tonymacx86's Haswell mATX: GA-Z87MX-D3H - i7-4770K - HD 4600

[Stork]

Apple does not support VGA with Intel Integrated Graphics. You'll have to use the DVI, HDMI or DP connects on the motherboard. Additionally, OS X does not support VGA on most recent graphics cards, either.

 

[w32parite]

nice build

plan to buy the same motherboard for a new build.

i read the board has vt-d support ? -think this is only on q chipsets supported ?

is there a possibility to leave vt-d enabled and install mavericks, because i need this feature fur different vitualizing projects for my study.

greetings.

 

[altivec128]

do not care about that, it's normal… 3,5 is the base clock, 3,9 is the top boosted frequency.
that's what the bios recognizes about your cpu, and referring to ram setting.
when the speedstep technology is active the correct multiplier is 39, so all seems normal in your hackintosh.

i had some issue due to some ram that causing the bios to see the cpu as 3,5 base clock but 3,7 as bost clock.
it seems i solved buying other ram (g-skill kit from gigabyte tested ram PDF) and now bios and osx see the correct cpu speed.

 

[worldwidewes]

do not care about that, it's normal… 3,5 is the base clock, 3,9 is the top boosted frequency.
that's what the bios recognizes about your cpu, and referring to ram setting.
when the speedstep technology is active the correct multiplier is 39, so all seems normal in your hackintosh.

i had some issue due to some ram that causing the bios to see the cpu as 3,5 base clock but 3,7 as bost clock.
it seems i solved buying other ram (g-skill kit from gigabyte tested ram PDF) and now bios and osx see the correct cpu speed.

Think you were replying to me? Thanks and you're right. It was really weird because my RAM is 1866 speed so I manually changed in BIOS that seemed to lock my frequency at 3.9 and changed my CPU voltage without touching anything else. Once I select XMP profile1 for the memory (whatever the heck that does) and changed RAM clock to 1866, everything seems to work better, at least in windows the clock doesn't lock at 3.9 and Mavericks with the HWMonitor installed, I can watch it adjust itself from multiplier 8, to 35,36,37,38,39 so it definitely seems to be working fine. I found that it seems the speedstep is limited to those frequencies in Mavericks at least as far as I know. I was mainly concerned because I was seeing high temps, I found that one of the pins holding my stock CPU cooler wasn't properly snapped into place (takes much more pressure than I wanted to give it to snap in). I've also been able to lower my vcore voltage to about 1.1v and everything still seems stable. On windows running a stress test temps reached about 85c which is hot but seems about right after doing some research on my own these haswells run hot especially without an aftermarket cooler.

 

[altivec128]

yes replying you, XMP profile 1 ram seems the best suited to work with haswell platform…
i tried pure 1600mhz ram but has wrong cpu clock and voltage, so get a gskill kit and selecting XMP profile 1 got cpu recognized at right clock and voltage.

regarding the temp i suggest to get rid of stock cooler… is noisy and poorly efficient.
get any 30 to 50 $ better cooler and you'll have a better cooled and silent pc.

 

[lokin]

Have we figured out the random system freezes for this board yet?

I've been reading around and I'm so far running FreezeFix, Nvidias Web drivers and the F6 BIOS update.

Though it has helped hugely I am still getting freezes every now and then (makes me anxious, lol).

Just a note to all those considering this board it can have freezing issues.

 

[altivec128]

few days ago new bios for my z87x-OC mobo came out...check if a F7 bios is released for your mobo too

 

[Stork]

few days ago new bios for my z87x-OC mobo came out...check if a F7 bios is released for your mobo too

F6 came out in late January (2014) for the Z87MX-D3H.

 

[jaekwong]

Sounds like this combo is a bit of a miss? Freeze issues, driver issues - i was considering this combo, but would you guys not recommend this to a newbie looking to build a mATX hackintosh

 

[zweckmehl]

This is the most Mac-Like Hackintosh-Build i ever completed! My GA-Z87MX-D3H Mainboard came with BIOS F2, so the First Step i did was installing F6. Set the BIOS to "Optimized Defaults" as recommended by tonymac. Then i installed 10.9 as usual with UniBeast. Restarted again with UniBeast. Next was Online-update to 10.9.1.

The 4 PCI(e) Slots of my Board are populated with:
- GTX 660 2GB VRAM GigaByte (took one slot, blocked the second)
- Sonnet PCie Gigabyte Ethernet Card (works OOB)
- WLAN Card TP-Link WND4800 (works OOB)

After 10.9.1 update i configured UniBeast exactly like tonymac did, but without Ethernet (not needed). I then booted again to BIOS and disabled onboard Ethernet and onboard Graphics. All 6 SATA-Ports are connected to HDs, DVD and one SSD 240GB (Mushkin). Booting is very fast with this System. Sleep works, but wake from Sleep stalled Bluetooth and the system hangs. So i disabled Sleep. iMessage didn't work first, but thanks to NVRAM (and this thread) a solution was found. I used this System now several days without a single issue other then that. The i5-4670K is really fast and more then adequate for my uses.

I have 4 Corsair VENEGANCE 4GB Modules in this Board. They work stable at 1333MHz, trying 1600 (XMP1) gives me hangs, so i stay with 1333 and will eventually buy 2 new 8GB Modules which are more compatible with XMP1. But i think 1600 vs 1333 didn't make much of a difference in day2day work.

What's remarkable about this board is that we didn't need a dedicated USB3-Driver. USB 3 works OOB. I also tried 2 other graphic-cards (GT 640, HD 6870) both worked instantly (plug and play) without any issues. At the end i used the GTX 660 which seems the best to me for this system. As Monitor i use a 27" DELL U2713HM@2560x1440.

I'm very Happy with this Build now and use it as my main system. My 15" MacBook Pro Retina (late 2013) will be used in the living room and on the go.

My conclusion after several years Hackintosh: This is about as good as it could get! Within 30 Minutes to a few hours you can get a High-End iMac-class Machine working fast and stable, thanks to this (or similar) GigaByte Z87-Board(s) and the helpful folks here on tonymacs Forum.