Z68MA-D2H-B3

[RavensByte]

This won't be a surprise to anyone as this is one of the recommended boards, but I just wanted to throw out there that the Z68MA-D2H-B3 works great with UniBeast. I just finished an install of Lion with an i3-2125 and 4MB RAM which followed the UniBeast installation flawlessly using the DSDT file posted on the site. The only item I changed was to specify my machine as a Mini in order to get the HD3000 graphics enabled, which are working great. I have my new build attached to my LCD television were it is serving as a media center. The only caveat is that sound isn't porting through HDMI, but that's a pretty common problem with the real Mini's as well and easily solved by running the sound seperately.

Kudos to Tony and this site for making it all painlessly possible. I will promply make a contribution as a "thank you"!

 

[TaumXD]

Hi!

I'm just wondering, as I'm sort of new to Hackintoshes and considering this board: Is Sleep/Wake working OK ? Can you put the computer to sleep and wake it up instead of shutting down everytime?

Did you need any manipulation besides following the UniBeast installation guide (http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2011/10/ ... using.html) ?

 

[streetcore]

This won't be a surprise to anyone as this is one of the recommended boards, but I just wanted to throw out there that the Z68MA-D2H-B3 works great with UniBeast... The only item I changed was to specify my machine as a Mini in order to get the HD3000 graphics enabled, which are working great.

Thanks for the feedback. I've got one of these boards and an i5-2500K 3.3GHz on order, but I'm kind of nervous about starting the build. I was reading these forums tonight, and some of the discussions were starting to scare me. So it's nice to know things worked out so well for you.

Where did you specify the machine as a "Mini". Is that in Unibeast or Multibeast?

Thanks.

 

[Vendetta]

This won't be a surprise to anyone as this is one of the recommended boards, but I just wanted to throw out there that the Z68MA-D2H-B3 works great with UniBeast. I just finished an install of Lion with an i3-2125 and 4MB RAM which followed the UniBeast installation flawlessly using the DSDT file posted on the site. The only item I changed was to specify my machine as a Mini in order to get the HD3000 graphics enabled, which are working great. I have my new build attached to my LCD television were it is serving as a media center. The only caveat is that sound isn't porting through HDMI, but that's a pretty common problem with the real Mini's as well and easily solved by running the sound seperately.

Kudos to Tony and this site for making it all painlessly possible. I will promply make a contribution as a "thank you"!

Have you looked into any of Toleda's posts about getting that audio working?

This won't be a surprise to anyone as this is one of the recommended boards, but I just wanted to throw out there that the Z68MA-D2H-B3 works great with UniBeast... The only item I changed was to specify my machine as a Mini in order to get the HD3000 graphics enabled, which are working great.

Thanks for the feedback. I've got one of these boards and an i5-2500K 3.3GHz on order, but I'm kind of nervous about starting the build. I was reading these forums tonight, and some of the discussions were starting to scare me. So it's nice to know things worked out so well for you.

Where did you specify the machine as a "Mini". Is that in Unibeast or Multibeast?

Thanks.

It's a system definition found in Multibeast.

 

[racerx90]

Hi!

I'm just wondering, as I'm sort of new to Hackintoshes and considering this board: Is Sleep/Wake working OK ? Can you put the computer to sleep and wake it up instead of shutting down everytime?

Did you need any manipulation besides following the UniBeast installation guide (http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2011/10/ ... using.html) ?

Sleep/Wake/Restart/Shutdown is PERFECT. The only device I have issues with is my USB webcam on my monitor (which doesn't always recover from sleep - although I never use it), but ALL other devices work flawlessly (including my Rocketfish Bluetooth adapter and Addonics Firewire card.)

Also, I did upgrade the NIC to a Rosewill RC-401-EX because I couldn't get the RTL8111E working right. (The Lnx2Mac driver didn't always start at boot for me, and the Realtek official driver doesn't recover from sleep.)

Finally, the only other drivers I've installed (outside of Multibeast) were Toleda's audio kext for ALC889 (works with the DSDT from here) and kozlek's HWsensors kext's (to monitor temperature, voltage, and fan speeds.)

 

[streetcore]

Hi!
Also, I did upgrade the NIC to a Rosewill RC-401-EX because I couldn't get the RTL8111E working right. (The Lnx2Mac driver didn't always start at boot for me, and the Realtek official driver doesn't recover from sleep.)

Is that the onboard ethernet you're referring to? That would be critical for me as well, since I don't plan to use wifi and would be connecting to the internet and a network printer via ethernet.

These are the kinds of problems I've been reading about (ethernet, audio, webcams, usb3, firewire, etc) that make me want to skip the hackintosh and just buy a mac.

 

[racerx90]

These are the kinds of problems I've been reading about (ethernet, audio, webcams, usb3, firewire, etc) that make me want to skip the hackintosh and just buy a mac.

