[SUCCESS] Gigabyte Designare Z390 (Thunderbolt 3) + i7-9700K + AMD RX 580

[HackDeMac]

I just purchased 2 EVO Pluses. I checked them in Windows for the latest firmware first (per these posts 2b2qexm7). I then fresh installed Windows on 1 and hackintosh on the other. In Win the drive read/writes ~3300/3000 respectively (using Samsung Magician)... in Hack it runs a bit slower. If I remember, Blackmagic showed just under 3000 for both. Either way, works great and they are speedy for sure.

Thanks for your reply. I'll have to try and find a PC to upgrade the firmware but fingers crossed it'll be fine.
Thanks again.

 

[tdcam]

I was able to update the firmware by connecting the nvme to the motherboard directly (m2)

Hello @CaseySJ ! I could no try your advices because I left a few days from home, but I'm back to solve the problem of update with my Samsung 970 EVO Plus. I downloaded the ISO Samsung Driver from the official website, launched unetbootin but there are few matters. The USB is most of time not detected by unetbootin, so there's not drive to select at the bottom. This is a main matter to create a bootable USB. I tried with several drives but it seems to be very random. The only times it worked, I put the driver with unetbootin inside the USB but when it was plugged in my Hackintosh and I selected F12 to boot from it, but after there was a black screen again and nothing happened. It happens two times with two different drives. Have you got a solution for the USB before I buy the specific enclosure you adviced for my NVMe M.2 ? Thanks a lot

 

[CaseySJ]

Hi @CaseySJ (or any others with experience in this area). I'm considering having my home and OS folders on separate drives. I've read your instructions in Post #1 and the instructions from @Thaigyver. If I do this and then at some point I need to reinstall from scratch, I'd still need to reinstall applications right? Other than a smaller OS drive to clone back and forth, are there other advantages? I currently have my photos and music libraries on a separate drive and those are the largest folders so I'm already most of the way there. Just wondering what other advantages and disadvantages would come with putting the entire home folder on a separate drive. Many thanks!

When I first assembled my Hackintosh, NVMe SSD prices weren't as low as they are today. So I opted for a 256GB module to accommodate macOS and my applications, and purchased a 1TB SATA SSD for my home folder, which was already 550GB or so from my 2008 Mac Pro 3,1.

That seemed like a good compromise between price and capacity and performance. I wanted the OS to boot quickly and for applications to launch quickly, hence the PCIe NVMe. But my data files were relatively small files -- just a whole bunch of them. So putting them on a SATA SSD made sense.

Today, I find that this kind of separation still makes sense. It allows me to use cheap 256GB SATA SSDs for creating bootable backups (which do not contain my home folder) and the backup finishes more quickly. In fact, I have multiple bootable backups on multiple 256GB SATA SSDs.

I use Acronis TrueImage to backup my home folder to a NAS drive. And I have a TimeMachine backup disk as well. And the NAS drive is itself backed up to a 12TB Western Digital spinning hard drive that is stored off-site.

 

[Ponkass]

All,

This is a fairly common issue. Please search this site using relevant keywords. Also look at the Post-Installation --> Graphics forum and the Catalina Desktop Support forum. You might try enabling CSM Support in BIOS.

If anyone has specific suggestions, please let us know.

@MacMarshall

After a couple of hours of research this is what solved it for me. I used Hackintool:

[GUIDE] Installing 3rd Party Kexts - El Capitan, Sierra, High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina

Installing 3rd Party Kexts in /Library/Extensions Note: This guide was originally written to support MacOS Mojave and older versions (< r5200) of the Clover boot-loader. The methods detailed here are now considered legacy methods and should only used with older versions of MacOS as detailed...

www.tonymacx86.com

I simply hadn't installed the Kexts the right way, which is even more important in Catalina!

 

[iLikeHackintosh]

Important note:

Please check this post linked below as I'm unable to update 2 posts at the same time:

<< Solved >> - Closed: Z390 Designare + Intel Core i9-9900K + Radeon VII

yes its wakes perfectly well with the power button only I can't put my finger on what would prevent it from waking from mouse or key board This might be an USB misconfiguration issue.

www.tonymacx86.com

Post linked above has more relevant and the latest information about topic discussed below.

Which of the suggestions in the Sleep Aid guide have you tried?

