Tim's PowerMac: GA-Z87X-UD5H - i7-4770k - 32GB RAM - GTX 770 4GB

iTimOSX · Mar 17, 2014

Tim's PowerMac Build
GA-Z87X-UD5H - i7-4770k - 32GB RAM - GTX 770 4GB

Comments

I've been a Mac user for almost 5 years now and I started off with my 21.5" iMac, it worked great but I needed more performance, especially GPU/CPU performance since these parts weren't upgradeable on my iMac.

My first Hackintosh try was years ago with Leopard, it worked, but not good enough.
I've always liked Apple's design and wished I could buy a hackintosh with it one day, the design of normal computer cases weren't my thing and were withholding me, after a while I found out about the PowerMac G5 mod's people were doing here on the forum. Luckily I found a pre-modded case and bought it for €100,00
With help of the buyers guide I picked the parts above together and bought them.

Assembling the parts was a bit tight but eventually everything was in place.
The temperatures were a concern but they are fine for the time being.

I kept my iMac's keyboard and mouse and used the GMYLE Bluetooth adapter that I bought from eBay, it works great!

This build is designed to be a fast Hackintosh for video editing and as a game PC (Windows).
I can say both goals were achieved since it all runs super smooth.
I choose 32GB RAM simply because I will use RAM disks more often (because of the speed).

BIOS/UEFI Settings
I had loads and loads of problems getting into the 10.9.2 setup from my UniBeast USB, It worked one time but it stopped working an hour later, I decided to make a UniBeast USB installer of 10.9.0 and used that, I still was having issues with getting the bootloader to work and found out my BIOS settings were faulty (although I was sure I did it correct..)

These are the settings I changed

- Pressed F7 to load Optimized defaults..
- Used an XMP for 1600Mhz.
- Added .05 V to RAM as a suggestions in tailchaser's thread for 32GB RAM freezes.
- Disabled Intel Graphics
- Disabled Wake On Lan
- Set vCore voltage to 1.2v and set turbo multiplier to 43 (overclock)

Benchmarks
Geekbench

Unigine Heaven

Unigine Heaven Benchmark was running with 2 displays on, this probably explains the lower score.

BlackMagic Disk on EVO SSD

MultiBeast configuration

Issues
- I had issues with the iMac14,2 system definition (glitching display, multi displays were only able to mirror, so I kept the MacPro3,1 definition)
- The WDRN400 TP-Link card is a bit buggy, When my router was on 802.11n the connection dropped constantly, I'm using 802.11g now and it seems stable. Support thread is here.
- When sleep is enabled and working it sleeps fine, I'm even able to wake from sleep but when it's back from sleep the audio is not working anymore and all the USB devices are disconnected for a short time (this gives me USB power error messages and "this disk hasn't been ejected properly" messages.) Still haven't found a fix for this yet, someone?.

Changelog 08-11-2014
I created this system in February 2014 and have been using it as my daily system for
9 months now and in this time some things have changed:

- I put my CPU back to stock clock since the CPU was overheating during work in FCP, this is
probably because of my poor cooling but I don't need the speed at this time so stock clock is fine.
- Switched bootloader to Clover.
- The WDRN400 TP-Link card still had a lot of range/connectivity drop issues so I removed it and used Ethernet instead which is working allright.
- I disabled sleep since it didn't work fine with the USB HUBs on my displays.
- Switched back to iMac14,2 which worked fine with Clover.
- Updated to Yosemite which worked without any issues.

This machine is still working great and I love the G5 case with my "own" hardware in it!

Thread will be updated when an issue is fixed/found!

radoson · Mar 18, 2014

Tim's PowerMac i7 - 4770k - 32GB RAM - GTX 770 4GB

iTimOSX said:
Issues
- I had issues with the iMac14,2 system definition (glitching display, multi displays were only able to mirror, so I kept the MacPro3,1 definition)
- The WDRN400 TP-Link card is a bit buggy, When my router was on 802.11n the connection dropped constantly, I'm using 802.11g now and it seems stable. Support thread is here.
- When sleep is enabled and working it sleeps fine, I'm even able to wake from sleep but when it's back from sleep the audio is not working anymore and all the USB devices are disconnected for a short time (this gives me USB power error messages and "this disk hasn't been ejected properly" messages.) Still haven't found a fix for this yet, someone?.

