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Testing Thread: Skylake Platform in OS X

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My story:

I became so frustrated with my Skylake/ASUS Z170I/El Capitan integration experience (see post # 130 above ) that I started to question the published progress of the system integration leaders. Not a healthy thing.

I noted that the best documentation was on a Gigabyte Z170-HD3 and also noted that the motherboard was a good mix of new tech and tried and true tech (Ethernet and Audio). And also to my pleasure, the motherboard is available for a reasonable price.

So I ordered one of these motherboards and set the ASUS system aside for now.

Box.jpg


My New System Configuration -

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA Z170-HD3 (source B&H Photo)
BIOS version: F3 (starting point)
Memory: Corsair VENGEANCE LPX DDR4 2x8GB | 16GB 2666MHz (source Amazon)
CPU: Intel i5-6500 (source Fry’s)
Video: onboard Intel HD530 and Zotac GF 9600 GT (already owned… old stock)
Display 1: Dell 2007FP 20” 1600 x 1200 by DVI ( already owned )
Display 2: HANNSpree 28” HDTV 1920 x 1200 by HDMI ( already owned )
Keyboard: GearHead USB2 ( already owned )
Mouse: Microsoft Wheel Mouse USB2 ( already owned )
HDDs: 250GB WD HDD (system drive) ( already owned )
1TB Seagate Barracuda (3 partitions, 2 for sys clones and 1 for data) ( already owned )
External Audio Processing: Lepai Stereo Class T Digital Audio Amplifier to
JEC TC-716 Stereo Control Center ( already owned )

Open test stand (no case, this is the stand that I have used for several years to hold my GA EP45-DS3R system).

TS.jpg


Board Bring Up Summary -

As I often do, I by-pass actual OS X installation and go with a clone copy of OS.

Here I made a clone of El Capitan 10.11.1 onto a 3.5 inch WD 250 GB HDD (fresh format and a single GUID partition). For this I use SuperDuper!.

While I was at it, I formatted and partitioned a 1TB Seagate HDD with three partitions, the third partition is for data. So as I had plenty of time, I cloned data from my personal workstation system to this new “Data” partition. This gives me a bank of my photos, music, videos and my historical Documents and DownLoad folders.

Then to make iterative changes to the Clover config.plist easier, I made up a UEFI boot USB flash drive. Clover v3320.

First power on - BIOS version is F3, no IOAPIC 24-119 feature, set up for booting UEFI.

Booted to the USB stick, KP’d, second try used Verbose mode and booted to the El Capitan desktop. This is with the onboard graphics. Artifacting. USB2 ports not functional, moved mouse and keyboard to USB3 ports and they worked. Note that all of my partitions show on the desktop… yea.
Audio via VoodooHDA working. Ethernet almost but not working correctly (LEDs blinking and pushed one it and got an IP address but can not connect - needs to be sorted out).

Ethernet is problematic so I installed an Intel Pro /1000 Quad Port NIC in the second PCIe 16 slot for the time being and also added the Zotac GF 9600GT GPU.

The system now is smooth and very responsive and mostly works. USB2 ports don’t work and the system won’t sleep, and the shutdown leaves the fans running. GeekBench 3 is 3777 / 12394.

So to see if the BIOS version had anything to do with the Ethernet port not working, I updated the BIOS to F6b (beta version) and found that the IOAPIC 24-119 was now present in the ChipSet portion of the BIOS setup screens. Long story short after some frustrating starts and re-starts, I flashed the BIOS back to the F3 version and intend to leave it there for the time being.

This experience has made an impression on me that the BIOS setup is critical. With the correct selection of BIOS ticks, Clover v 3320 will boot 10.11.1 with almost any config.plist file, kexts and patches (within reason). With one or two incorrect selections and almost nothing boots.

OS X Installation with USB flash built with UniBeast 6.1.1 and OS X 10.11.1 -

I followed the UniBeast guide to build the installer then used ammulder’s “[Guide] El Capitan on the Skylake H170N-WiFi to reconfigure it for my uses. I was very pleased that I was able to run the installer and complete a fresh installation.

And used the GM/Release Candidate for MultiBeast 8.0 to setup the Ethernet and Realtek ALC887/888b.

I was not able to get the HWMonitor to run with all of the sensors as at least one sensor is responsible for a Clover fault/reboot.

