- Joined
- Aug 17, 2011
- Messages
- 36
- Motherboard
- GA-Z77X-UD5H
- CPU
- i7 2600K
- Graphics
- GTX 770
I have been trying to replace my aging Mac Mini media server with a more modern machine for awhile. I settled on the GA-Z87N-WIFI board and an i5 4690 processor, because that MoBo was in the recommend build section. I built the machine up, and after fighting the "Boot 0" issue and some other problems, eventually got it to boot. One of the key requirements for this system is that it
a) MUST SLEEP reliably! Not only that, but it:
b) must support WAKE ON LAN!
I'm not going to waste 40 Watts 24/7 because the machine won't sleep.
So, I soon found out that the Gigabyte board wouldn't work. Actually, it wasn't soon - I messed around with it for months, before I finally came to the conclusion that this MoBo has a firmware bug (or some interaction with OS X) that corrupts memory after several sleep cycles. By upping the DRAM voltage and turning on "Enhanced Stability" I was able to get it to sleep for up to 30-40 cycles, but it would eventually fail. So, I decided to give up on that board and try the ASRocks Z97M-ITX/ac.
I also moved to Clover as a bootloader, and that took some messing around until I got it to boot.
Note for anyone who stumbles on this tread: If you get a "unable to find driver for this platform:\"ACPI\".n"@/SourceCache/xnu/xnu-1504.15.2/iokit/Kernel/IOPlatformExpert.cpp" panic on boot with Yosemite, it's most likely that the kext-dev-mode boot flag has not been set. I swore I set it, and I couldn't get it to boot. After setting the flag from the Clover boot options, it came right up.
After I had the machine running, i decided to test sleep.
It didn't work.
Rather, it would sleep, but wake up immediately with a wake reason of "GLAN XHC." It took a long time to figure this out, because the information on the web was misleading - it's NOT Ethernet - it's the WiFI / Bluetooth combo card. I removed the card (which I don't need - it's going to be wired), and since then the machine has slept and woken perfectly. Right now it's on 58 cycles.
Also, optical audio out works after sleep, so it looks like I will be swapping out my old Mac Mini with this new machine soon!
a) MUST SLEEP reliably! Not only that, but it:
b) must support WAKE ON LAN!
I'm not going to waste 40 Watts 24/7 because the machine won't sleep.
So, I soon found out that the Gigabyte board wouldn't work. Actually, it wasn't soon - I messed around with it for months, before I finally came to the conclusion that this MoBo has a firmware bug (or some interaction with OS X) that corrupts memory after several sleep cycles. By upping the DRAM voltage and turning on "Enhanced Stability" I was able to get it to sleep for up to 30-40 cycles, but it would eventually fail. So, I decided to give up on that board and try the ASRocks Z97M-ITX/ac.
I also moved to Clover as a bootloader, and that took some messing around until I got it to boot.
Note for anyone who stumbles on this tread: If you get a "unable to find driver for this platform:\"ACPI\".n"@/SourceCache/xnu/xnu-1504.15.2/iokit/Kernel/IOPlatformExpert.cpp" panic on boot with Yosemite, it's most likely that the kext-dev-mode boot flag has not been set. I swore I set it, and I couldn't get it to boot. After setting the flag from the Clover boot options, it came right up.
After I had the machine running, i decided to test sleep.
It didn't work.
Rather, it would sleep, but wake up immediately with a wake reason of "GLAN XHC." It took a long time to figure this out, because the information on the web was misleading - it's NOT Ethernet - it's the WiFI / Bluetooth combo card. I removed the card (which I don't need - it's going to be wired), and since then the machine has slept and woken perfectly. Right now it's on 58 cycles.
Also, optical audio out works after sleep, so it looks like I will be swapping out my old Mac Mini with this new machine soon!