X58 and OS X El Capitan? (X58A-UD3r)

[justr]

Hey all together (especially audioguyjosh),

does anyone have running El Captain on X8SIL?
I am thinking about buying a SuperMicro X8SIL either with a Xeon X3440 or an i5.
There is a pretty good offer at eBay.

I'd like to run it as a El Cap Server stored in a small network rack.
So the Xeon version seems to be the better option.
What do you think?

Or would you recommend something different?

Looking forward to your reply.

Thanks,
session

No experience here, but a suggestion:

Don't use X58 for an always-on server. The platform is super energy inefficient at idle and low clock-speeds compared to more contemporary processors-- particularly the 45nm X58 cpus. I could see some reasons for using an Xeon L5639 (60 Watt, hex-core X58/LGA 1366 CPU), but even so the mobo consumes so much power at idle that it's really not ideal for a server these days.

I would think that it's just not worth the hassle to get going for an old platform for server use.

 

[sessionpeschen]

Hi justr,

thanks for the reply.
Any suggestions for an always on server? It shoudl not be too expensive.
Aiming at let's say € 300 in total.

Regards,
session

 

[justr]

Everything seems to work pretty damn well on my setup now. In fact, power management seems far better than with Chameleon-- I'm now getting that 23X turbo bin on up to 2 cores, and my single-thread performance in Cinebench r11.5 and r15 and Geekbench 3 has jumped a solid 15-30%!

There are a few low-impact niggles remaining:

1. I cannot get Clover to appear on my screen at 2560 x 1440 (it looks more like 768p). The OS loads at full resolution, but no matter what edits I make I just don't seem to get said resolution at the bootloader-- despite getting it, or close to it, with the USB installer and identical edits!

2. Clover doesn't see my Win7 partition/install at the bootloader, though I can see it when I use the USB install I created, and the disk is accessible once I'm in the OS.

3. Clover/OS is only seeing 5 DIMM slots (I only have 4 populated, 4x8GB, but may way to go to 48GB at some point). I'm using MacPro 5,1 and a Xeon X5650.

4. I don't trust the temperature readings I'm getting from HWSensors/iStat, since they are a good 5-8 C lower than I was getting in Chameleon at idle-- and at idle they're often within 1-2 deg of what I think my ambient is. Those temps don't go up much at all in single-thread tasks! I do get up to 60 C when I really saturate all cores benching. Exporting A7rII RAW files in Lightroom only hits mid to high 50s.

5. The FL110 USB 3 card works a treat! But, as with when I used on-board USB 3 in Chameleon/Yosemite, it has the classic interference with my USB Magic Mouse, causing it to be a bit laggy/jittery on movement-- even though I have the Apple/Broadcom Wifi/Bluetooth PCI card in the very top slot (x1) and the USB3 card in the very bottom slot (x16), and I'm only using the front-case/internal USB header. I wonder if there is a way to shield the card/cable without causing issues?

In general, I'm not happier with Clover than I was in Chameleon, if for no other reason than the finicky power management issue that prevented me from getting the 23X bin is now resolved-- and my single-thread benching scores show a huge improvement.

Hi justr,

thanks for the reply.
Any suggestions for an always on server? It shoudl not be too expensive.
Aiming at let's say € 300 in total.

Regards,
session

Sorry, I don't. I think you're better asking this sort of question as a stand-alone thread in the buying advice section of this forum rather than a thread focused on such an old platform as X58 (since, presumably, many of us only have that system at our disposal).

 

[fredfries]

Will any of this work for ASUS Sabertooth P67?

 

[fredfries]

Will step 4. and 5. of this work for ASUS Sabertooth P67?

OK retested the X58A-UD3R with the following observations/results:

1. Format the USB Master Boot Record not GUID or boot0af error
2. Clover Legacy Boot Mode must be used
3. USB 2.0 port must be used- try different ones
4. Standard Legacy Boot Mode UniBeast ACPI fixes: FixHPET FixDTGP
5. Additional ACPI fixes: FixDarwin FixIPIC AddMCHC FixUSB

After these changes, it booted to OS X El Capitan USB installer! Thanks to everyone who's posted results here so far.

Here is the config.plist:

 

[fredfries]

This worked for ASUS Sabertooth P67 as well.

OK retested the X58A-UD3R with the following observations/results:

1. Format the USB Master Boot Record not GUID or boot0af error
2. Clover Legacy Boot Mode must be used
3. USB 2.0 port must be used- try different ones
4. Standard Legacy Boot Mode UniBeast ACPI fixes: FixHPET FixDTGP
5. Additional ACPI fixes: FixDarwin FixIPIC AddMCHC FixUSB

After these changes, it booted to OS X El Capitan USB installer! Thanks to everyone who's posted results here so far.