Actually I'm trying to not use anything blindly like playing o roulette. There is always a reason for every issue and it's important to know exact reason. if we are sick, it's smart to figure how what's the real illness, instead of trying every medicine that comes in our mind or is available at home. Such behaviour can lead into bigger troubles or just hide some symptoms but the cause is not fixed.

For example the 300-Series RTC patch is originally AsRock Z390 BIOS DSDT Device(RTC) bug fix, which helps when on AsRock 300 series motherboards an initial boot fails or stuck after loading the APFS driver etc.

The patch changes the following query in the _STA method of RTC from

if (STAS == 1) too
if (0xFF or 0xFF) // Always 1

Do you have more detailed explanation about this patch available?

EmuVariableUefi.efi is for emulated NVRAM on case the native NVRAM is not available (or isn't stable for some reasons). According to my knowledge there are conflicting statements about z390 native NVRAM, some claim that if properly patched DSDT is used, native NVRAM should work. Anyway I'm using EmuVariableUefi.efi.

Non-volatile random-access memory (NVRAM) is random-access memory that retains its information when power is turned off (non-volatile). This is in contrast to dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) and static random-access memory (SRAM), which both maintain data only for as long as power is applied.

If there is no some serious bug reported, I'm using always the latest hack kexts. It's very easy to check it with Hackintool.

For example, if I let computer to sleep for 5 minutes, it wakes fine. No issues. Something happens on long sleep. Seems that when comp wakes by-self, it but gets stuck on going back to proper sleep or doesn't wake properly on case self initialised wake.

So sleep works until I don't leave comp for overnight sleep. For example I have left my Z170 comp for day's to sleep (going to travel) and when I come back, it wakes fine.

I don't use darkwake flag on boot but @CaseySJ, your suggestions guide doesn't mention darkwake flag at all. But in your initial post you wrote:

Sleep, Wake, Reboot, Shutdown. Wake from sleep now requires a single keypress. Thanks to @e-troc for the suggestion to use darkwake=0.

I supposed you have to update you sleep suggestions guide, as this doesn't mention the quite important aspect.

The DarkWake feature in Mac OS X Lion or newer that allows to wake up certain parts of your Mac from sleep, while leaving other parts in sleep mode.

Whatever suggestions users may have, I suppose that there are only these flags available now accordion to xnu-4903.241.1/iokit/Kernel/IOPMrootDomain.cpp:

// gDarkWakeFlags
enum {
    kDarkWakeFlagHIDTickleEarly      = 0x01, // hid tickle before gfx suppression
    kDarkWakeFlagHIDTickleLate       = 0x02, // hid tickle after gfx suppression
    kDarkWakeFlagHIDTickleNone       = 0x03, // hid tickle is not posted
    kDarkWakeFlagHIDTickleMask       = 0x03,
    kDarkWakeFlagAlarmIsDark         = 0x0100,
    kDarkWakeFlagGraphicsPowerState1 = 0x0200,
    kDarkWakeFlagAudioNotSuppressed  = 0x0400
};

If we translate hex values into decimals we get this table:

• kDarkWakeFlagHIDTickleEarly = 1
• kDarkWakeFlagHIDTickleLate = 2
• kDarkWakeFlagHIDTickleNone = 3
• kDarkWakeFlagHIDTickleMask = 3
• kDarkWakeFlagAlarmIsDark = 256,
• kDarkWakeFlagGraphicsPowerState1 = 512,
• kDarkWakeFlagAudioNotSuppressed = 1024

Seems that these flags are not used anymore:

    kDarkWakeFlagIgnoreDiskIOInDark  = 0x04, // ignore disk idle in DW
    kDarkWakeFlagIgnoreDiskIOAlways  = 0x08, // always ignore disk idle
    kDarkWakeFlagIgnoreDiskIOMask    = 0x0C

So, for example boot flag darkwake=8 and darkwake=10 are obsolete now as there is no kDarkWakeFlagIgnoreDiskIOAlways defined anymore. Which leads us to next possible combinations:

darkwake=0
darkwake=1
darkwake=2
darkwake=3
darkwake=256
darkwake=257
...

So, as flags are used for bitwise operations, then for example darkwake=10 equals actually to combination darkwake=2 now, which is kDarkWakeFlagHIDTickleLate = hid tickle after gfx suppression.

