i9-9900k - Asus Prime z390-a, Rx580 8gb, Mojave 10.14.2 - a Desperate’s Man diary!

[pastrychef]

Graphics card is a powercolor Vega 64 reference card, it needed some tweaking for voltage and fan speed but I will probably just swap it out for an old NVIDIA Kepler card as my primary function is an Audio Workstation and I don’t need too much graphics power.

I'm not sure that's a very wise decision... The last iMacs to ship with Nvidia graphics was around 2013. My guess is that built-in support for the Kepler cards are nearing the end of the line.

 

[skroutz999]

You are welcome!
I didn’t have any freezes at all. I am running a 970 Evo NVMe in the M.2_2 slot (the one with the heat sink), 850 Evo for Windows (M.2_1 slot in sata mode) and an 800gb intel 750 nvme for storage in the pcie x16_2 slot.
RAM is Corsair pro RGB 4x8 3200MHz.
Graphics card is a powercolor Vega 64 reference card, it needed some tweaking for voltage and fan speed but I will probably just swap it out for an old NVIDIA Kepler card as my primary function is an Audio Workstation and I don’t need too much graphics power.

In the bios I actually have enabled AI overclock which automatically disables xmp. Xmp is set to detect in config.plist/clover and shows as 3200mhz in MacOS. Intel graphics is disabled in bios too. I will upload bios pictures in a few hours.
Yes, do try the clover folder I uploaded, it should get you going at least to problem solve.

I'll try those settings and report back. Have in mind that nvidia haven't updated the drivers for Mojave yet, so it may be a problem with changing gpu and support for the new macOS.

 

[buddhaburger]

I'm not sure that's a very wise decision... The last iMacs to ship with Nvidia graphics was around 2013. My guess is that built-in support for the Kepler cards are nearing the end of the line.

@pastrychef Yes, I agree 100% that the Kepler’s days are drawing very close to the end. For my use case, the plan with this build is to stay on Mojave for ~3yrs to stay inline/compatible with AVID Pro Tools. I already have a Kepler card lying around from a previous build and might as well use it while it's still valid and supported for the purpose of this build. I do love the Vega and will apply it to my other build where I can use it to it's full potential.

@skroutz999 Metal compatible Kepler cards are supported natively in Mojave but as pastrychef said, but it won't be for not much longer.

Here are pics of my bios settings, I tried to photograph them as best as possible, the bios screen is huge on my display (34" 2560x1080) If i missed something with the bios pics, just let me know and i can add more. Hopefully they can be some help for you!

 

[skroutz999]

buddhaburger I can't thank you enough for the help you provide here! Im impatient to test all these settings and I don't have enough time these days to start with them. I can't wait... I'll report back as soon as possible.
The only thing I can't understand is how you have xmp disabled and macos reads your ram at 3200mhz. Can the overclocking be done inside OS only by setting "xmp to detect" inside clover? Also do you have HEVC support only with rx vega64 enabled?

 

[Raftrix86]

Very interesting -- IORegistryExplorer shows 14 HSxx ports (which are USB High Speed ports -- USB 2.0) and a USR1 port, for a total of 15. This is the standard MacOS "USB Port Limit". None of your SSxx ports (USB Super Speed -- USB 3.0) is active because the 15 port limit was reached with just the High Speed ports.

Although you have applied the Port Limit Patch, it seems that might not be the right one or it did not take effect. For 10.14.2, are you using the USB patch listed in this post?

Eventually, once you have successfully installed Mojave, it would be a good idea to create a custom SSDT for USB ports. With such a SSDT you won't have to worry about port limit patches any more!

Hello, I have a MSI Z390-A Pro mainboard with a Core i7 9700K, and I could install Mac OS Mojave 10.14.1 with the USB Port Limit. The thing is the ports were working with USB 2.0 speeds with the USB 3.0 ports and 3.1 ports USB-C and A. I think there is a problem with the patch, because I saw one guy that with a Z390 mainboard from Asrock could use 3.0/3.1 speeds in his usb ports. I investigated a bit and yes he used a custom SSDT for USB. The problem is when I tried to make the guide here https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/guide-creating-a-custom-ssdt-for-usbinjectall-kext.211311/ in IORegistryExplorer all ports were HSxx, no SSxx at all.

The thing is I was trying to install OSX in my brother's computer, he has a 9700K too, but he bought a Z370 Pro4 from Asrock, and when we installed High Sierra and later Mojave all the ports were in USB3.0/3.1 speeds . I wanted to give up and bought a Z370 motherboard.

But I wanted to look if in High Sierra maybe my build would work better. I installed High Sierra 10.13.6 and when I checked the USB 3.0/3.1 the ports were working at full speed!!!!!. I have 10Gbps devices and the USB C and A 3.1 Gen 2 showed me 10GB/S linked speed. I just make a partition in my disk and installed Mojave again keeping my High Sierra Installation just in case, maybe the USB Port Limit was wrong inserted in my config file, but no, all ports were still working USB 2.0 speed.

But I could finish the USB SSDT Guide, because I had de HSxx and SSxx showing correctly in the IORegistyExplorer. I could delete the USB Port Limit Patch and when I opened High Sierra my usb ports where working, I tried in Mac OS Mojave too and... boom, my ports were working perfect, at full speed like in High Sierra!!!!.