Remember, Hackintosh isn't for everyone. Based on your respond, my suggestion for you would be to just buy either a Mac Mini or iMac. It will definitely be the easiest approach in the long run as it sounds like you want something you never want to have any sort of problems with and only Apple Hardware that is 100% supported will provide this for you.

As for the Rosewill NIC, it only runs about $20 (most people got theirs for $15 from Newegg) and is supported OOB in OS X (no additional drivers are required to make it work.) This was the main reason I went with it as it was a lot easier to disable the on-board NIC and use a card that just works than spend time troubleshooting it.

While a number of people have gotten the Realtek drivers to work, I was never able to get it working 100% (closest I got was with the Realtek official drivers, but sleep wouldn't work.) And instead of wasting my time with it, I decided to just buy the Rosewill NIC and my issues were immediately solved.

In my case, I own a number of Apple computers including a MacBook, MacBook Pro, and a Mac Mini, but I still use my Hackintosh the most. It's the fastest system I own (by far) and provides me with an awesome platform for gaming, video editing, publishing, and development (including being able to dual boot Windows 7 when I need to.) The best part was that it cost half the price of a comparable Mac and it literally only took an evening to build. Everything works on it (never crashed) and to be honest with you, I wouldn't think twice about doing it again.

Good luck!

 

[streetcore]

Thanks for the reply. I don't mind tinkering, and kind of enjoy it sometimes, it's just that as soon as I think I have a handle on this hackintosh stuff I discover some new issue. I spent the last week reading every night and putting together a parts lists that changed several times. I thought I finally had it settled, then this morning I read about this ethernet problem for the first time. So the price keeps going up, and the Canadian vendor I was ordering all the other parts from doesn't carry the Rosewill card. I can't find any other Canadian sites that sell it either and newegg.ca charges $25 plus $10 shipping. I know that's not a lot, but it all adds up and I'm already spending a lot more than I was expecting at the start.

Is there any other NIC card that would work?

 

[racerx90]

Thanks for the reply. I don't mind tinkering, and kind of enjoy it sometimes, it's just that as soon as I think I have a handle on this hackintosh stuff I discover some new issue. I spent the last week reading every night and putting together a parts lists that changed several times. I thought I finally had it settled, then this morning I read about this ethernet problem for the first time. So the price keeps going up, and the Canadian vendor I was ordering all the other parts from doesn't carry the Rosewill card. I can't find any other Canadian sites that sell it either and newegg.ca charges $25 plus $10 shipping. I know that's not a lot, but it all adds up and I'm already spending a lot more than I was expecting at the start.

Is there any other NIC card that would work?

Understood.

My suggestion for you then would be to first try out the Lnx2Mac driver and see how it works for you with the on-board RTL8111E NIC. If sleep is a requirement, then this is really your only option for Realtek NIC's (since the Realtek Official driver doesn't support sleep - even though I had better results with it.) The main problem with it that I ran into was that it didn't always bring up the NIC during boot-up - however, there are quite a few folks where it works well for them (maybe you'll be lucky.)

The only other issue I ran into was even though it does recover from sleep - it will take 10-15 seconds after the system is awake before you can do anything. With the Marvell (Yukon) based Rosewill card, the sleep wake-up time is no more than 1-2 seconds (it's really noticeable compared to using the Lnx2Mac driver and many others have said the same thing.) This was a bit annoying for me, but would have been bearable if the Lnx2Mac driver was reliable on boot.

If you do decide to upgrade the NIC at some point, then you want to look for Marvell Yukon based NICs since OS X has OOB support for them. The only other brand I'm aware of is the Sonnet Presto Pro (but unfortunately, they're a lot more money than the Rosewill.) Also, others have had success with certain models of Intel NICs (they might be cheaper, not sure), but I believe they all require modifications to the kext drivers. You can read more about these here: http://www.tonymacx86.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=48091 (it's a long thread so work backwards.)

 

[qthatswho]

Hi, I'm new to the forum, and to hackintosh-ing, so be gentle. I managed to get my system (mostly) up and running without too much trouble. Currently running a Z68MA-D2H-B3 board (F9 bios) with an i5 2500k and Lion installed on an SSD. Nearly everything is running ok, except for audio. I followed the following guide:
http://www.tonymacx86.com/viewtopic.php?f=168&t=36674&hilit=Z68MA+D2H+B3&start=240

Basically, the sound hardware appears to be detected, but in the Sound Prefs panel, no inputs/outputs show up (save for my Logitech USB headset).

Am I just missing something really simple, or is there a relatively involved process in getting board-audio working? I'm not terribly interested in HDMI audio (which I understand is possible, but is an involved process).

Thanks in advance.
- qthatswho