are 27 - 31" , so better idea would be purchasing iMac 5k ) . The problem is that 40 - 42" TV don't have Display Port ( I can't find it anywhere )
Please help me to choose what would suit my needs better. I need large screen to work comfortably with an Excel sheets. What is better? Mac Mini or Mac Pro and 4K 40" screen or iMac 5K for work with Excel ?. The other problem I have is that when I spend 16 hours at work with retina macbook , my eyes are ok. Using the 30'' Dell screen 2560/1440 my eyes are tired after 2 hours.
Thanks for your help on advance
Best regards
David

Currently you can only get 4 K at 30 Hz via HDMI. Some users have reported jerky curser movement because of the 30 Hz.
I would go for the 5K iMac. You can add a second screen at 4K.
FaceTime HD camera
Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display and up to 3840 by 2160 pixels on an external display
Support for extended desktop and video mirroring modes
The Mac Mini supports:
Support for up to two displays at 2560 by 1600 pixels, both at millions of colors
Thunderbolt digital video output
Native Mini DisplayPort output
DVI output using Mini DisplayPort to DVI Adapter (sold separately)
VGA output using Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter (sold separately)
Dual-link DVI output using Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter (sold separately)
HDMI video output
Support for 1080p resolution at up to 60Hz
Support for 3840-by-2160 resolution at 30Hz
Support for 4096-by-2160 resolution at 24Hz
The 2013 Mac Pro can use three and more displays:
Mac Pro (Late 2013): Using multiple displays - Apple Support
I would go for multiple screens

Mac pro retina 15 inch screen

My mac pro retina 15 inch screen broke... does anyone know how much it would be?

Yes, you could do it yourself cheaper, but it requires some expertise. Even more importantly, it will invalidate your warranty if you still have one (i.e. it is less than 1 year old or you have the Applecare that adds another 2 years warranty) - so if anything else goes wrong, you are on your own!
I'd probably bite the bullet with a machine so new and let Apple fix it. And then be super careful in the future!

HT3053 i did some thing wrong that makes my mac just showing a black screen and amessage says you need to restart your mac .... etc and i wanted to talk to any one from apple and i couldnt get my mac serial number and i could do nothing i turned to some o

i did some thing wrong that makes my mac just showing a black screen and amessage says you need to restart your mac .... etc and i wanted to talk to any one from apple and i couldnt get my mac serial number and i could do nothing i turned to some one who formatted the hard desk and i tried to talk to any one from apple but it seems no one care i spent 4 years to be able to buy this mac and i dont know what to do > i will never buy mac again please some one tell me what to do dvd is not working i press on options and nothing happen what showld i do ? through it ? some body tell me what to do or where to go

Just to make certain, you inserted the original installation disk and started the MBP holding down the C key? Did the Optical drive reject the disk or did it just spin? If the former, the lens in the drive may be dirty and needs to be cleaned. If the latter, you will have to take it to an Apple repair facility.
Ciao.

IMac 2007 20'' black screen and fan loud

Hi, I have a imac from 2007 and i got it from an other person that said to me that the problem was the rams, and i got the rams and the screen continues black and the fans loud.
Thank you.

Hello brunofig132,
Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.
I understand that your iMac is booting to a black screen and loud fans. The following article provides steps to troubleshoot the startup process for your iMac. It should give you an indication of what might be causing the problem.
Your Mac won't start up in Mac OS X (Mac OS X 10.3.9 or earlier) - Apple Support
Regards,
Jeff D.

Mac Pro 3.1 black screen, loud fans

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for