One thing, I read in a lot of post that the H310/B360/H370 have almost the same USB3.1 bus. And with some friends with machines with in an Asus B360M-A, and an Asus H370M Pro, I tried Mojave to check maybe the USB speed in 3.0/3.1. And in Mojave in this mainboard in that two cases I had USB 2.0 speed in all ports. I think the USB Port Limit is working good until Z370 mainboards in Mojave.

I made later a testing in my friends computers with that mainboards I said before High Sierra and the ports where working at full speed.

Well Installing High Sierra helped me to finish the USB 3.0/3.1 SSDT because thank god the USB Port Limit Patch works better in that SO. But for H310/B360/H370/Z390 chipsets is totally needed in Mojave a Custom SSDT for USBInjectAll.kext otherwise the USB 3.0/3.1 will work at USB 2.0 Speed.

 

[buddhaburger]

buddhaburger
The only thing I can't understand is how you have xmp disabled and macos reads your ram at 3200mhz. Can the overclocking be done inside OS only by setting "xmp to detect" inside clover? Also do you have HEVC support only with rx vega64 enabled?

You are welcome!
With the Asus AI overclock activated in the bios it seems that xmp becomes auto. I just tested the XMP Detect setting in clover, with either yes or no I still get 3200MHz. So i am led to believe that XMP is controlled by the AI OC.
One thing to note is that before i started playing around with the ASUS AI OC feature, I used XMP Setting 1 and everything was fine.

HEVC files work fine in preview/quicktime with only the VEGA 64 enabled.

 

[skroutz999]

You are welcome!
With the Asus AI overclock activated in the bios it seems that xmp becomes auto. I just tested the XMP Detect setting in clover, with either yes or no I still get 3200MHz. So i am led to believe that XMP is controlled by the AI OC.
One thing to note is that before i started playing around with the ASUS AI OC feature, I used XMP Setting 1 and everything was fine.

HEVC files work fine in preview/quicktime with only the VEGA 64 enabled.

buddhaburger I tested your clover folder and all bios settings and things are getting better as it seems! Much faster boot times, most USB 3 ports are recognised correctly! ofc when I will have more free time I will make a custom ssdt but for now yours works like a charm! With bios settings I noticed that if I use "AI Optimised" and BCLK frequency at 100.0000 and also AI Overclock Tuner to manual the system goes to 50/51 at Light Load/Heavy Load. I tried twice to run geekbench 4.2.2 and at 70% the system was restarting at 5.1ghz with temps at 67C. So Im using xmp I and ram is working at proper speed at 3200mhz as you mentioned in previes post! HEVC stopped working also (tried with igpu and also dgpu only). Strange is in HS once it was supporting HEVC without igpu enabled but I don't remember what I had for settings back then. I have to do a research about it. Final quicklook/preview stopped working with jpgs and fcpx sometimes it doesn't launch at all (only force quit works just like in both HS and Mojave). After all the most thing that matters is to not have any system freezes again..! fingers crossed!

 

[buddhaburger]

@skroutz999 Great! I am so happy that it’s all going in the right direction! Yes, making your own USB SSDT to suit your purpose is a good idea

The quick look / jpeg issue was easily fixed for me with NoVPAJpeg.kext installed into /Library/Extensions (must have lilu.kext installed, which we do) it may have something to do with HEVC working also?
I forgot to mention it earlier!! Sorry!

 

[skroutz999]

@skroutz999 Great! I am so happy that it’s all going in the right direction! Yes, making your own USB SSDT to suit your purpose is a good idea

The quick look / jpeg issue was easily fixed for me with NoVPAJpeg.kext installed into /Library/Extensions (must have lilu.kext installed, which we do) it may have something to do with HEVC working also?
I forgot to mention it earlier!! Sorry!

I had the same issues with fcpx when HEVC was supported before, including both macos operating systems (HS and Mojave).
NoVPAJpeg.kext didn't work in my case (lilu is also on the latest version), so I changed smbios to imacpro1.1 and now quicklook/preview is working w/o any issues. I don't know if its a wise decision to change to imapro1.1 cause it is made for xeon processors but at least geekbench gives very good scores for cpu and gpu (6880 sc, 36700 mc, 140000 opencl). Still have things to test and will report back.

 

[skroutz999]

4 days have been passed and I had 2 freezes until now. The system is more stable than before thx to buddhaburger.
Sadness... I can't find what it causes system to freeze. Im thinking my ram maybe which have hynix chips and I need to change with samsung chips for better stability... or my nitro+ rx580 8gb? I should have go with pulse edition. Spend more money and at the end probably the issue is present again. Depression...! I will try to make a clean install to my other ssd (840evo) which has better remaining life (based on hwmonitor) and test and another sata port. I can't even install mojave directly from my machine... its freezing at 2 min at beginning and at 15 min after reboot. I have to install macOS to my other hackintosh system and then put my ssd to my main build. Buddhaburger can you please post also the entire page from bios->AI Tweaker to check if everything as your settings are similar to mine? also can you take a screenshot from library/extensions to check what kexts have you put there? finally how did you install mojave? didn't it freeze while installing?

P.S. Also my psu is 6 years old which is an OCZ 1000W Z series Gold edition. I paid for it almost 200€ back then... is there any chance to have a relation about hte issue with my system? ofc with windows I say again I don't have any problems at all.