pastrychef's Asus ROG Strix Z370-G Gaming (WI-FI AC) build w/ i9-9900K + AMD 6600 XT

[djeans]

Thanks for the detailed info on your build. I'm trying to do a similar build, but cannot get Mojave to install. It stalls out at 2 minutes remaining when installing from the USB. When I restart I can see the HD as an install option, and when continuing from that, it just hangs at 15 minutes.

Here is my build so far,
ASUS Maximus XI Hero
Intel I9 9900k
Red Devil RX Vega 64
32 Gig Ram G.SKILL TridentZ RGB (4X16)
Samsung 970 EVO 1TB NVMe
Clover 4769

I used your EFI folder from this post, and use the same BIOS settings you recommended.

I would appreciate any suggestions you can give.

Thanks

 

[pastrychef]

Do you gain anything by having a Z390 outside of it being new and some hack experience with one?

Generally, most of the Z390 that I've seen have better VRM than Z370 and the ability to provide more power to the CPU. This can be very helpful when overclocking.

Other than that, there's not much to be gained other than headaches trying to get things working as well as Z370. As we've seen, among the current problems with Z390 are:

• Loss of native NVRAM.
• Apple Wi-Fi/Bluetooth cards with M.2 adaptors may or may not work (depends on motherboard, I think).
• Audio support is a question mark.
• I still haven't seen confirmation that the Intel USB 3.1 gen 2 is actually working at gen 2 speeds.

Loss of native NVRAM sucks. With native NVRAM, if you have a kernel panic, on the next reboot, you will get a panic log. This won't happen if you are using emulated NVRAM.
The Wi-Fi/Bluetooth issue can be largely overcome by using a PCI-e adaptor, but that's just a wast of PCI-e lanes.
I'm not sure why audio isn't working right for some Z390 motherboards, but I expect that it will be ironed out by vit9696.

 

[pastrychef]

Thanks for the detailed info on your build. I'm trying to do a similar build, but cannot get Mojave to install. It stalls out at 2 minutes remaining when installing from the USB. When I restart I can see the HD as an install option, and when continuing from that, it just hangs at 15 minutes.

Here is my build so far,
ASUS Maximus XI Hero
Intel I9 9900k
Red Devil RX Vega 64
32 Gig Ram G.SKILL TridentZ RGB (4X16)
Samsung 970 EVO 1TB NVMe
Clover 4769

I used your EFI folder from this post, and use the same BIOS settings you recommended.

I would appreciate any suggestions you can give.

Thanks

Please try running the install in verbose mode and post a picture of where it is stopping.

For now, you can try a different USB port and/or different USB flash drive. I suggest trying one of the USB 2 ports on the rear of the motherboard.

 

[scottkendall]

Generally, most of the Z390 that I've seen have better VRM than Z370 and the ability to provide more power to the CPU. This can be very helpful when overclocking.

Other than that, there's not much to be gained other than headaches trying to get things working as well as Z370. As we've seen, among the current problems with Z390 are:

• Loss of native NVRAM.
• Apple Wi-Fi/Bluetooth cards with M.2 adaptors may or may not work (depends on motherboard, I think).
• Audio support is a question mark.
• I still haven't seen confirmation that the Intel USB 3.1 gen 2 is actually working at gen 2 speeds.

Loss of native NVRAM sucks. With native NVRAM, if you have a kernel panic, on the next reboot, you will get a panic log. This won't happen if you are using emulated NVRAM.
The Wi-Fi/Bluetooth issue can be largely overcome by using a PCI-e adaptor, but that's just a wast of PCI-e lanes.
I'm not sure why audio isn't working right for some Z390 motherboards, but I expect that it will be ironed out by vit9696.

So you really do not have anything to gain but some headaches to go from z370 to z390 at this point. Does your board not have 3.1 gen2? Mine does and it works not sure about the speed but I can tell you that it hates my USB 2.0 Sound BlasterX G5.

 

[pastrychef]

So you really do not have anything to gain but some headaches to go from z370 to z390 at this point. Does your board not have 3.1 gen2? Mine does and it works not sure about the speed but I can tell you that it hates my USB 2.0 Sound BlasterX G5.

Yeah, not too much to gain other than knowledge and experience. Lol

Yes, my current motherboard has USB 3.1 gen 2. All the Z170, Z270, and Z370 motherboards that have USB 3.1 gen 2 used ASMedia chipsets that are natively supported by macOS. All the Z390 motherboards use Intel USB 3.1 gen 2 and I don't know if macOS has support for them.

I tested the USB 3.1 gen 2 on my current motherboard with a USB 3.1 to NVMe adaptor and saw approximately 1000MB/s transfers read and write, so I know they work.

 

[djeans]

Please try running the install in verbose mode and post a picture of where it is stopping.

For now, you can try a different USB port and/or different USB flash drive. I suggest trying one of the USB 2 ports on the rear of the motherboard.

The verbose mode in clover continues until the installer opens. During the install process I opened the installer log to see where it fails at, here is a picture of the screen when that happens.

 

[scottkendall]

The verbose mode in clover continues until the installer opens. During the install process I opened the installer log to see where it fails at, here is a picture of the screen when that happens.

I would say it is the fact it wants to convert your system to APFS but is unable to convert the volume. It says that you may not be able to install on this volume it can not be converted to Apple file system.

 

[pastrychef]

The verbose mode in clover continues until the installer opens. During the install process I opened the installer log to see where it fails at, here is a picture of the screen when that happens.

It seems to be complaining about file system. Be sure to initialize your 970 EVO as APFS. Mojave will not install on HFS+.

 

[djeans]

It seems to be complaining about file system. Be sure to initialize your 970 EVO as APFS. Mojave will not install on HFS+.

Just tried again, reformatting the drive to APFS instead of MacOS Journaled. Same result, freezes with exact same error message, even with the drive pre-formatted to APFS

 

[zzmadd]

that shouldn't be right.
Try setting the SVID behavior to "best-case scenario" and in "Internal CPU Power Management" the two IA AC/DC Load Line values to 0.01.

@Sofronis you seem to know a few things about overclocking.
On MacOS the AVX offset is not considered. How do you manage to deal with it?
In Windows things are easier. AVX apps are clocked lower.
A well functioning OC in Windows leads to reboot in MacOs when handbrake converts H265.
This is a Rog Strix Z390-I Gaming with i5-8600K running at 5.1 5.1 5.1 5.0 5.0 4.9, LLC 5, 1.34VCore, AVX -2
In Windows handbrake (no Quick Synch) converts H265 at 4.7Ghz and it's hot at around 90
Non AVX Apps like Cinebench lead to the same 90 at 4.9Ghz.
It's a mITX build with a Noctua NH-L9x65 air cooler. It has limitations.
You run a H265 encoding on handbrake in MacOS and the system reboots.

So in the end I have to find a compromise at 4.8 for AVX and non AVX @ 1.345VCore
Is there a way to escape this issue and have non AVX apps run higher?
Thanks a lot.