Here is the config.plist:

 

[gregcotten]

Everything seems to work pretty damn well on my setup now. In fact, power management seems far better than with Chameleon-- I'm now getting that 23X turbo bin on up to 2 cores, and my single-thread performance in Cinebench r11.5 and r15 and Geekbench 3 has jumped a solid 15-30%!

There are a few low-impact niggles remaining:

1. I cannot get Clover to appear on my screen at 2560 x 1440 (it looks more like 768p). The OS loads at full resolution, but no matter what edits I make I just don't seem to get said resolution at the bootloader-- despite getting it, or close to it, with the USB installer and identical edits!

2. Clover doesn't see my Win7 partition/install at the bootloader, though I can see it when I use the USB install I created, and the disk is accessible once I'm in the OS.

3. Clover/OS is only seeing 5 DIMM slots (I only have 4 populated, 4x8GB, but may way to go to 48GB at some point). I'm using MacPro 5,1 and a Xeon X5650.

4. I don't trust the temperature readings I'm getting from HWSensors/iStat, since they are a good 5-8 C lower than I was getting in Chameleon at idle-- and at idle they're often within 1-2 deg of what I think my ambient is. Those temps don't go up much at all in single-thread tasks! I do get up to 60 C when I really saturate all cores benching. Exporting A7rII RAW files in Lightroom only hits mid to high 50s.

5. The FL110 USB 3 card works a treat! But, as with when I used on-board USB 3 in Chameleon/Yosemite, it has the classic interference with my USB Magic Mouse, causing it to be a bit laggy/jittery on movement-- even though I have the Apple/Broadcom Wifi/Bluetooth PCI card in the very top slot (x1) and the USB3 card in the very bottom slot (x16), and I'm only using the front-case/internal USB header. I wonder if there is a way to shield the card/cable without causing issues?

In general, I'm not happier with Clover than I was in Chameleon, if for no other reason than the finicky power management issue that prevented me from getting the 23X bin is now resolved-- and my single-thread benching scores show a huge improvement.




Sorry, I don't. I think you're better asking this sort of question as a stand-alone thread in the buying advice section of this forum rather than a thread focused on such an old platform as X58 (since, presumably, many of us only have that system at our disposal).

You should update your first post on the thread with a step by step!

 

[shdwkeeper]

Would love to see a step by step to get this working properly without going through every thread and trying to piece mail this all together.

All the best

 

[btwnwlds]

Step By Step for X58A-UD3R and El Capitan

Here is a step-by-step guide that details how I upgraded my hackintosh from Snow Leopard 10.6.8 to El Capitan. This guide is a hybrid of TonyMac's "Unibeast: Install OS X El Capitan...," posts #168, #183, #194 from the current thread, post #93 from: http://www.tonymacx86.com/bootloaders/145429-clover-old-guard-ga-x58a-ud3r-rev-2-0-a-10.html, and other threads and posts that I probably forgot about. Many thanks to those who posted before me. No thanks to those who left it for me to create this step by step.

1. As others have recommended, it is a good idea to clone your existing hack onto a secondary drive using Carbon Copy Cloner or Clonezilla in case you have any unrecoverable problems. Begin the installation process by disconnecting all peripherals, except for USB keyboard and USB mouse and monitor connected DVI to DVI, all hard disks, expect for Snow Leopard disk that will end up as El Capitan, all PCI and PCIe cards except for graphics, and all CD/DVD drives except for one. I left my RME HDSP 9632 (PCI) audio card connected, as I would like to use it for audio production (See POSTSCRIPT below).

2. Adjust BIOS Settings.

First select “Load Optimized Defaults”
Change Boot Priority: CD/DVD first, Hard Disk second
Change ICH SATA from IDE to ACHI
Change HPET Mode to 64-bit mode

NOTE: The following differences were indicated in the screen shots linked to the TonyMac install guide for El Capitan and X58A-UD3r:

• Enable USB mouse (my USB mouse is working without enabling)
• Disable Full Screen LOGO Show (relates to the Gigabyte splash screen which I want enabled)
• Change eSATA to AHCI (controls the rear panel yellow USB/1394/eSATA ports which work with this set to IDE).
• Change GSATA3 to AHCI (controls the internal white SATA ports [6, 7] connected to the Marvel 9128 chip which I do not need; the ICH10R chip sounds better).
• GSATA2 (internal white SATA ports [8, 9] connected to the Gigabyte chip, which I do not need; the ICH10R chip sound better).

