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[Success] ASRock Z270M Extreme4, socket 1151 - Intel Core i7-7700K - GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1050 Ti

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OMK

Joined
Aug 10, 2017
Messages
14
Motherboard
Asrock Z270M Extreme4 Z270
CPU
Intel Core i7-7700K, 4,2 GHz Kaby Lake
Graphics
Radeon RX 580
Mac
  1. MacBook
  2. MacBook Air
  3. MacBook Pro
  4. Mac mini
Mobile Phone
  1. Android
  2. iOS
OMK's The O-Build 2017:
ASRock Z270M Extreme4 - i7-7700K - GTX 1050 on Sierra and High Sierra

Components

ASRock Motherboard Motherboards Z270M Extreme4
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N7CKVW9/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

Intel 7th Gen Intel Core Desktop Processor i7-7700K
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MXSI216/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Windforce OC 4G
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M6Y671T/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 DRAM 2400MHz (PC4-19200) C14 Memory Kit - Black
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0134EU9YA/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

Samsung 850 EVO 500GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal SSD
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OBRE5UE/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

LG 24UD58-B 24-Inch 4K UHD IPS Monitor

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LPNKFK0/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

Thermaltake Water 3.0 Extreme S 240mm
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00O08FWTM/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

Corsair AX Series, AX760, 760 Watt (760W), Fully Modular Power
Supply, 80+ Platinum Certified

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A0HZMEM/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

Thermaltake Core V21
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00PDDMN6S/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

IOGEAR Blutooth 4.0 USB GBU521
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007GFX0PY/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

EDITS
This post is being updated as I learn.
2017-08-24: Notes on Magic Mouse and Dual boot, and wake from sleep problem described in more detail
2017-08-25: Edit on the Audio Setup and clarification on install of the EmuVariableUEFI-64 driver
2017-08-26: Edit on the Magic Keyboard in dual boot... not quite working.
2017-09-03: Edit wake on sleep now working.
2017-09-10: Changed sound setup to use VoodooHDA
2017-09-11: Added section about FAN settings in bios.
2017-09-12: Redacted parts of the previous edit
2017-10-08: Added Update to High Sierra section
2017-02-04: Added comment about stalling during update to 13.3.3

Comments

This is my first Hackingtosh build. It is ment to replace a Mac Mini 2011 version. I wanted to have something new in place before that system dies, and since the the future of the Mac Mini is a bit uncertain, and the flexibility/extendibity of Apple hardware has been a challenge I started eying my own build.

The install described here was done with Sierra. See below for the upgrade to High Sierra.

Since I want a general purpose machine for the next few years I decided to go for a high-end install that allows for relatively silent operation. Hence the choice for the water cooler and the power supply (0db at 50% operation). All in all I went over-board.

I took quite some time reading up on this and other forums before deciding on a Kaby Lake/Z270/Pascal based system. The Delphius' Build and the fact that Sierra 10.12.6 natively supports the Kaby Lake was the deal maker.


Installation Notes

  • I followed the Delphius Build as the outline for the install. I ordered a USB 2.0 Head and did not try to install over the 3.0 USB interfaces.
  • The settings in the Bios (version UEFI: Z270M p2.10): I disabled Fast boot and disabled Boot/CSM(compatibility Support Module), to prevent BIOS based boots. A somewhat unrelated setting is that the CASE FAN needed to be set on DC in order to not run at higher RPM all the time.
  • The system is a dual boot system. I first unplugged the first SATA SSD to install Windows on the second SSD. This is not a Windows forum, but I hope I'll be forgiven for a few notes. To force UEF Install I created, on a windows-based laptop, a Windows 10 USB using RUFUS. During the install of Windows 10:
    • When you get to it, Click/tap on the Custom: Install Windows only (advanced)
    • Delete all partitions/volumes on the Drive # (ex: Drive 0) that you want to install Windows 10 with UEFI on until that Drive # shows as unallocated space. Next and a default partition table will be created:
      • Partition 1 - Recovery
      • Partition 2 - System - The EFI System partition that contains the NTLDR, HAL, Boot.txt, and other files that are needed to boot the system, such a drivers.
      • Partition 3 - MSR - The Microsoft Reserved (MSR) partition that reserves space on each disk drive for subsequent use by operating system software.
      • Partition 4 - Primary - Where Windows is to be installed to.

