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

[pastrychef]

gottcha ... the instruction "On reboots, select the "Install" partition until it no longer shows up on the Clover boot menu" is key. thank you ...

after automatic restarts, i'm always choosing the usb stick, and it keeps giving me --- so far -- installation partition choices, but ...

how many restarts are there (just for orientation purposes) ... i'm now on number 4; 15 mins, 34 mins, 34 mins and 34 again ... don't remember mac installs having that many restarts, nor exact 34 min repeaters ... feels like somethings off

No, don't choose the Install from the USB flash drive. That just needs to be selected once.

 

[pastrychef]

Good news!!

Asus sent me a pre-release copy of BIOS 1802 and the missing "Primary Display" option is back!!

 

[manitou]

No, don't choose the Install from the USB flash drive. That just needs to be selected once.

Thanks for hanging in there with me pastrychef ... The next time you are in Germany, the first six pack is on me =)

I finally understood what I did "right" during the first installation process, but decided to abandon a second installation on a separate partition and have gone back to tinkering with the first install, which resides on a partition that I didn't erase. Why?

It turns out that the first install was not corrupted during installation: the "MacOS Install Data" wasn't related to an incomplete or botched installation of 10.12.6, but to my having used Migration Assistant to migrate docs, apps etc. from another drive, including unwittingly parts of 10.13.6 used in an attempt to create install media from an interrupted App Store installation of 10.13.6 per Tonymac and Apple Support instructions on how to do that. Since that didn't go so well, I decided to stick with 10.12.6.

So, the first troubleshooting I did was to go back (no bios upgrade, bios changes, etc) and just replace the EFI folder with a pristine copy of yours ("High Sierra"), then tried to boot up from the HD disk it's attached to, and lo and behold, it worked!!!!!!! Just like that! USB stick not necessary any longer!! =) That's a solid EFi you've made for us. I must have read something in a different post and then made an alteration that messed stuff up.

I am sitting in front of a screen with 10.2.6 running off my Seagate drive. Can't believe my eyes ... I'm doing a reboot now just to make sure I'm not dreaming .... yeah , it's real, it booted again. Picts to follow ... Now, the good and the bad news ...

Here's what's working so far (the Good):
--all ram recognized
--Nvidia 1070 mini (haven't installed the second one yet, but I don't expect problems)
--sleep, reawakening etc, no problem
--Belkin pci wifi card works too (but may eventually want to go your way on the wifi connection, especially because an installed 2nd 1070 will make it impossible to also populate the smaller pci with the Belkin)

So far, here's what's not working (the Bad & Ugly):
--no audio: itunes not working, nor quicktime: no music progress bar moving, no sound

If I remember correctly, the audio is supposed to work "out of the box", isn't it? Any suggestions? Maybe something I can add, or take out?

 

[manitou]

Good news!!

Asus sent me a pre-release copy of BIOS 1802 and the missing "Primary Display" option is back!!

Awesome ...
does upgrading the bios mess with the settings, i.e must one reconfigure the values after updating?

 

[kernelpanicd]

Is there a tool that can read the CPU voltage from macOS? The HWSensors/HWMonitor app doesnt report a correct value for me.

 

[pastrychef]

Thanks for hanging in there with me pastrychef ... The next time you are in Germany, the first six pack is on me =)

I finally understood what I did "right" during the first installation process, but decided to abandon a second installation on a separate partition and have gone back to tinkering with the first install, which resides on a partition that I didn't erase. Why?

It turns out that the first install was not corrupted during installation: the "MacOS Install Data" wasn't related to an incomplete or botched installation of 10.12.6, but to my having used Migration Assistant to migrate docs, apps etc. from another drive, including unwittingly parts of 10.13.6 used in an attempt to create install media from an interrupted App Store installation of 10.13.6 per Tonymac and Apple Support instructions on how to do that. Since that didn't go so well, I decided to stick with 10.12.6.

So, the first troubleshooting I did was to go back (no bios upgrade, bios changes, etc) and just replace the EFI folder with a pristine copy of yours ("High Sierra"), then tried to boot up from the HD disk it's attached to, and lo and behold, it worked!!!!!!! Just like that! USB stick not necessary any longer!! =) That's a solid EFi you've made for us. I must have read something in a different post and then made an alteration that messed stuff up.

I am sitting in front of a screen with 10.2.6 running off my Seagate drive. Can't believe my eyes ... I'm doing a reboot now just to make sure I'm not dreaming .... yeah , it's real, it booted again. Picts to follow ... Now, the good and the bad news ...

Here's what's working so far (the Good):
--all ram recognized
--Nvidia 1070 mini (haven't installed the second one yet, but I don't expect problems)
--sleep, reawakening etc, no problem
--Belkin pci wifi card works too (but may eventually want to go your way on the wifi connection, especially because an installed 2nd 1070 will make it impossible to also populate the smaller pci with the Belkin)

So far, here's what's not working (the Bad & Ugly):
--no audio: itunes not working, nor quicktime: no music progress bar moving, no sound

If I remember correctly, the audio is supposed to work "out of the box", isn't it? Any suggestions? Maybe something I can add, or take out?

I didn't know you are running Sierra...

You can try using Audio-ID 1 since you are on Sierra.

I highly recommend that you upgrade to High Sierra for better CPU support.

 

[pastrychef]

Is there a tool that can read the CPU voltage from macOS? The HWSensors/HWMonitor app doesnt report a correct value for me.

I don't know of any app that reports voltage accurately.

I use something like the following to monitor power usage.

 

[manitou]

Will the upgrade to 10.3.6. require me to not only update the nvidia drivers and reinstall your EFI folder (?), but also do something else to make everything work again?

 

[pastrychef]

Will the upgrade to 10.3.6. require me to not only update the nvidia drivers and reinstall your EFI folder (?), but also do something else to make everything work again?

No need to redo the EFI folder. Just make sure you install the correct Nvidia web drivers.

 

[manitou]

No need to redo the EFI folder. Just make sure you install the correct Nvidia web drivers.

That's good news!!

Before I go that route though (which will require backing everything up, the potential of another reinstall of 10.12.06 if there's a problem, etc.), I'd like to try something else first. I'd love to first have a relatively well running version of 10.12.06 before moving on to backing-up, upgrading, etc. (given all the time we put into this =)

With regard to that, thanks again for the audio improvement suggestion for 10.12.06. I will make that change and see if it helps.

As you mentioned in post#1, members have confirmed that this build also runs on 10.12.06. I'm not sure if the CPU is under-performing with 10.12.06, as you suggested it might (haven't run any benchmarks yet), but some stuff seems sluggish (like doing other stuff while copying files from another HD) and the CPUs were overheating when I did some cpu intensive rendering, so I am wondering if you have any obvious other recommendations (in addition to the audio change) of what (like maybe a symbios change to earlier mac version like 18,3?) I should adjust/change in the conf.list or regarding kexts to improve 10.12.06 performance with this build on Sierra?