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[SUCCESS] GA-Z97M-D3H - i5 4690 - HD4600

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Joined
Dec 2, 2013
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Motherboard
Gigabyte GA-Z97-D3H
CPU
i5-4690K
Graphics
GTX 970
Mac
  1. MacBook Pro
Mobile Phone
  1. iOS
[SUCCESS] GA-Z97M-D3H - i5 4690 - Radeon HD6570


RazInYorkshire's Haswell mATX:
GA-Z97M-D3H - i5-4690 - MSI GTX 970 Gaming

hackintosh.jpg
Components


Gigabyte Z97M-D3H
[AMAZON-UK]http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00K9R1P3A/?tag=tonymacx86-21

Intel Core i5 4690 3.5GHz
[AMAZON-UK]http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00K5J2252/?tag=tonymacx86-21

8GB Crucial Ballistix Sport (2x 4GB kit)
[AMAZON-UK]http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B006YG94Y2/?tag=tonymacx86-21

Cooler Master Silencio 550
[AMAZON-UK]http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004WPBD96/?tag=tonymacx86-21

TP-LINK TL-WDN4800
[AMAZON-UK]http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B007GMPZ0A/?tag=tonymacx86-21

ARCTIC Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2
[AMAZON-UK]http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002G392ZI/?tag=tonymacx86-21

Corsair CXM 500W Modular 80 PLUS Bronze PSU
[AMAZON-UK]http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00ALK1GFC/?tag=tonymacx86-21

IOGEAR GBU521 Bluetooth 4.0 USB Micro Adapter
[AMAZON-UK]http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B007GFX0PY/?tag=tonymacx86-21

WD 1TB 3.5 inch Internal Hard Drive - Caviar Blue
[AMAZON-UK]http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0088PUEPK/?tag=tonymacx86-21

WD 2TB 6Gbps SATA III Hard Disk Drive - Green
[AMAZON-UK]http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00D0240PQ/?tag=tonymacx86-21

Perixx PERIBOARD-407B, Mini USB Keyboard (for BIOS setup)
[AMAZON-UK]http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0064M436A/?tag=tonymacx86-21

Arctic F12 120mm case fan
[AMAZON-UK]http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002KTVFTE/?tag=tonymacx86-21

Dual Motherboard 9Pin Header to 4 Port USB 2.0 PCI Bracket
[AMAZON-UK]http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00HR5RRNE/?tag=tonymacx86-21

MSI GTX 760 Gaming (2GB) - discontinued, 2nd hand from eBay

Already Owned

Crucial 240GB M500 SATA SSD
[AMAZON-UK]http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00BQ8RM1A/?tag=tonymacx86-21

Apple Bluetooth Keyboard
[AMAZON-UK]http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005EMLOU4/?tag=tonymacx86-21

Logitech M510 Wireless Laser Mouse
[AMAZON-UK]http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B003PAKL7O/?tag=tonymacx86-21

Dell 24" 2407WFP-HC - discontinued

SATA cables
[AMAZON-UK]http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00IML7E5S/?tag=tonymacx86-21

160GB Intel SSD - discontinued

AMD Radeon HD6570 - discontinued (pulled from a HP Pavilion)

Comments

I'm a long time Mac user who has grown rather frustrated with the ever narrowing focus of Apple's desktop product line and lack of upgradability. When time came to replace my old mid-2011 Mac Mini, I decided a Hackintosh was the best bet. I used TonyMac's excellent buyer's guide to spec out a decent system for my needs (I mainly do iOS development and photo editing in Lightroom). I decided to build around a mATX board because I've no need for loads of expansion slots and they tend to run a bit cheaper than their full size brethren.

I went with the vanilla 4690 3.5GHz i5 as I have no interest in overclocking.

Building the system was great fun, I've not put together a PC since I was a teenager and wow things have improved a lot in the last 15 years! No more cut fingers from inexplicably sharp edges in the case and cable management is a thing now, no more rats nest of wires!

I wanted a mid-size case with plenty of room for internal drives that operated as quietly as possible. After some research I settled on the Cooler Master Silencio 550. I'm really pleased with it, it was easy to work in and looks really nice and smart. Following advice from reviews that the included fans were a bit weak, I swapped the rear case fan with an Arctic F12 and moved the other included fan behind the drive cage. I picked a 500W PSU as that seemed more than adequate for a system without a dedicated GPU and should be enough to run something like a GT740 or GTX750 at some point down the line.

BIOS Settings

I'm using the standard recommend BIOS settings:

Loaded Optimized Defaults

Disabled VT-d

Disabled CFG-Lock

Disabled Secure Boot Mode

OS Type set to Other OS

Additionally:
Set SATA port 6 to allow hot swapping (this works fine under OS X).
Disabled num lock on by default (number pad keys shared with standard keys on my mini USB keyboard).


My installation method was a little unorthodox. My boot drive, the Crucial 240GB SSD linked above, was originally used in my Mac mini and had an up-to-date (OS X 10.10.2 at the time) system installed on it along with all my apps and things. Following TonyMac's installation guide I had planned on wiping this and starting afresh, but after I'd started the Hackintosh from the installer USB memory stick I'd created with Unibeast, I noticed my system drive appeared as a boot option in Chimera. Out of curiosity I selected it and a few seconds later I was booted into OS X with everything up and running as it had been on my Mac Mini beforehand!

