- Joined
- Mar 29, 2013
- Messages
- 19
- Motherboard
- AsRock X570 Gaming 4
- CPU
- AMD Ryzen 3700
- Graphics
- Radeon 5700XT
- Mobile Phone
Wanted to let everyone know that I was able to successfully install 10.12.5 on a GA-X99P-SLI/i5820K combination. And the USB-C/Thunderbolt works!
Now, this is NOT a guide. Think of it as more of a report of a work in progress.
HARDWARE:
Almost from the beginning I experienced little glitches along the way, such as every time Win10 automatically updated, the update failed and Windows rolled itself back. The Mac side worked pretty well, but every once in a while I couldn't get the BIOS to POST. I tried updating the BIOS through several versions, but the issues remained.
A couple months ago the system refused to recognize Seagate SATA drives. WD, no problem, but Seagates were a no go. Weird!
Finally, 2 weeks ago every drive in the system except the Windows boot and MacOS boot drives were suddenly corrupted. Like, totally corrupted. I took them all out and tried them in other, known working systems and all 4 (WD Black) drives refused to mount.
I'd had enough and resolved to toss that mobo. Thunderbolt is a critical need for me because my audio interface for my work is a Universal Audio Apollo w/TB card. I saw that Gigabyte had a motherboard with the new TB3 built in. Most of the other subsystems used identical or very similar components. I intended to just give in and go Windows since the X99 hack had been quite a lot of work and headache.
Ordered the motherboard from Amazon, swapped out the old X99-UD4, got everything connected up and cables cleaned up, but couldn't understand why it would not see my m.2 Windows boot drive. Duh! The old mobo used a SATA m.2 interface, the new one PCIe. Since I didn't couldn't boot that drive, on a whim I thought, "I wonder what would happen if I put my old MacOS boot drive in. Afterall, the hardware was similar. It booted up without issue!
Got me to thinking: I wonder if I could install Sierra? Mostly followed this guide:
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...sierra-10-12-clover-guide-100-working.203769/
Boom! Success the first time!
Then discovered that I would need an adapter for the Apollo to talk to the TB3 on the motherboard anyway so ordered this:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EJ4XL08/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
Plugged it up and it found my Apollo, updated the firmware, and worked flawlessly for 8 hours yesterday! The only anomaly is that when you go to About This Mac it says "No Thunderbolt drivers are loaded", but it's lying to you. The Thunderbolt appears to work perfectly fine. Noted, I don't have any other TB peripherals, so can't check it with drives, etc., but what I have works like a charm.
I've since been able to restore all my data from a Time Machine backup.
So far the only issue I discovered is that I'm not convinced all my USB 3 ports are running at full speed, and power management doesn't work, but this is a workstation so I would disable most of the PM capabilities anyway. If I can get that USB 3 sorted out I may never install Windows on this machine!
Now, this is NOT a guide. Think of it as more of a report of a work in progress.
HARDWARE:
- Gigabyte GA-X99P-SLI motherboard
- i5920K CPU
- GTX960 graphics
- 64GB RAM
- various Western Digital Black HD's
Almost from the beginning I experienced little glitches along the way, such as every time Win10 automatically updated, the update failed and Windows rolled itself back. The Mac side worked pretty well, but every once in a while I couldn't get the BIOS to POST. I tried updating the BIOS through several versions, but the issues remained.
A couple months ago the system refused to recognize Seagate SATA drives. WD, no problem, but Seagates were a no go. Weird!
Finally, 2 weeks ago every drive in the system except the Windows boot and MacOS boot drives were suddenly corrupted. Like, totally corrupted. I took them all out and tried them in other, known working systems and all 4 (WD Black) drives refused to mount.
I'd had enough and resolved to toss that mobo. Thunderbolt is a critical need for me because my audio interface for my work is a Universal Audio Apollo w/TB card. I saw that Gigabyte had a motherboard with the new TB3 built in. Most of the other subsystems used identical or very similar components. I intended to just give in and go Windows since the X99 hack had been quite a lot of work and headache.
Ordered the motherboard from Amazon, swapped out the old X99-UD4, got everything connected up and cables cleaned up, but couldn't understand why it would not see my m.2 Windows boot drive. Duh! The old mobo used a SATA m.2 interface, the new one PCIe. Since I didn't couldn't boot that drive, on a whim I thought, "I wonder what would happen if I put my old MacOS boot drive in. Afterall, the hardware was similar. It booted up without issue!
Got me to thinking: I wonder if I could install Sierra? Mostly followed this guide:
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...sierra-10-12-clover-guide-100-working.203769/
Boom! Success the first time!
Then discovered that I would need an adapter for the Apollo to talk to the TB3 on the motherboard anyway so ordered this:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EJ4XL08/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
Plugged it up and it found my Apollo, updated the firmware, and worked flawlessly for 8 hours yesterday! The only anomaly is that when you go to About This Mac it says "No Thunderbolt drivers are loaded", but it's lying to you. The Thunderbolt appears to work perfectly fine. Noted, I don't have any other TB peripherals, so can't check it with drives, etc., but what I have works like a charm.
I've since been able to restore all my data from a Time Machine backup.
So far the only issue I discovered is that I'm not convinced all my USB 3 ports are running at full speed, and power management doesn't work, but this is a workstation so I would disable most of the PM capabilities anyway. If I can get that USB 3 sorted out I may never install Windows on this machine!