Thread will be updated when an issues is fixed/found!

The Sleeping USB issue might be a C1 stepping Southbridge chip, you can check Rev using CPUZ even though it isn't exactly what people are seeing with C1 chips installed.
I bought an Asus Maximus for my hackintosh because it has a C2 chip, here is my post so you can see a screen shot on what to look for. You should also be able to find what Southbridge chip you have via Bios info.
http://www.overclock.net/t/1413905/...ners-and-overclocking-club/1730#post_21923617

iTimOSX · Mar 18, 2014

Windows 8.1 shows a REV C2 as well, is there a fix?

Mediva · Jul 2, 2014

Did you have any trouble with your Dells? I am thinking about getting two of them but read a lot of horrible stuff about the nvidia rgb hdmi/dp bug. Basicly they do get recognized as TVs and as a result of that you only get the limited rgb colors (more to read about that here: http://daniloercoli.com/2013/09/19/blurry-text-on-dell-monitor-mac/)

thanks in advance

iTimOSX · Jul 21, 2014

Mediva said:
Did you have any trouble with your Dells? I am thinking about getting two of them but read a lot of horrible stuff about the nvidia rgb hdmi/dp bug. Basicly they do get recognized as TVs and as a result of that you only get the limited rgb colors (more to read about that here: http://daniloercoli.com/2013/09/19/blurry-text-on-dell-monitor-mac/)

thanks in advance

Sorry for the late reply, I did have some issues with the nvidia kexts of 10.9.0+ so I kept using the 10.9.0 ones and that works with 10.9.3 as well, I have full colors and have them connected via HDMI to HDMI and Displayport on my GPU to Minidisplayport on the Dell.

Tenczys · Oct 21, 2014

Hi ! I've got very similar setup to yours but instead of 32GB of RAM I've got 16GB.

I'm wandering if you have the same problem. My GTX 770 is plugged into PCIE x16 slot but when I look for it in System report it says that it is plugged as x8 slot.

Did you have same issue ? or this card is running only x8 speed.

Thanks

iTimOSX · Nov 8, 2014

Tenczys said:
Hi ! I've got very similar setup to yours but instead of 32GB of RAM I've got 16GB.

I'm wandering if you have the same problem. My GTX 770 is plugged into PCIE x16 slot but when I look for it in System report it says that it is plugged as x8 slot.

View attachment 108799

Did you have same issue ? or this card is running only x8 speed.

Thanks

Not sure

Mine says x16

I'm using the NVIDIA alternate web drivers

Main topic updated with my experiences so far.

rreichphoto · Mar 4, 2015

Hi Tim,

I have the same hardware as you do besides my video card (GIGABYTE|GV-N770OC-4GD GTX 770), and I was hoping to update to Yosemite with the Clover boot loader. Do you have any plans to do a guide for that? I'm having trouble figuring out exactly which kexts and flags I need since I'm used to being babied by MultiBeast/Chameleon

I tried sending you a PM, but it didn't go through.

Thanks!
Ryan

ModBot · Mar 4, 2015

rreichphoto said:
...I tried sending you a PM, but it didn't go through.

See the Rules:

General Rules

...

Members may not solicit nor provide assistance via private communications. This forum was created to provide help by posting questions and getting answers. By not publicly discussing you are depriving others of solutions to problems they may encounter.

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iTimOSX · Mar 6, 2015

rreichphoto said:
Hi Tim,

I have the same hardware as you do besides my video card (GIGABYTE|GV-N770OC-4GD GTX 770), and I was hoping to update to Yosemite with the Clover boot loader. Do you have any plans to do a guide for that? I'm having trouble figuring out exactly which kexts and flags I need since I'm used to being babied by MultiBeast/Chameleon I tried sending you a PM, but it didn't go through.

Thanks!
Ryan

Hi,

Installing Clover wasn't that hard, I downloaded the setup, made a clone of my Boot SSD and installed Clover, rebooted and for me it was working
without any issues.

I just had to reinstall audio and the TRIM patch again. (You can use MultiBeast for this, it's not directly connected to Chameleon so most things work with Clover too, just don't install the boot-loader from within MultiBeast")
My current flags are dart=0 kext-dev-mode=1

Tim,

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Tim's PowerMac: GA-Z87X-UD5H - i7-4770k - 32GB RAM - GTX 770 4GB

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