Amazed that it had 'just worked', I then used MultiBeast (settings shown below) to install the Chimera bootloader on the SSD, along with the kexts for the sound driver, fake SMC, Ethernet and HWMonitor, rebooted and had a fully functioning system. The only thing I had to tweak was the setting on my router (Airport Extreme) to use a fixed channel for the 5GHz WiFi network for it to show up under OS X.

MultiBeast settings:

DSDT free
Bootloaders > Chimera v4.0.1
Customize > Boot Options > Basic Boot Options
Customize > System Definitions > Mac Pro > Mac Pro 3,1
Customize > Themes > tonymacx86 Black
Customize > Boot Options > Generate CPU States
Customize > Boot Options > Hibernate Mode - Desktop
Customize > Boot Options > Kext Dev Mode
Customize > Boot Options > Use KernelCache
Drivers > Disk > 3rd Party SATA
Drivers > Misc > FakeSMC v6.14.1364
Drivers > Misc > FakeSMC v6.14.1364 HWMonitor Application

Drivers > Audio > Realtek ALCxxx > ALC892
Drivers > Network > Realtek > RealtekRTL8111 v1.2.3

Everything is working fantastically now, WIFI, Bluetooth, App Store, sound etc. I even have the system dual booting with Windows 10 tech preview on another drive. It's not showing up in Chimera but I just hit F12 at the BIOS screen to select the drive it's on and it boots from that happily.

The system has successfully weathered a couple of OS X security updates so far. I'm using the handy externally accessible SATA slot on the case to clone the SSD onto a spare old WD HDD I have each time just to be on the safe side.

Update:

I obtained a Radeon HD6570 from my partner's old desktop PC (a HP Pavilion P6) and found it works OOB with OS X 10.10.2. It shows in System Profiler as "AMD Radeon HD 6xxx 2048 MB". Despite being a low end card it still runs rings around the built-in HD4600. The only change I made to my system was to set the PCI-e graphics card as the default video option in the BIOS.

Update 2:

Now rocking an MSI GTX 760 as I wanted a more powerful video card with full native support. No software tweaks required, just swapped cards booted and everything running beautifully.

Update 3:
Switched over to Clover following the guides here and upgraded to El Capitan with no problems! :headbang:

Update 4:

Spoke too soon, USB 3 ports downgraded to USB 2 after upgrading to El Capitan. However the following fix works.

Bluetooth has also proved unreliable since upgrading to El Capitan. It can usually be fixed by unplugging and then replugging the bluetooth dongle, but it's not ideal and seems to be necessary with each reboot to get a stable connection to my Apple wireless keyboard. I'm not sure if this is specific to the IOGEAR bluetooth dongle or a symptom of some other issue (e.g. changes in USB drivers).

Update 5:

I bought a 4K monitor (Acer CB271HK 27") and wanted some more power to run it, so upgraded to an MSI GTX 970 Gaming. Installed and configured the web driver before swapping the card with the 760 and the upgrade was completely painless.

Benchmarks:

Geekbench 3 64-bit: 3585 single core, 11702 multi-core.
Cinebench: (HD6570) 37.44fps
Cinebench: (GTX 760) 86.49fps OS X / 110fps in Windows
Cinebench: (GTX 970) 101fps OS X / 125fps in Windows
 
Last edited:
Hey, good to hearing your success story on hackintosh. Can you share what your BIOS settings and boot flags argument?

Thanks.
-L
 
Good build description! :thumbup: Please add your MultiBeast configuration to your original post, too. TIA.
 
Excellent! Congrats on the successful build, Razin.

The sound works after system wake up from sleep?
 
...The sound works after system wake up from sleep?
Audio does not work after sleep wake-up due to an Apple HDA problem. So, I use shilohh's LoadHDA app. I put it on the desktop and click on it after wake-up; it reloads the Apple HDA and audio returns. It's a lot easier than rebooting.:thumbup:
 
What an amazing tip! Thanks guys!

I'm going to build a new system base on that mainboard. They should be: Z97M-D3H, i5 4690, GTX 970.

I hear that the GA-Z97M-D3H mainboard was getting radom freezes. Not sure but i'm quite worry. :(
 
...I hear that the GA-Z97M-D3H mainboard was getting radom freezes. Not sure but i'm quite worry. :(
The "Haswell Freezes" are due to:
  • The use use of memory not on both the motherboard's memory support list and the memory manufacturer's motherboard support list;
  • The PSU not being rated as Haswell "ready" or "certified" or 4th or 5th generator i3/i5/i7 processor compatible; and
  • Not having your BIOS XCHI parameters set correctly.
I recommend Crucial Ballsitic Tactical memory but other make/model # work if they're crossed referenced as pointed out above. The PSUs in the Buyer's Guide are Haswell ready. As for the XCHI and ECHI parameters, set them to Auto & Enabled, respectively.

Good Luck!
 
Thanks for the advise, Stork! Much appreciated! Hope that everything will be fine, then will post my success build this forum.

@Razin: thank you for posting the configuration info, will follow exactly.

Cheers!
 
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