GA-Z97X-UD7 TH (rev. 1.0) Success with OS do?

[B-San]

@Ragnar-Kon,

Thanks for the awesome breakdown!


This could bode very well for us!

 

[Ragnar-Kon]

Small update.

Motherboard came in but ran into a two snags...

The plan was to use an old Crucial M4 SSD I had sitting around, but the OS X installer doesn't detect it. Flipped over to a Windows 7 installer I had sitting around, and it doesn't detect it either. UEFI detects it just fine though. Thought maybe it was a driver issue, but the preinstall driver available for Windows doesn't do jack. So either my SSD is bad, there is a Z97-related issue, or.... ???

I also realized why I was troubleshooting the SSD that Mac OS X doesn't support Intel RAID. Kind of a deal-breaker for the intended purpose of the computer... so I'm looking at Highpoint cards right now to fill the gap.

 

[alvindarkness]

Small update.

Motherboard came in but ran into a two snags...

The plan was to use an old Crucial M4 SSD I had sitting around, but the OS X installer doesn't detect it. Flipped over to a Windows 7 installer I had sitting around, and it doesn't detect it either. UEFI detects it just fine though. Thought maybe it was a driver issue, but the preinstall driver available for Windows doesn't do jack. So either my SSD is bad, there is a Z97-related issue, or.... ???

I also realized why I was troubleshooting the SSD that Mac OS X doesn't support Intel RAID. Kind of a deal-breaker for the intended purpose of the computer... so I'm looking at Highpoint cards right now to fill the gap.

I'm interested in this board so have been keeping an eye on this thread. Out of interest cant you just disable the intel raid and use them as normal sata ports? can you boot off the marvell ports instead, does mac recognise them?

 

[Ragnar-Kon]

I'm interested in this board so have been keeping an eye on this thread. Out of interest cant you just disable the intel raid and use them as normal sata ports? can you boot off the marvell ports instead, does mac recognise them?

The Intel RAID has been disabled. I did, however, plan on using the Intel RAID once the initial install was complete. But once I remembered OS X doesn't support Intel RAID, I realized I had to change my plans.

I've been troubleshooting it off and on all day long (balancing the wife's holiday weekend demands and this project has been harder than expected). I'm fairly certain something is wrong with this SSD. UEFI detects it when plugged into either the Intel SATA ports and the Marvell ports, but Linux/Windows/OS X don't detect it at all for some reason.

At the moment I am rummaging through my basement trying to find an old SATA HDD that I can use. Every other SATA drive I have is actively being used in a RAID array, so I cannot "borrow" it without breaking the array. I could technically steal a drive from my NAS RAID-5 array, but my NAS literally stores the vast majority of my life, and it isn't something I am willing to risk.

 

[alvindarkness]

At the moment I am rummaging through my basement trying to find an old SATA HDD that I can use. Every other SATA drive I have is actively being used in a RAID array, so I cannot "borrow" it without breaking the array. I could technically steal a drive from my NAS RAID-5 array, but my NAS literally stores the vast majority of my life, and it isn't something I am willing to risk.

Understood. When you find another sata device and figure out whats going on let us know. Very interested in the new UD7. Do you have any thunderbolt devices to try out of interest?

 

[Ragnar-Kon]

Understood. When you find another sata device and figure out whats going on let us know. Very interested in the new UD7. Do you have any thunderbolt devices to try out of interest?

I have a Sonnet SxS card reader, and a few Thunderbolt to eSATA adapter docks that are designed for Sound Devices PIX240/260 recorders. Nothing truly exciting to be honest. I have been holding off on purchasing higher-end Thunderbolt devices until I can find a feasible, cost-effective way to get Thunderbolt on a desktop platform. Which... hopefully will be this motherboard.

But my coworker has a Blackmagic UltraStudio Express that I am hoping to borrow. I was going to ask him if I could have it for the weekend but he left early from work on Friday before I got a chance to ask him.

Anyway, I found an old SATA 80gb hard drive in the garage. Currently creating a USB boot drive with UniBeast on my Macbook Pro as I type this.

 

[Ragnar-Kon]

Alrighty then... preliminary update:

TL;DR - GA-Z87X-UD7 TH copy-pasta

And now for the meat...

- Installation was a breeze, only issues was the typical easily-overcomed issues that are common with Gigabyte boards.
- Thunderbolt compatibility is rough. Any device plugged in to a Thunderbolt port shows up as a PCI device.
- Hot-swap still doesn't worry properly. Although for whatever reason I can hot-swap SxS cards without any issues.
- Every other Thunderbolt device I've tried requires a reboot.
- OS X boot times are annoyingly long.
- Functionality of the Marvel SATA ports are spotty. 90% of the time they work great, but every once and awhile they won't show up. No idea why this is happening.
- Blackmagic PCIe capture card works flawlessly.
- Firewire PCIe card works flawlessly.

Like an idiot, I installed Windows first, so I cannot confirm or deny whether a Windows driver installation is required to "unlock" the Thunderbolt functionality. Really wish I had used my brain and installed OS X first, as I know this was a problem with the GA-Z87X-UD7 TH.

Long story short I encountered the same issues that people discovered in the GA-Z87X-UD7 TH. To be expected, as this new motherboard is essentially a stripped down version of the Z87 version. But still slightly disappointing. The ONLY reason why I can think of as to why Thunderbolt doesn't work 100% out of the box must have something to do with custom firmware on Apple's end. Either within the Thunderbolt chip itself or maybe with the UEFI. Who knows. Just frustrating. I'm going to continue to mess with it for awhile long before I surrender, but it isn't looking great.

The good news is the Windows side works like a dream, so worse comes to worse and I'll just use Windows. Still to be added is a Highpoint RAID card and a LTO tape drive. Once I get everything up and running I'll write up an in-depth build-log with my findings and post it on these forums.

 

[wheresthatkiwi]

Aiming to pick one of these up tomorrow so really appreciate you reporting your slide down the bleeding edge for us all.

Just wondering if you were using a Chameleon/Chimera to a Clover boot loader for your install?

 

[kao825567095]

I bought it on amazon together with a EVGA GTX780 Verified, I hope to receive the package tmr and fly back to Hongkong tmr night. Based on the previous discussion, it seems the thunderbolt port is still a problem, but is likely to be solved later in this year.
Actually I own a seagate thunderbolt adapter and a 256GB M550 SSD, which give me a perfect performance on my rMBP as a windos-to-go disk.
However, the tbolt problem push me to install a windows first and then a OSX(I intended to built myself a mac-only computer, which I thought would be able to use my WTG flawlessly).

 

[Ragnar-Kon]

Just wondering if you were using a Chameleon/Chimera to a Clover boot loader for your install?

It was the typical Chimera boot loader for my setup. I did that for simplicity sake... as I will have to re-do the install all over again once my new SSD comes in. Since I was using a temporary 80gb SATA HDD, I didn't want to have to deal with the quirks with Clover. I just wanted to do a quick-n-dirty install to figure out the Thunderbolt compatibility.

I intend on using Clover for my "final" build.

Anyway... been working on the Thunderbolt issue with some other not-to-be-named Mac communities on the web. If something pops up I'll find a way to report back.