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ASRock Z77E-ITX | Core i7-3770K | EVGA GTX 570HD

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Joined
Jun 28, 2012
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201
Motherboard
Asus Z97i-itx
Graphics
GTX 970 - 4GB
Mac
  1. MacBook Air
  2. Mac mini
Mobile Phone
  1. iOS
Buckeyes1995 Build: Core i7 3770k - Asrock Z77E-ITX - EVGA GTX 570

32467-closedcase.JPG



Updated for BIOS 1.80!!


Components

Apple Mac OS X Version 10.8.2 Mountain Lion
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/os-x-mountain-lion/id537386512?ls=1&mt=12]

ASRock Z77E-ITX LGA 1155 Mini ITX Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157312&Tpk=z77e-itx

Intel Core I7-3770K Ivy Bridge 3.5Ghz Processor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116501

Lian Li Q08 Silver Mini-ITX Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112266

Corsair H60 Liquid CPU Cooler
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181015

Corsair TX650M 650 Watt Semi-Modular Power Supply
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139031

Crucial M4 256B SATA III Solid State Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148443

Vantec NexStar CX SuperSpeed 2.5" SATA to USB 3.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817392043

Dell DW1515 Half-Height Mini Wireless N Card (Atheros AR5BHB92)
Purchased on Ebay


Already Owned

EVGA GeForce GTX 570 HD 2.5GB DDR5 Graphics Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130687

ASUS VE257H Black 23.6" Monitor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236112&Tpk=ve247

G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 32 GB (4x8GB) DDR3 SDRA {Note: Used only two modules for 16GB Total)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231490

Western Digital Scorpio Blue 1TB 5200RPM 2.5" Hard Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136545

Apple LED Cinema Display (27" Flat Panel)
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC007LL/A/apple-led-cinema-display-(27"-flat-panel)?fnode=53

Razer Naga Gaming Mouse
http://www.amazon.com/Razer-Laser-Gaming-Mouse-RZ01-00280100-R3/dp/B002MPPRPO

Razer Black Widow Mechanical Keyboard
hhttp://www.amazon.com/Razer-BlackWidow-Mechanical-Gaming-Keyboard/dp/B003ZJ1VD8/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1348405787&sr=1-1&keywords=razer+blackwidow


Comments:

Background

I've been casually playing around with Hackintoshes for a couple of years. My latest creation was based upon an Intel 930 and EVGA Classified motherboard. I found that there were several items in this build that did not work and was very frustrating. I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so I wanted a build that was cleaner and more functional.

About a year ago, I bought myself a Mac Mini Server 2011. I love the ease of use of Apple products, and the Mac Mini's form factor was very appealing. After using the mini for a year, the one drawback was the lack of solid graphics performance. I'm not a hardcore gamer, but I do like Blizzard games and wanted to be able to experience great performance on my 27" Apple LCD. Hence, I began looking for a powerful build that could incorporate a non onboard graphics card.


Selection of Components

As I wanted to maintain as small of a footprint as possible, I decided to go down the ITX route. Being an engineer by trade, I am hung up on having the latest and greatest technology. I decided I was going to go the Ivy Bridge route with a Z77 chipset.

I reviewed a couple of the Z77 ITX builds in the User Builds and settled on the Asrock. Appleg33k85 had started a build thread based upon the Z77E-ITX and thus I leapfrogged off of that. I decided to go with Intel's top of the line 1155 processor, the 3770k.

I reviewed several of the ITX case options out there, and settled on the Silver Lian Li Q08. This selection was primarily based upon wanting to maintain as much "Apple-like" feel as I could. The Q08 is a gorgeous case. While certainly much bigger that the Mac Mini I loved, it looks very good on my desk. Also, as I wanted to play with overclocking a bit, this case also houses the 27mm line of self contained cooling systems from Corsair and Antec.

For video, I had already been using an EVGA GTX 570HD 2GB card so decided to stick with that. It offers plenty of performance for my gaming needs. My frame rates in Diablo III are very good, even at high settings. Similarly, I stuck with my existing DDR3 memory from G.Skill.

The Wifi card provided with the motherboard is not compatible with OSX. Instead, I replaced it with the Dell DW1515 half height Wifi N card. It works out of the box and is recognized as an Airport Extreme.