    • After the Windows install I (SATA) unplugged the disk and used UniBeast for the MacOS install on the first disk. Once Clover was installed I could attach the second disk again and the Windows showed up in the boot menu.

  • Video: The Clover install got me to a working version almost right away. It took me a bit of effort to get the NVIDIA drivers to work percistently. Turned out I had to apply step 6 from Solving NVIDIA Driver Install & Loading Problems post. Note: Every time after running MultiBeast (v 9.1 and v9.2) you have to run the Install Clover Bootloader application and reinstall Drivers64EUFI/EmuVariableUEFI-64, or install the Driver using CloverConfigurator.


    CloverScreenShotDriver.png
  • This is the MultiBeast configuration I have after messing about a bit and upgraded to MB 9.2
    • Quick Start > UEFI Boot Mode
    • Drivers > Audio > Realtek ALCxxx > ALC1200
    • Drivers > Audio > Realtek ALCxxx > 100/200 series Audio
    • Drivers > Misc > Fake SMC v6.25-333-g05ef4be.1759
    • Drivers > Network > Intel intelMausiEthernet v2.3.0
    • Bootloaders > Clover v2.4k r4173 UEFI Boot Mode
    • Customize > System Definitions > iMac 18.3
    • Drivers > Graphics > NVIDIA Web Drivers Boot Flag

    Note that after running MultiBeast you also have to use the CloverConfigurator to reset your (board) serial number in the SMBBIOS settings.

  • Getting audio to work was a bit of a bummer. USB audio worked out of the box but the devices were not visible. I followed some of the advice in the "No Audio Devices - Realtek ALC AppleHDA" post, which got me the devices to show up, but without getting the sound to work. Frankly, I did not make notes during this process, but I think I had initally forgotten to install both the ALC1200 and 100/200 series Audio drivers and that after selecting both the devices showed up. It could also be the case that the DSDT patch that I applied allong the way did the trick. ('Rename HDAS to HDEF, Find 48444153, Replace 48444546). Regardless non of that actually gave me audible sound.

    EDIT 2017-09-10
    To get the audio working I eventually installed the AppleALC and Lilu Kexts
    For audio, including HDMI to work, and having an audio panel that appropriately names all outputs, I installed the VoodooHDA version 2.8.8 driver.
    Screen Shot 2017-09-10 at 12.32.47.png

    As an aside: during the initial install I tried the Quick Fix which left me with an unbootable system - an adventure by itself.

  • Wake from Sleep [Edit/Add 2017-09-03]

    After the initial setup I had a problem where wake from Sleep kept the monitor dark. The system still worked, Screen Sharing and/or ssh allow me access the system, make edits, and to reboot cleanly. The same problem occurred when using the other HDMI slot on the monitor (for my laptop) and then switching back to the original HDMI input. The system failed to sync. This has to do with the 'Deep Color' option on the LG monitor. Reseting the monitor to its default values restored the wake/sleep possibility. It turns out that when the monitor is set to 'Deep Color' it will wake properly only if the display is scaled to the maximum 'More Space' setting (maximum i.e. 4k resolution). Any other display setting in combination with the Deep Color monitor setting will prevent the wake-up.
  • I could not get Wake from sleep to work propperl. The screen stays dark even though the machine seems to wake up. I tried some Darkwake settings (0, 2, 8) but could not get anywhere. (see above)
  • The Thermalake case is a bigger than I had imagined. I could have probably created a more compact setup with this gear, but I like the fact it is still expandable.
  • [Added 2017-09-11 and modifies 201709-12] Over the weekend I did some serious Blender rendering which, so was my theory, caused very erratic behavior. After some period of rendering the machine would freeze. In almost all cases that impacted the LAN in such a way that no device connected could communicate. I suspect that the Ethernet interface is left in some weird state, I have not sniffed what happened on the LAN. During troubleshooting I figured that my machine remained remarkably silent. The Fans did not kick in at all. Turned out that in the bios settings I had the CPU and CASE fans set to silent --- given the reports on Kaby Lake temperature spikes I figured I wanted a bit more aggressive settings. Installing FAKE SMC allowed me to monitor the temperature in iStat and the hardware monitor that comes with FakeSMC and after setting some custom values (low speed around 40C, high speed getting close to 70) the system has been stable high temperature has been excluded as the root cause.
High Sierra
[Added 2017-10-08] modified [2018-02-04] to reflect updates to 13.3.3.

