How to build your own iMac Pro [Successful Build/Extended Guide]

[veggieryan]

Do not worry, I have 25 years experience in audio production on Win and OSX platforms and beta testing experience with many major audio software developers. I use Logic and Ableton from the version 3.x/1.x respectively. Now I use latency at 256 samples that should be default for 20 years old machines. I was using Xeon E5-V3 X99 on 10.12. hackintosh, E3-1231V3 with H87 on 10.8-10.11.hackintosh and genuine Mac Pro 3,1 8-Core 10.6-10.8. every time with Logic and Ableton Live. I am sure that this is not my problem and my goal is not searching for problems. And once again, the same behaviour is under Windows 10 as well. This is just the statement that Skylake-X power management use resources differently and is somehow difficult to reach maximum power for real time multithread audio processing. I can make some DAW Bench tests on Ableton to compare the results with Windows machines with the same CPU

poshook: I was experiencing frequent crashes in Logic/Ableton and poor performance with my 7820x. This was especially with the Soundtheory Gulfoss EQ plugin which makes use of AVX instruction sets. Some research revealed that the 7820x cpu's often need to manually set Vcore to 1.2V in your bios to run stable especially with power hungry loads like AVX and low latency audio in general. Sounds unlikely but this fixed my stability issues. See here: https://communities.intel.com/thread/117668?start=30&tstart=0

 

[nachosband]

Behringer UMC204HD but it is not the case of interface. Apogee DUET FW on 1394 TI card with the same results. What interface do you have and what CPU load shows you Ableton with 256 samples and 32 samples / 48kHz? Can you send the picture?

I ask about the interface because recently I had audio breaking up in everything, including Live and Spotify and I solved it by doing a hardware reset on my Apollo Twin MKII (thunderbolt) and disabling ASPM under /Advanced/ Thunderbolt(TM) Configuration/ in BIOS, not sure which of the two solved it but I've been running stable since with very low buffer sizes.

 

[poshook]

I ask about the interface because recently I had audio breaking up in everything, including Live and Spotify and I solved it by doing a hardware reset on my Apollo Twin MKII (thunderbolt) and disabling ASPM under /Advanced/ Thunderbolt(TM) Configuration/ in BIOS, not sure which of the two solved it but I've been running stable since with very low buffer sizes.

I have no stability issues. Can you please make the screenshot of that 64samples latency with the CPU meter in Ableton?

 

[nachosband]

I have no stability issues. Can you please make the screenshot of that 64samples latency with the CPU meter in Ableton?

 

[poshook]

 

[kgp]

I agree @kgp here is my ioreg with Loloflatsix's thunderbolt SSDT

Lets note here that @Loloflatsix file works with his and mine X299 Gigabyte board despite us having different revision models. Should be safe to assume this works with all x299 Gigabyte boards!

@kgp no one is trying to take credit for your hard work, we all appreciate what you have done and continue to do. Lets all take a deep breath that we are all working together to make it even better!

Still I need to know from @Loloflatsix what else he exactly changed in the SSDT-X299-TB3-iMacPro-KGP.aml. His original TB-SSDT was very short when compared with the primer. I don't like passing several days in comparing versions.

As soon I have all details, I can think on how to proceed.

 

[flmmkr]

I updated BIOS to 1401. No issues and no discernible difference in performance.

 

[macs_forever]

Probably works better in an eGPU confit than internally.

Yes, It didn't work OOTB for me. Had to use kernel patch, lilo and whatevergreen but it works perfectly in that configuration.

 

[RuleBreaker01]

Is there an option to set the minimum ratio for CPU? Now it jumps from 12x to 42x, I would like to set it from 36x to 42x.
What I need to change in BIOS to reach stable performance. In audio applications I can get audio drops and the processor in Intel Power Gadget is going on 2-3GHz

AFAIK, the only alternative would be to set to have all cores running at a given speed.

that would pretty much disable most intel power optimisations...

 

[poshook]

AFAIK, the only alternative would be to set to have all cores running at a given speed.

that would pretty much disable most intel power optimisations...

Where in ASRock BIOS I find this option? And will OSX respect this settings from BIOS?