[GUIDE] Jerivalu’s Build: Fresh 10.11.5, Z170X-UD5 TH, 6700k, Intel HD 530, Thunderbolt, Dual Boot

[zipb]

Ha, no not you Michael. Waiting for news on the Thunderbolt front.

Best of luck, BTW. Handoff & continuity can be a challenge...

 

[michael.tan]

Yeah, I think handoff (?) seems to work. After a reboot to my original installation with the BT and wifi recognised, i was asked to enter a 6 digit code on my iPhone, and now I can send and receive SMS.

Have not tried if apps can work, but i think that can wait.

And yeah, I'm also waiting for TB, although, I don't have anything to connect it to.

 

[jerivalu]

Picking up a drive to test with tomorrow!

 

[Red Chief]

Well, I was about to order this mobo for its high-end audio features (check Tweaktown review), but after reading the whole thread I'm not sure it's worth the trouble. I don't need TB3, but since Apple isn't supporting it and may never will, even USB-C ports are worthless, and maybe I should consider a UD3 instead (UD5 are not available in Europe, where I live).

 

[zipb]

I bought the UD5-TH hoping/expecting TB2/3 will work at some point in the near future.

 

[Red Chief]

Well, I don't think Apple cares much about their Mac Pro expectations, if there are still a few clients for outdated 3000$ computers. I bet they make more profit in a couple hours with iPhone sales, than they do in a whole year with those.

 

[michael.tan]

I bought the UD5-TH hoping/expecting TB2/3 will work at some point in the near future.

me too, actually. But now I am having second thoughts about it too. I'm sort of hoping something changes for the better, as I don't use windows. Ah well.

 

[jerivalu]

Thunderbolt Guide:

I finally got my hands on a portable thunderbolt 1 gdrive for some testing with my startech TB3 adapter (B+H is the cheapest place I could find it, 40 bucks less than amazon/others).

First off let me say that thunderbolt does appear to work, but I've had some issues. Is thunderbolt ready for a production environment with a hackintosh... depends how risky you are feeling.

So now let's get a little bit of background info out of the way.

1. I do have windows installed and did install the windows firmware update for thunderbolt for my motherboard (I don't know if this effects the outcome or not so I wanted to include it)
2. The drive does appear in OSX 10.11 from a fresh boot, without booting into windows first (sometimes I have to restart once and then the drive appears)
3. The drive is not hot swappable and you must plug the drive in pre boot or restart to make it show up
4. In BIOS you must set Thunderbolt Security Level to LEGACY
   

   Intel(R) Thunderbolt_[23-00-31] Copy

   • jerivalu
   • Jun 11, 2016
5. I did try both thunderbolt ports on the motherboard- both seem to work
6. There are lots of little strange bugs that have gone on while I was testing the drive

Now let's talk about the strange bugs I've ran into

• The drive sometimes wouldn't respond while formating/renaming and would crash the computer (I did this test multiple times)
• When I first plugged the drive in, any file over 1.5gb would crash the computer if I tried to transfer it to the drive. I then plugged the drive into my macbook pro and did some transfer tests to see if the drive was bad (which it wasn't). After that, I plugged the drive back into my hackintosh and restarted. Magically the drive could transfer any file fine (and still works after multiple reboots/shut downs).

Here are some pics:

Drive shows up in storage

System report shows nothing in thunderbolt

Disk Speed test for thunderbolt gdrive (I get the same speeds on my macbook pro)

Drive+ adapter

 

[michael.tan]

anybody get sleep/reboot to work nicely yet?

With my onboard graphics, and el capitan, video out through the HDMI port to a HDMI to DVI cable, the screen does not wake up from power saver mode after sleep, and sometimes, after a OS activated restart.

 

[zipb]

@jerivalu:
Thanks for sharing your TB findings. Hmm. So it works, with restrictions. As it always has. I don't mind not having hot swap(though it would certainly be nice) for TB devices, but stability once connected is paramount.
I might get one of these Startech adapters myself(at least these seem to work) for further testing. I'm not planning to install Windows though, so I wonder if the TB firmware update procedure in Win is still mandatory.

Anyone got TB working without Windows?