Catalina 10.15.1 uses xnu-6153.41.3 and Catalina 10.15.2 uses xnu-6153.61.1. The latest xnu source available online is 4903.241.1. If someone can find 6153.41.3, this will be great, so we can dig what Apple has defined for gDarkWakeFlags in this version.

uname -av
Darwin videoStudio.local 19.2.0 Darwin Kernel Version 19.2.0: Sat Nov  9 03:47:04 PST 2019; root:xnu-6153.61.1~20/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64

So I'm going to test various darkwake options now to see the impact. Anyway, @CaseySJ this would be great if you get a chance to test overnight sleep on your comp.

 

[CaseySJ]

Hope you've all had a great start of the 2020!
I've ordered most of the components but have two questions. Any answers will be greatly appreciated:
•I'm looking to order the 970 Evo Plus NVMe M.2 2TB but read some mixed reviews on how it performs. has anyone managed to successfully get this to work on their systems?
•I need recommendations on cooling systems for the i7. The one used by CaseySJ seems great but fairly hard to source as I'm based in the UK. I'm using a 'ThermalTake Versa J23'. Do I need a dedicated CPU cooling system and if so any reasonably priced ones you'd recommend? Thermaltake website says this about the case: "the J23 can fit a tower CPU cooler with maximum height 160mm, and dual expansion slots for VGA up to 310mm in length, and a power supply with length of up to 170mm."
Sorry if this has been covered or if it's too simple for a post. I'm getting there.

There are many good air coolers and liquid all-in-one coolers. High quality air coolers such as those from Noctua can be highly effective. I prefer liquid coolers because they involve a relatively small CPU block in the middle, and they keep everything else locked away at one of the sides of the case.

The J23 supports the following radiators:


For the i7-9700K, a 240mm radiator is sufficient. A 280mm or larger radiator would be advisable for overclocking. As for specific makes and models, various websites and YouTube channels provide head-to-head comparisons. Most name-brand liquid coolers on the market today do a great job.

 

[MacMarshall]

@MacMarshall

After a couple of hours of research this is what solved it for me. I used Hackintool:

[GUIDE] Installing 3rd Party Kexts - El Capitan, Sierra, High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina

Installing 3rd Party Kexts in /Library/Extensions Note: This guide was originally written to support MacOS Mojave and older versions (< r5200) of the Clover boot-loader. The methods detailed here are now considered legacy methods and should only used with older versions of MacOS as detailed...

www.tonymacx86.com

I simply hadn't installed the Kexts the right way, which is even more important in Catalina!

Thanks @Ponkass, I will look at this over the weekend.

Seems like you were also updating from 10.14.6 to 10.15.2, what changes did you have to make to your kexts? I followed the guides here pretty much exactly for 10.14.6 and updating to Catalina. Maybe post a screen shot of your /Library/Extensions and EFI/Clover/kexts/Other folders?

 

[CaseySJ]

@iLikeHackintosh

That's a good summary. I was just tired of sleep/wake reports so I created the Sleep Aid to avoid dealing with those issues again...or at least for a little while! This thread was getting inundated with sleep/wake problems, and the same advice (as in the Sleep Aid) was being repeated daily.

Looks like you're on the right track to hunt down the cause of long-term sleep. Please continue to investigate and report any findings. Alas, I'm staying away from this one...

 

[Schlinnster]

I'm suddenly unable to log into the App Store. iCloud, Messages and Facetime work fine, but not iTunes and the App Store. What could that be? I'm on 10.15.1.

EDIT: I deleted the system preference files and restarted. I now seems to work!

 

[iLikeHackintosh]

I prefer liquid coolers because they involve a relatively small CPU block in the middle, and they keep everything else locked away at one of the sides of the case.

Same here. Both, CPU and GPU radiators can be placed on the case on the way, that heat is immediately sent out of the case. Also bigger radiators can be used.

Actually water cooling is just a more complex air cooling. Heat is carried with liquid into radiator, where liquid is cooled down and sent back to collect heat. If you want easier to manage solution, then air cooling is better option. But if you control more precisely cooling and noise then liquid cooling is better option, as you can play with pump speed, fans speed etc simultaneously.

I personally recommend to use OOB liquid cooling as these are easier to install and maintain. No risk of leaking usually. Below is an example of Z390 with alphacool OOB type coolers. For cpu is used 420 radiator, which gives bigger cooling area and provides more silent system. GPU has also water cooling.