The update to High Sierra was almost effortless. I've used the default install, with the default install to APFS. Following the standard update instructions
  • To update the new NVIDIA drivers I had to boot with SIP ENABLED (CsrActiveConfig 0x0). That rendered my USB-keyboard and my mouse unusable. I did not do the full troubleshooting exercise and worked around the issue by connecting to the machine using ScreenSharing/VNC.
  • For sound I had to upgrade to the VoodoHDA drivers for High Sierra.
  • For the update from 13.3.2 to 13.3.3 I had to install FakeSMC.kext in EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other/ otherwise the boot would stall during upgrade.
  • While at 13.3.2 I changed the filesystem to apfs.efi, make sure the apfs.efi driver in
    EFI/CLOVER/drivers64UEFI
The whole exercise including download and typing this took less than an hour.

Summary
  • What Works
    • On-board Ethernet: 1000baseT
    • Display over GTX-HDMI at its full 4k glory NVIDIA and all.
    • Sound over USB and sound-jacks
    • Display Sleep
    • USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 (I did not test speed)
    • Magic Mouse and Magic keyboard, with the IOGear 4.0. Bluetooth dongle (in the USB2.0 slot created with the head, the IOGear dongle fits uncomfortably tightly in the 3.0 slots.) [See Below]
    • Dual Booth on two separate disks from Clover [See Below]
    • Wake from sleep [See Above, 2017-09-3 Edit]
  • What sort of works
    • Getting the magic mouse and keyboard to work in the dual boot scenario took a bit of registry editing.

      [Edit/Addition 20170826:] Every time you connect the USB to lightning cable to the keyboard or the mouse configures new keys (as displayed using sudo defaults read /private/var/root/Library/Preferences/blued.plist). The keyboard and mouse will survive dual-reboots as long as you do connect it to the OS using the USB to lightning cable.
  • What doesn't work
    • Dual monitor setup using two slots on the the GTX. I couldn't be bothered to sort this out.
  • Not used/tested
    • native HDMI
    • sound over GTX HDMI (pretty sure it doesn't)
    • USB 3.1 Interface (it is visible in the system report)
    • WIFI, I have no interface.
Performance

Geekbench 4.0 Score for this system: Single-Core: 5827, Multi-Core: 20141. This seems a bit low compared to the 7k/22k range for other i7-7700k based systems. I have not yet figured out what the root cause of that is, but i am sure that turning on some of the OC features in the bios will certainly crankt the value up a bit.

Geekbench.png

As for the Unigene Heaven Benchmark. Here are two screen shots, one for the default setting, and one for the default setting modified to full the max mode (2560x1600).

Heaven Benchmark 1280x720.png

Heaven Benchmark 12560x1600.png
 
Last edited:
Thank you for posting this up, I have been wrestling with trying to get a nearly identical set up working properly. This should hopefully help.

** are you using Thunderbolt at all? I purchased the asrock thunderbolt PCIe card to go with this board and am hoping to be able to get this working as well.
 
Thanks again for posting your successful build.... I have the same board (ASRock Z270M Extreme4 - non M series) so it looks like this board can work. It appears the only difference in our builds is a NVMe SSD 960 EVO drive (main difference), GTX-1080 and more memory. I too used the Delphius build and the one he based his off of.