Again, this is not a 100 % system but is very close and I am pleased thus far.

Using the version F3 BIOS - Key settings after Save & Exit>Load Optimized Defaults:

Peripherals>XHCI Hand-Off set to [Enabled]
Peripherals>Super IO Configuration>Serial Port 1 set to [Disabled]
Peripherals>Super IO Configuration>Parallel Port set to [Disabled]

Good modding,
neil
 
MikeLP said:
Hi guys! I used attached by tonymacx config.plist (patched) but i still getting error "Still waiting for root device (with disallow icon)". I used Unibeast 6.1.1 - El Capitan - EFI mode.

My config is
processor - Core i7 6700k
motherboard - Asus Maximus VIII Gene (Intel® Z170 Express) - latest bios 0907
graphics - Integrated intel
storages - SSD Samsung Evo 1TB | SSD Kingston 120GB
memory - Kingston HyperX Savage 16gb
cooling - DeepCool Maelstrom 240T

Short story)
Every time, when I am buying new PC I have a troubles with installing mac os x. (like a loser, I know it :) Last time I could not stand and bought Mac Book :), but I was forced to give to my wife. Last week i bought new working PC and I hope that you help me break the curse.

So, maybe I dont turn off /turn on some options in bios or put wrong kext? I will be grateful if you'll help me or give me advice. Thanks!
Click to expand...

Can you post the attached config and kext you've used for your setup? Also what did you change in the BIOS? Thanks a lot.

Edited : Im also stuck at the "waiting for root device" w/ that disallow icon. (Freeze screen) ; Ive tried all boot flags possible and still no result.
 
hellrokr said:
hows thing coming along? I'm planning to get the same motherboard so was hoping to get an opinion first.
Click to expand...

This is the Z170X-UD5.

I still can't get either onboard ethernet to work correctly. I beleve the i211 "stop working after 10min" problem was solved by rebuilding the AppleIGB.kext driver targeting the 10.11 sdk. However it still doesn't survive sleep/wake, the network connection is not working on wake but can be restarted by setting of then on in control panel. It then works, but shows as disconnected in control panel. The i219-V is also not supported yet. I ended up getting a usb hub with ethernet and it works fine. Also shutdown doesn't work correctly, it will turn off but then turn back on again a few seconds later. I also have a Samsung 950 Pro (NVMe) and it isn't recognized, I can't find any solutions to this currently.

Beyond that most stuff is working. All usb 2.0/3.0 work including internal headers, this required SSDT patch/injector/clover patch similar to the H170-wifi guide posted here. I haven't tried getting usb 3.1 speeds or the type-c port working yet, I don't have any devices that can use it. I don't know how well the HD 530 graphics works, I use an NVIDIA card and it seems fine. I also haven't tried getting the audio working as I use bluetooth audio, but I suspect it will work as it's a similar solution to the H170-wifi. I'm using a null ethernet device as en0 so iCloud/iMessage/App Store will work. But if the i211 can be fixed this won't be necessary. Also it works fine at my nominal overclock of 4.5 GHz with an i7-6700k. I added the additional p-states to the SSDT patch posted here earlier and it works. Had to add my DIMM info in clover to get the memory I have to work at XMP, but with XMP disabled it was detected properly.

Overall I've had a mixed experience with this motherboard not just with OS X but on windows and linux as well. In spite of that I would probably buy this board again since it's been very stable, and that's the most important criteria for me.

The positives are:
* Very stable.
* The hardware that is there works well.
* BIOS updates have come quickly.

The negatives are:
* Fan control is pretty bad. You have 2 CPU fan headers (1-pwm, 1-voltage control) and 3 chassis fan headers (all voltage control). There is no custom curve support in bios, there are a few presets and a selection of "custom" linear presets (eg. 0.75 %/DegC is the minimum). The fan control software in windows is terrible, and won't reload fan curves at login. In fact all the gigabyte windows software is pretty terrible. Speedfan does not support the thermal chip currently. The thermal chip works in linux lm_sensors with some extra kernel parameters.

* You have to run the beta bios(s) if you want 1GHz FLCK for Early Power On. The non-beta bios(s) have this set at 800MHz.

