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OWC 128gb RAM Upgrade Issues, Mac Pro 6.1 Cubase 8.5 Kontakt 5.6.8

JonEverist

New Member
Hey ya'll.

Having a very strange issue here. I have a 6 core 3.5ghz Xeon e5 Mac Pro trashcan with 64gb ram running latest Sierra and Cubase 8.5 Pro. I haven't had any issues for the 2 years I've had it so far, but I've recently come up against my 64gb RAM wall on my large orchestral template. I did a bit of research and decided to order the OWC 128gb upgrade kit since I heard the decreased performance of the sticks was outweighed by the increased capacity. I'm building a custom PC slave at the moment but wanted to wait until my current project was done before diving into that.

ANYWAY. After the installation, I tried to run my template and I was aghast at what I was seeing. 100% CPU spikes in every Kontakt instance in VE Pro, 100% CPU spike even in standalone Kontakt with ONE light patch instantiated. And my VST Performance monitor in Cubase was at 100% ALL THE TIME. Even when nothing was playing, even with one light instrument loaded (let alone the template with 600 of them). When I'd press a key on my controller, I would have zero latency as usual, but the audio was completely distorted, almost like a sample rate mismatch or disk read issue.

I scoured the internet and could find nothing matching what I was experiencing. I deleted cubase prefs, did SMC/Pram resets, tried Cubase 9, changed all ASIO and handling settings, double checked every plugin and permissions, made sure my Ensemble Thunderbolt had latest drivers and everything else I could think of -- and NOTHING worked. I just took the sticks out and put my 64gb kit back in, and everything is normal again.

I'm at a loss. Anyone have any insight on what might be going on? Could my motherboard be incapable of handling 128gb because of some defect? I saw no documentation on OWC about known issues with specific models or serials. An interesting side note...when the 128gb sticks were in my computer (verified that they were indeed installed correctly and verified by MemTest) I noticed that my displays started behaving erratically, flickering and signal going in and out. The thunderbolt buses seemed to not recognized them. I thought this could be affecting the other thunderbolt buses that my SSD array is on, which could be affecting the stream of data coming in and resulting int he choppy audio (that was my hunch). I had to take my Mac Pro in to get new graphics cards last year because I was one of those unlucky folks who got defective units. I remember the tech saying something about my motherboard potentially needing to be replaced as well but of course they wiggled out of having to do that.

Thanks in advance for any help!l
 

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I had to take my Mac Pro in to get new graphics cards last year because I was one of those unlucky folks who got defective units. I remember the tech saying something about my motherboard potentially needing to be replaced as well but of course they wiggled out of having to do that.

i think the culprit may be lying there (eg: your mainboard may be defective).
I'd test the memory in another mac, and start some communication with /request an exchange with OWC
 
i think the culprit may be lying there (eg: your mainboard may be defective).
I'd test the memory in another mac, and start some communication with /request an exchange with OWC

My thoughts exactly. Glad to hear I'm not crazy. Apple also replaced one of the RAM risers along with the graphics cards last time I came in with little to no explanation as to what might of happened to it. I had a few consecutive memory sticks show up failed from OWC before which I found highly unlikely to be their fault. I think there's some sort of soldering issue or shorting going on that has slowly damaged my board. The computer is in a well ventilated and cooled rack too, so they can't claim that any excessive heat is my fault. Was on the phone with Apple today demanding a new machine and they actually seemed amenable to it (probably because they know it was one of the mac pros with potentially bad solders and GPUs.

Let's hope they replace! Thanks
 
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