The Installation

BIOS and Settings

There is a great thread in the DSDT forum for modified ASRock bioses. These modifications, done by samisnake, remove the lock in the BIOS that deals with cstates. Therefore, using the modified Z77E-ITX bios (at the time of this writing, BIOS version 1.80), allow us to use native power management without the need for the nullcpupowermanagement kext. The modified 1.80 BIOS is included in the Z77EITX_Package.zip attached to this post. Alternatively, you can patch the stock BIOS yourself following information contained in the thread.

To utilize the onboard HD4000 video with this board, you need to ensure that Onboard video is selected (Northbridge) as the primary video source and the shared memory is 32mb. Any other memory setting caused my system to kernel panic.

Mountain Lion Installation

1.Install Mountain Lion
Install using Unibeast - Mountain Lion 1.5.3 on an 8GB or larger USB drive using the Unibeast Installation Guide. Do NOT try and install from one of the USB 3.0 ports. Ensure your USB drive is plugged into one of the USB 2 ports. After install, reboot.

I suggest you use KextHelper to install the following kexts.

2. Install Networking
As the onboard Broadcom BCM57781 chip is not natively supported in Mountain Lion, you'll need to use the patched IONetworkingFamily.kext. I had copied it to another USB drive so I had easy access to it. It is included in the Z77EITX_Package.zip attached to this post.

3. Install USB 3.0
The Intel Z77 USB ports are supported natively in Mountain Lion, with the following exception: USB 2.0 storage devices do NOT work in USB 3.0 ports. We'll fix this issue via DSDTs. The ASMedia ports require two kexts included in the Z77EITX_Package.zip.

Note: The CalDigit USB drivers included with Multibeast will NOT work. You need to use the ones attached.

4. Multibeast Settings
Use MultiBeast - Mountain Lion 5.2.0, with the following selections:

41177-multibeast-settings.jpg


5. Audio Settings
Audio can be installed one of two ways:

1. No DSDT - If you choose not to use a DSDT, select ALC898 under the Audio->Without DSDT section in Multibeast
2. With DSDT - If you choose to install audio via Multibeast and a DSDT, select ALC898 under Audio -> With DSDT section in Multibeast

DSDT Installation and Edits

With the release of MacIASL DSDT editing is easier than ever before. Follow the instructions below to "roll your own" DSDT. For reference, I've attached my 1.80 BIOS DSDT incorporating the patches below.

a. Download MacIASL from http://sourceforge.net/projects/maciasl/files/
b. Configure Patch sources (via menu bar Prefernces) as:

53635-maciasl-config.jpg


c. Close MacIASL and reopen
d. You will now have a "Virgin" DSDT. Select the 'Patches' icon, and select and load the following patches:

- Audio HDMI Ivybridge -> AMI-EFI/Clean Compile
This will apply common patches to remove compiler errors

- Audio HDMI Ivybridge -> AMI-AMD-Nvidia-7_Series-A1 -OR- AMI-HD4000-7_Series-A3
This enables HDMI over discrete graphics, HD4000, or both

Select the Nvidia patch if you use a discrete graphics card for your HDMI. Select the HD4000 patch if you use HD4000 for your HDMI

- PJALM General -> ESB2 SATA
This corrects the "orange icon" issues that shows internal drives as external

- PJALM Intel 7 -> USB Power
This applies more power to the USB ports to allow charging of devices like the IPAD

- PJALM USB Multiplex
This corrects the issue with USB2 storage devices not working correctly in USB3 ports

- Long Wake (manual edit)
Find the WAK method at the end of the DSDT. Remove the following line:
Code:
\_SB.PCI0.LPCB.SIOW (Arg0)

e. Select Compile and you should have no errors or warnings.
f. Select SAVE AS and save as "DSDT.aml" in /Extras (make sure to select the ACPI Machine Language Binary file format)
g. Reboot


HD4000 On Board Video
The Native chameleon 1.11 EFI injection does not work for this board's HD4000 for whatever reason, so if you want to use HD4000 instead of a dedicated GPU, do the following:

1. add the following to your org.chameleon.Boot.plist:

<key>device-properties</key>
<string>7f0000000100000001000000730000000200000002010c00d041030a000000000101060000027fff04002c0000004100410050004c002c00690067002d0070006c006100740066006f0072006d002d006900640000000800000005006201140000006800640061002d0067006600780000000d0000006f6e626f6172642d31</string>
<key>Graphics Mode</key>
<string>1920x1080x32</string>
<---- update to the resolution of your monitor

2. in the UEFI Bios under Northbridge Configuration, ensure Onboard Video is the primary graphics and set video RAM to 32MB

Mac App Store
You *may* or *may not* have an issue downloading from the App Store. If you get an "Unknown Error" when entering in your Apple ID, you will need to include another EFI injection in your org.chameleon.Boot.plist.

