Haswell 10.6.8 Build, looking for audio/boot advice please!

[carrot]

Hi there,
I've just built my first hackintosh and I'm having a few issues with booting and audio. I'm wondering if anyone out there is able to help me out? My build is as follows:

Mobo: GA-B85-HD3
CPU: i7-4770
RAM: 32GB DDR3 Dual Channel
Graphics: Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 2GB
Storage: 120GB SATA SSD
Monitor: 1x HDMI monitor connected to a Mini DisplayPort port on graphics card via adapter
Optical: SATA BluRay Writer

Using iBoot Haswell and MultiBeast 3.10.1 I have been able to install my 10.6.3 retail disk and upgrade to 10.6.8 using the combo update. On first running MultiBeast, I selected EasyBeast, System Utilites, and the appropriate audio kext options for my Realtek ALC892 codec mobo.
Graphics is working as expected, with System Report showing my 5000-series graphics card with 6 display outputs and 2GB of VRAM. Audio is not working, but System Report shows multiple Intel Audio devices. System Preferences shows no audio in or out devices. Plugging headphones in to my mobo doesn't change anything. I was expecting my graphics card to handle audio in a similar way to Windows when the appropriate drivers are installed? Could the fact my graphics card isn't the Mac version be the cause of the audio issues too? I specifically chose the 5870 as I was under the impression it was the 'best' card officially supported by Snow Leopard, and the Eyefinity 6 version for the extra VRAM.

Would an appropriate DSDT for my mobo be a fix for my audio issues? I've not been able to find the correct DSDT for my 8-series board, but as far as I know every Intel board has a DSDT? Please correct me if I'm wrong on this. How would I go about getting the DSDT for my board?

I also know that Haswell was never officially supported by Snow Leopard. Could this be the cause of my boot issues? I'm able to successfully boot using my iBoot Haswell CD which uses Chimera 2.2.0. EasyBeast installed an older version of Chimera (1.7-something, I can't remember exactly) and booting directly from my SSD causes an infinite reboot loop (kernel panic?). I'm ultimately going to install Windows XP Pro x64 and CentOS 7 on this machine on a separate SSD. I'm happy to continue using the iBoot disc to get in to OS X if needs be, but I would ideally like to use a boot loader on the EFI partition of my Snow Leopard drive. I did read an article somewhere that trying to boot without using the iBoot disc is not possible as Haswell was never officially supported. Is this correct? Also, if I do have to continue using the iBoot disc, is it possible to have 2 optical drives in a hackintosh allowing me to keep my main BluRay drive free? Or, an even better solution, can iBoot be installed on a USB drive and I set my BIOS to boot from the USB? I have tried installing Clover to the EFI partition with no success.

This machine isn't going to be used very often and will be completely sandboxed with no LAN access. I only want to use it for some old legacy graphics programs, and maybe the occasional old game. I would like to keep with Snow Leopard for Rosetta.

TL;DR:
Would a custom DSDT fix my audio issues on a Haswell Snow Leopard build?
Is EFI partition booting possible on Haswell Snow Leopard?
Can I use multiple optical drives in a Snow Leopard hackintosh?
Can iBoot be made into a bootable USB drive?
Will iBoot allow me to access Windows and Linux partitions on a different SATA drive?

Phew, I think I just about covered everything! Sorry for the long post. I would be very appreciative of any support anyone can offer.
Cheers!

 

[Edhawk]

Your motherboard contains the Realtek ALC892 codec, which probably requires you to be running OS X Lion or Mountain Lion. Toleda created an SSDT_enabler for your and other ACL codecs, it might be worth a look - https://github.com/toleda/audio_ssdt_enabler. Not sure if it will work in Snow Leopard. It requires that you inspect your DSDT to confirm which version of the Enabler SSDT you need to use.

My advice would be to download and install OS X Mountain Lion, as that was the first version of OS X to support Intel Haswell. Doing so is likely to remove a number of the issues you are facing running Snow Leopard. FWIW, Lion wouldn't be any better than Snow Leopard running on a Haswell system.

Here is a free ink to download the Mountain Lion DMG (10.8.5) from Apple - https://support.apple.com/kb/DL2076?locale=en_GB

If running Rosetta is important, then you may want to look at using an older Intel system, Sandy Bridge support was added to Snow Leopard 10.6.7/8. As you have Snow Leopard installed already, you could move the HDD to a Sandy Bridge system to see if it runs any better. You would probably need to use iBoot not the Haswell version to boot the alternative system, if available.

 

[carrot]

I'll give Mountain Lion 10.8.5 a go on my Haswell system. Hopefully I can get away without using Rosetta. Otherwise I'll see about changing over to Sandy Bridge. I work a lot with audio-reactive visuals in my design work so having working audio is pretty important! Many thanks for your advice, much appreciated