* The selection of initial display PCI slot doesn't seem to work. No matter what I set it on I can only get PCI 1 or IGFX. I briefly experimented with multiple graphics cards and could not get PCI2 to be the first init display.

* The board will not POST unless a display is connected. I have no idea why and no ideas as to how to fix this. It seems a bizarre behavior to me.
 

Attachments

  • Z170X-UD5.zip
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Last edited:
I have the same board the GA-Z170X-UD5 TH. 32 gigs memory currently running windows 10 on one SSD and trying to install OSX on the 2nd SSD, I have a GTX 960 graphics card. I can't even get to the OSX installer.

Using the config.plist that tonymacx86 posted with the Step 1-3 fixes, I either get the dreaded Circle with slash "denied" or it reboots back to clover. I have tried 6.01 and 6.1.1 unibeast with same results. Tried several SMBIOS changes to get past the denied. I suspect i'm doing something stupid.
BIOS has SUPER I/O turned off, windows 8.1/10 turned off and all other bios settings I could glean from this thread. Does unibeast require me to have the target SSD formatted ahead of time? I seem to remember you can do that from the tools in the installer. At this point I have tried a lot of different things but i'm not sure what I have overlooked. Any help pointing me in the right direction would be appreciated.
 
Snoots said:
I have the same board the GA-Z170X-UD5 TH. 32 gigs memory currently running windows 10 on one SSD and trying to install OSX on the 2nd SSD, I have a GTX 960 graphics card. I can't even get to the OSX installer.

Using the config.plist that tonymacx86 posted with the Step 1-3 fixes, I either get the dreaded Circle with slash "denied" or it reboots back to clover. I have tried 6.01 and 6.1.1 unibeast with same results. Tried several SMBIOS changes to get past the denied. I suspect i'm doing something stupid.
BIOS has SUPER I/O turned off, windows 8.1/10 turned off and all other bios settings I could glean from this thread. Does unibeast require me to have the target SSD formatted ahead of time? I seem to remember you can do that from the tools in the installer. At this point I have tried a lot of different things but i'm not sure what I have overlooked. Any help pointing me in the right direction would be appreciated.
Click to expand...

Try a beta BIOS. I had similar experience with the non-TH board using the release BIOS.

If you still have trouble try using a SATA drive for the installer instead of a USB drive. I used a usb-sata adapter on an iMac to create the installer, then attached directly to a sata header on the hackintosh. One note is that UniBeast has trouble with big partitions. I had to create a small 16G partition on the sata hdd before it would install.
 
I will check when I get home, quick look at the gigabyte site shows F3 as current and no betas at least on the download page. I think mine is already at F3, will check. Thanks !
 
Thanks for the link, GA-Z170X-UD5 TH F4b can't actually hit the link blocked at work. hopefully has a list of changes also.
 
Helluva said:
Can you post the attached config and kext you've used for your setup? Also what did you change in the BIOS? Thanks a lot.

Edited : Im also stuck at the "waiting for root device" w/ that disallow icon. (Freeze screen) ; Ive tried all boot flags possible and still no result.
Click to expand...

Hi! Here is my bios changes - but first of all you should load defaults settings.
So you should go to Advanced -> CPU configuration - > intel virtualization (disabled)
-> VT-d - (disabled)
-> SATA Mode - (AHCI)
->XHCI Hand - off (enabled)
-> Secure boot -> OS Type - (other os)

In latest bios version ASUS was removed APIC option. So you need to apply a patch (it possible to do by clover). You should download config.plist that tonymacx earlier have attached and replace the default config.plist (please do before backup). It is included all patches that you needed. After that you must put USBInjectAll.kext (it's important) to "Other" folder in the EFI directory created by clover (sorry for my english). Also you can put any other kexts - for example for PS/2 keyboard/mouse).

May be I forgot something, so you guys correct me please.

P.S.
For now not working ethernet, integrated graphics card (50/50), sound, USB3.1
So here my plan to fix the issues
1. Graphics - I bought Nvidia GTX 980
2. Ethernet - I made order of Azurewave Broadcom PCI-E module and I'm waiting the shipping from China (1-2 weeks I hope) , because I have WiFi only in my working room now
3. Sound - I'll use external USB sound card(lexicon alpha)

I'm not sure that everything will smoothly, but I hope that.

So good luck!
 
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