If you are NOT using HD4000 then you only need one EFI string:

1. add the following to your org.chameleon.Boot.plist:

<key>device-properties</key> <string>4b00000001000000010000003f0000000100000002010c00d041030a0000000001010600031c0101060000007fff0400160000006200750069006c0074002d0069006e0000000500000001</string>

2. In System Preference->Network remove ethernet/wifi devices

3. Delete /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/NetworkInterfaces.plist

4. Reboot

5. In System Preferences->Network add ethernet THEN wifi

NOTE: If you are using both HD4000 and the App Store EFI injection, replace the hex string above with the combined string:

be00000001000000020000003f0000000100000002010c00d041030a0000000001010600031c0101060000007fff0400160000006200750069006c0074002d0069006e0000000500000001730000000200000002010c00d041030a000000000101060000027fff04002c0000004100410050004c002c00690067002d0070006c006100740066006f0072006d002d006900640000000800000005006201140000006800640061002d0067006600780000000d0000006f6e626f6172642d31


Autosleep

Set Darkwake = 10 in org.chameleon.Boot.plist to get auto sleep to work.

Remember that Auto Sleep will not work if you have a USB storage device that is NOT self powered (ie. it is powered by the USB port only.

If you still have problems with Auto Sleep, open Terminal and type "pmset -g assertions" to see what is hanging you up.



Wake on Lan

The board supports both Wake on Lan (WOL) from the SLEEP. To enable WOL to work from power off, a BIOS setting change is required.

Advanced -> ACPI Configuration -> PCI Devices Powered On -> ENABLED

Note that MAC OSX does NOT support wake from POWER OFF if that POWER OFF was due to an orderly shutdown of OSX. It will work if you shutdown from Windows or holding the power button.


What Works:

  • Sleep/Wake/Shutdown
  • Dual monitor support (DVI & Display port)
  • On-board sound
  • Ethernet (wired)
  • Ethernet (wireless)
  • Speedstep; Ran about 30 minutes and saw 9 P States: 16,17,18,19,20,34,35,36,37
  • Autosleep (Note: USB devices that are not self powered will prevent Mac's from sleeping)
  • Full Intel & ASMedia 1042 USB 3.0 ports
  • HD4000 video
  • HDMI audio over dedicated graphics
  • HDMI audio over HD4000
  • Multiple monitors using discrete graphics & HD4000
  • Wake on Lan from Sleep & non-OSX Power Off states
To Do/Not Working:

  • Verify CIR header (I have no need for a remote, but if anyone does.. let us know what you find!)


Performance

4.7GHz Overclock

33131-geekbench-4-7.tiff


Edit Log:

[09-23-12] Typographical edits
[09-24-12] Updated DSDT attached with HDEF edits for sound; P-states work; Auto sleep partially working; Updated MB Settings
[09-28-12] Added GTX OpenCL patch information (thanks to Netkas)
[09-29-12] Created 10.8.2 specific section to include SSD Trim Fix; Added Performance section
[09-30-12] Updated DSDT attached with HDMI over dedicated graphics card; Replaced multibeast settings to remove Audio; Added note about using the new ML optimized AppleHDA; Installed ASMedia (Caldigit) 1042 drivers for full working USB 3.0 ports; HD4000 works.
[09-30-12] Added 3 separate DSDTs; Added section on how to enable Auto Sleep; Updated guide to "flow" better
[10-05-12] Upgraded to 10.8.2 Supplemental; no changes required
[10-07-12] Replaced native Wifi card with Dell DW1515; Wireless now fully supported
[12-15-12] Updated Guide to reflect BIOS 1.6 and Multibeast 5.2.0
[01-12-13] Verified Wake on Lan (WOL) support; added section addressing BIOS change required for Power Off WOL
[04-17-13] Updated to BIOS 1.80. Removed DSDT files; added Z77EITX_Package.zip; Rewrote DSDT section to include 'how-to'
[04-28-13] Typographical edits; included 1.80 BIOS DSDT
 

Attachments

  • Z77EITX_Package.zip
    5.2 MB · Views: 1,578
  • DSDT.aml.1.80.zip
    14.6 KB · Views: 995
Last edited by a moderator:
Nice build you have here and I'm happy to see you're having some success with the z77e-itx. I just built a system with this motherboard and a 3770k as well this week, although I went with a Bitfenix Prodigy and a Kuhler 620 for water cooling. Anyway, I'm very new to the whole hackintosh scene, so having your guide here will be very helpful.

