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

@CaseySJ I am upgrading from i5 9600k TO i9 9900k; is there anything I need to do other than swapping the CPU?
Cheers
Fortunately swapping CPU is truly plug and play. No EFI changes needed.
 
I hosed my Thunderbolt chip up when I tried to flash it on my Designare Motherboard. I've been looking for a replacement board, but they are nowhere to be found. Is there another motherboard that works well with i9's and has TB3, or is there a PCIe TB3 card that you recommend?
 
Please try the attached OC.zip for the Z390 AORUS Master.
  • Copy serial numbers into PlatformInfo before use.
Changes made:
  • Replaced OpenHfsPlus.efi with HfsPlus.efi. At this time we should not use OpenHfsPlus.efi.
  • Disabled SIP by setting it to FF0F0000. You may change this back to 00000000 if the system is stable.
Question:
  • Why does OC folder contain the file BOOTx64.efi? This file should be in EFI/BOOT folder.

Thanks. I will try this after I go home.

bootx64.efi placed under OC folder because I have Windows/Linux using the same esp partition. They like to overwrite bootx64.efi. So I placed it here.

After I flashed NVM 50 firmware, it seems much stable now. But it seems there is no way of flashing the NVM firmware on Designare.
 
Fortunately swapping CPU is truly plug and play. No EFI changes needed.
Sounds great! So I don’t need to change the product name/model?
 
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@CaseySJ, I finally found the real problem - the real problem is the famous XMP freeze is coming back to 11.3.

Both my computer have Radeon VII and Corsair VENGEANCE RGB PRO SL 8GBx4. If I enable XMP, even if I set the memory frequency to DDR-3000, it will freeze. If I turn off XMP, It won't freeze now.

I don't know if this XMP problem is on Corsair or Corsair + Radeon VII.

Maybe some other people using ENGEANCE RGB PRO SL can prove if the XMP+3600 will cause the freeze. If not, then this must be caused by Radeon VII and Corsair combination.
 
Wait, it still freezes, just after I posted reply. I even tried to set Thunderbolt to disabled, and remove the SSDT, and using your OC 0.6.9 EFI with my own serial.

All freeze...

It almost drive me crazy now.
 
I hosed my Thunderbolt chip up when I tried to flash it on my Designare Motherboard. I've been looking for a replacement board, but they are nowhere to be found. Is there another motherboard that works well with i9's and has TB3, or is there a PCIe TB3 card that you recommend?
The Gigabyte GC-Titan Ridge kinda works on the Designare Z390 but not as well as the onboard TB.

What make you think your onboard Thunderbolt chip is "hosed up"' ?
The chip to flash is just a very basic 1MB flash ROM, it's replaceable (with some tricky SMD soldering-fu). But it's very hard to brick unless you physically damage it. (But it's also possible you damaged something else on the board if not careful.)

If it doesn't boot, it may just have a corrupted firmware.
If you can't read it anymore you may just have a bad connection to it.
If you manage to have a good and stable connection to the chip, you may be able to rewrite a correct firmware and solve your issue.

What method did you use to flash the chip ?
The most reliable way is to disconnect everything on the board, take it out on the flat surface :
  • Use a 3.3V CH341A programmer or a Raspberry PI with a SOIC8 clip
  • Stabilize the Vcc rail with additional capacitance, some recommend one 47µF capacitor for the Designare, I had better results with three 10µF.
  • If it doesn't work, add two pull-up resistors (1kΩ-2kΩ) connected to /WP (to force disable write protection) and /HOLD (to force the chip in a resume state).
Here is a picture of my setup :
IMG_0308.JPG
 
I hosed my Thunderbolt chip up when I tried to flash it on my Designare Motherboard. I've been looking for a replacement board, but they are nowhere to be found. Is there another motherboard that works well with i9's and has TB3, or is there a PCIe TB3 card that you recommend?
We can buy a GC-Titan Ridge and install it in the bottom long slot. We should first use it with original firmware and flash the controller only if necessary (chip with the blue dot).
 
Wait, it still freezes, just after I posted reply, I even tried to set Thunderbolt to disabled, and remove the SSDT, and using your OC 0.6.9 EFI with my own serial.

All freeze...

It almost drive me crazy now.
It may be time to do a fresh install on a spare SSD mounted in an external USB 3 enclosure or internally (copy EFI folder to EFI partition of the spare SSD to make it bootable). Without installing any third-party apps (simple utilities are fine), check for system stability. If system is stable, install third-party apps one by one while continuously checking for stability. Eventually all your apps will be installed on the spare drive. Then copy all documents and media files from old disk to new spare SSD so that the spare SSD becomes a fully configured system. Then run macOS from the spare SSD for a few days to ensure stability. If all is well, then carefully erase the internal SSD and clone the spare disk to the internal disk. Make sure to copy EFI folder to the internal disk as well.
 
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