My issue is the dreaded wake reboot issue that I have been working on for over a month, everything else seems to work well. I have tried lot of combinations to resolve the issue with no success. I thought disabling CSM would do the trick (like on your system) with a single monitor (two monitors connected stay black coming out of boot) but it rebooted on wake as well. I was wondering if you could drop you EFI/CLOVER config on the reply to this post so I can take a look. Clearly there is something odd or wrong with this config/ hardware combo or something with with ASRock or my board. Any help or thoughts you can assist with would be greatly appreciated.

*Build*
ASRock Z270 Extreme 4/ BIOS Version: P2.20/ i7-7700k
64GB Ram - DDR4-3600
NVMe SSD 960 EVO
nVidia GeForce GTX 1080 FE
- DP Samsung U32D970 4k UDH Monitor
- DVI NEC LCD 1920 x1200
IOGEAR Blutooth 4.0 USB GBU521 - USB EXT
 
Last edited:
I was wondering if you could drop you EFI/CLOVER config on the reply to this post so I can take a look.


Sure... see attached. with the Board Serial and Serial Number redacted.

Note that, for sound, I've loaded the AppleALC and Lilu kernel extensions (they live in EFI/Clover/kext/Other). Don't think that makes a difference...
 

Attachments

  • config-20170905.plist
    6.5 KB · Views: 283
Thanks and wow...! That config has almost running nothing for DSDTs. Perhaps a number of things are patched via SSDTs in the /clover/acpi/patched/* section of Clover. Not sure how that is working according to the the configs I have seen but if so great. Also, on sounds I'm using the Lilu and AppleALC with a 11 injection (like you) and the sound seems to work well at this point.

If you don't mind what I was looking for was a complete zip of the /EFI/CLOVER/* (serials are fake from Clover but no worries on redacting them, I can add them on my side) so I can boot up your complete Clover build including the KEXTs/ SSDTs to see how that works on my system. Perhaps I have too many configs that others have called for but are not needed.

Here is mine attached... Thanks!
 

Attachments

  • EFI_CLOVER.zip
    2.2 MB · Views: 166
Last edited:
Thanks and wow...! That config has almost running nothing for DSDTs. Perhaps a number of things are patched via SSDTs in the /clover/acpi/patched/* section of Clover. Not sure how that is working according to the the configs I have seen but if so great. Also, on sounds I'm using the Lilu and AppleALC with a 11 injection (like you) and the sound seems to work well at this point.


Yes... It is my first build and I've tried to keep changes to the Delphius recipe to a minimum. I am actually pretty happy not to have to get into DSDT editing.

If you don't mind what I was looking for was a complete zip of the /EFI/CLOVER/*


Here you go with redacted serials.

--OMK66


PS. As an aside: When looking at the config.plist in the XCODE plist editor I notice the ConfigName set to 觔 (U+89D4). Which according to google translate means Tendon. Not sure how that config name is generated. I quickly looked at the source code. My C is rusty and my knowledge of the apple APIs is NULL, but as far as I can tell that value is set somewhere in the NVRAM. However printing the nvram content doesn't show a ConfigName nor a byte combination that could be parsed as U+89D4. Ah well... Don't fix what ain't broken.
 

Attachments

  • CLOVER.zip
    12.6 MB · Views: 159
CPU i7 7700k
Asrock z270 extreme 4
EVGA GTX 1060 6GB
16GB RAM DDR4 3000mhz
TP Link n900 wireless card

for some reason, my sound shows up but there is no sound you can hear. Can someone guide me to getting the sound? thank you. I tried the vodooha kext wizard but that didn't work.
 
for some reason, my sound shows up but there is no sound you can hear. Can someone guide me to getting the sound? thank you. I tried the vodooha kext wizard but that didn't work.


To get the audio working I eventually installed the AppleALC and Lilu Kexts, did you install those?
 
When I download those
To get the audio working I eventually installed the AppleALC and Lilu Kexts, did you install those?
When I download those files, what do I do next? asrock z270 extreme 4 MB, GTX 1060 6B GPU. I want the HDMI sound because I have speakers built into my monitor. thank you
 
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