As far as getting the HD4000 working, my understanding is that all that needs to be changed is setting the VRAM to 64MB in the BIOS.
 
I updated my bios using your linked file and tried using your DSDT.aml by placing it on my desktop and running multibeast with the User DSDT option. However, when I reboot, it crashes shortly after the bootloader. Not sure what's going on here. Does this DSDT have anything specific to your setup (i.e., SSDs, video card) that a standard z77e-itx user might not have?

The networking kext worked like a charm though.
 
I updated my bios using your linked file and tried using your DSDT.aml by placing it on my desktop and running multibeast with the User DSDT option. However, when I reboot, it crashes shortly after the bootloader. Not sure what's going on here. Does this DSDT have anything specific to your setup (i.e., SSDs, video card) that a standard z77e-itx user might not have?

The networking kext worked like a charm though.

Are you running 10.8.2? If so, did you install the FakeSMC plugins? If so, delete S/L/E/FakeSMC/Contents/Plugins/oemsmbios.kext.

I forgot to put that in the build description above.

Also, I'm not sure if Multibeast moves the .aml around or not.. I just put it in /Extras
 
Are you running 10.8.2? If so, did you install the FakeSMC plugins? If so, delete S/L/E/FakeSMC/Contents/Plugins/oemsmbios.kext.

I forgot to put that in the build description above.

Also, I'm not sure if Multibeast moves the .aml around or not.. I just put it in /Extras

Yes, 10.8.2. I tried twice, once with your MB settings (with FakeSMC), one with no settings, just the UserDSDT option. Perhaps MB wasn't reading the DSDT from the Desktop. So, I should put the DSDT.aml in /Extra and run MB again? Sorry, I'm new to the osx86 world.
 
Yes, 10.8.2. I tried twice, once with your MB settings (with FakeSMC), one with no settings, just the UserDSDT option. Perhaps MB wasn't reading the DSDT from the Desktop. So, I should put the DSDT.aml in /Extra and run MB again? Sorry, I'm new to the osx86 world.

When you turn on the computer, hit Tab at the Chameleon boot loader. Boot with the -v option. You should see where it hangs up. We can go from there.
 
Thanks for your response -- really appreciate it. I ended up getting a stable setup without your DSDT (although no functioning sleep mode), so I'll want to backup before I start tinkering again. I'm not sure the best method to maintain my current install while removing my old multibeast settings.

However, when I was originally attempting your DSDT, I tried booting in verbose mode and it didn't stop on anything very clear -- it would begin to boot after chimera and pretty much instantly go to the multi-language crash screen. Not sure if this is indicative of anything in particular, or just a generic crash.
 
Thanks for your response -- really appreciate it. I ended up getting a stable setup without your DSDT (although no functioning sleep mode), so I'll want to backup before I start tinkering again. I'm not sure the best method to maintain my current install while removing my old multibeast settings.

However, when I was originally attempting your DSDT, I tried booting in verbose mode and it didn't stop on anything very clear -- it would begin to boot after chimera and pretty much instantly go to the multi-language crash screen. Not sure if this is indicative of anything in particular, or just a generic crash.

Good to hear you're up and running! I agree, make a backup. I use Carbon Copy Cloner (well worth the price) and backup to an external 500GB USB 2.0 drive.

So your sleep is not working? What happens when you try and put it to sleep? Sleep pretty much worked out of the box for me with the exception of wake. It took about a minute to wake from sleep. I fixed this by editing the DSDT; so this should work for you as well. I've heard that graphics cards can affect sleep. What card are you running?

Also note that I updated the DSDT last night to include audio edits. You can now install the ALC 898 driver using the 'with DSDT' option.. that way you don't need the extra HDAEnabler kext.
 
hey buckeyes

great thread.
didnt know the broadcom lan was working, so thanks for that.
you shouldnt need to use the entire ionetworkingfamily.kext in future, all youll need is the AppleBCM5701Ethernet.kext inside the plugins folder.
might help if you ever do a reinstall.
where did you get that from out of interest?

with your autosleep issue, type
Code:
pmset -g assertions
in terminal, and it should show you what is preventing your system from autosleeping
 
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