2. Boot up existing hackintosh (mine was Snow Leopard 10.6.8). Next download El Capitan from the App Store; it should automatically be saved to the Applications folder. If it prompts you to proceed with the installation, click Mac OS X Install from the top menu and quit the install. Insert a 8GB or larger USB drive into a USB 2.0 port, open Disk Utility and format the USB drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with 1 partition using Master Boot Record as the Partition Map Scheme (not GUID Partition Table), and name the drive “USB.”

3. Download UniBeast 6.1.1 from TonyMac, and run it. Click Continue, Continue, Continue, Continue, Agree. At Destination Select, choose USB and click Continue. At Select OS Installation choose El Capitan and click Continue. At Bootloader Configuration choose Legacy Boot Mode and Continue. At Optional Graphics Configuration, select Inject NVIDIA (this worked best for my card, different graphics cards require different procedures), and Continue. At Verify Install Options click Continue. After the UniBeast install is complete, which could take 30 minutes or more, copy DSDT from existing hackintosh to EFI > Clover > ACPI > Patched folder on the USB drive.

4. Reboot, tap F12, and boot to the USB drive. At the Clover boot screen choose External “Boot Mac OS X from USB” and Enter. At the OS X installer click Continue, Continue – Agree. At the Install OS X screen, go to the menu bar at the top and click Utilities > Disk Utility. Select the disk you want to install El Capitan onto and select Partition. Make sure that the Scheme is set to GUID Partition Map, name the disk El Capitan, and Format to OS X Extended (Journaled), click Apply. Quit Disk Utility, select El Capitan and click Continue. After the Install is complete it will reboot automatically, as it does tap F12 and boot to the USB drive.

5. At the Clover boot screen choose "HFS" (your El Capitan disk) and hit enter. You will be prompted to setup El Capitan. After setup is complete and you are at the desktop, go to Preferences > Energy Saver > Computer Sleep and set it to Never, and uncheck “Put hard disks to sleep…” to prevent problems waking the machine from sleep. Download El Capitan Post-Install Tools folder form TonyMac, then install Clover_v2.3k_r3320-Legacy.pkg, and then, install CustoMac Essentials.

6. Next download and run Clover Configurator. At the bottom of the home window, locate the config.plist file in EFI > EFI > Clover and double-click it—this will mount/load the settings within the plist into the Configurator. In the ACPI window, whatever fixes are contained in the plist will be selected/checked. The following appeared for me: FixHPET, AddDTGP, FixHDA, and FixIPIC. I then added/selected the following fixes: AddMCHC, FixShutdown, FixUSB, and FixDarwin. In addition, you should see your DSDT file in the space next to “DSDT name.” Next click the Graphics tab on the left and within that window configure your graphics. I unchecked “Inject Intel,” because I do not have onboard graphics, and then selected Inject NVIDIA. Next click the SMBIOS tab, press Magic Wand Icon on the right, select the MacBook Pro icon, and then choose MacPro 5,1 from the drop down menu. Finally click File > Save, close Clover Configurator, and reboot.

7. To get onboard audio working, download the VodooHDA.kext from Source Force, install it and reboot. For good measure, download and run Kext Utility "El Capitan" Ready 2.6.4.

POSTSCRIPT: So far, I have been unable to get my RME HDSP 9632 sound card working in El Capitan. It works fine in Snow Leopard 10.6.8 using the hdsp_173_x86.gz driver but not in El Capitan. With the card installed, no device is shown in About this Mac > System Report > Hardware > PCI. The following thread addresses in detail why this card does not work in El Capitan:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/45037-rme-hdsp-macosx-x86-drivers-released/page-7

To summarize, the problem is in part due to OS X, since LION, running exclusively in 64bit mode. The problem is also in part due to Apple no longer including PCI interfaces in their builds, and RME being unwilling to create a driver for a configuration that only exists in hackintosh land. One user (post #139 in the thread linked above) details the challenge of patching an RME driver for use in newer versions of OS X. Check out this thread where some folks really go at it with an RME rep:

https://www.forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?pid=63591#p63591

If anyone has any new information about getting this card working in El Capitan, I would greatly appreciate it.

 

[djmichaelwenz]

Thanks everyone, I am looking to update to El Capitan. Quick question. There is a lot of information on here and I am new to clover. I have a Yosemite build and it works perfectly and has for a long time. I am going to make a clone of my build. I am understanding there is a new way with a UEFI bios and that having the X58 will be in legacy mode. Forgive me for being ignorant but can I just update from the app store and use clover and unibeast? I have updated my Hackintosh before like that. Am I never going to get iMessage working without Clover or a UEFI bios? Sorry, there is so much information here its incredible. Thanks a lot guys!