Zipb Z690's DAW/PS/LR Build

Components

ASRock Z690 Steel Legend
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09JM6L6MH
https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813162027

Intel Core i7-13700K (Raptor Lake) Processor
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BCF57FL5
https://www.newegg.com/intel-core-i7-13700k-core-i7-13th-gen/p/N82E16819118414

WD SN850x 2TB NVMe SSD
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B7CMZ3QH
https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16820250247

GC Titan Ridge TB3 card VS1.0/Flashed with firmware 33 (prepared on my Z390, not hard at all)

Already owned
Fractal Design R5 case
Corsair RM750x modulair PSU
Noctua NHD15s CPU cooler
CORSAIR 16GB x 2 DDR4 RAM/3200MHz
LG 43" 4K Monitor
AMD Vega 56/8GB GPU
Sonnet AQ107 10GbE networkcard
Universal Audio UAD2 PCIe DSP card
PCIe Broadcom Wifi/BT module
Metric Halo ULN-8 soundcard
NVME drives/SATA SSD drives
Lots of USB devices


Comments

This is my fifth Hackintosh, and probably the last. I use my Hacks as digital audio workstations(mostly using Logic Pro, Cubase Pro, Bitwig) and for editing and archiving my 80K photo collection (Lightroom and Photoshop).

I can't afford a proper Mac for my needs, even if I wanted to, so I decided this was a good time to do a last build before Intel CPU's are no longer supported. I hope I can use it for another 3 years or so, and then I will probably wave MacOS goodbye. Apple is clearly aiming at clients with little IT or tech knowledge and deep pockets. That's not me.

My Z390 Designare was becoming a bit long in the tooth with some heavy duty DAW sessions with lots of virtual instruments and plug-ins. Still quite usable, no real complaints.
But more CPU grunt and all my sample libraries (5TB) available on fast NVMe drives looked enticing.

Intel got some serious competition from AMD and Apple after years of dominating the CPU market and not improving much. So at the cost of being not very energy efficient, you can now build a much more powerful system.

The pioneers who built the first Alder Lake and later systems published very promising figures, so I knew I could expect a nice boost. I did my homework. (I was worried about the high power and e-cores of which MacOS has no idea but that didn't seem to be a real problem, among other things.) With a proper motherboard/BIOS one can switch the e-cores off, if necessary.

I asked questions on this forum, and with advice from some members I finally decided on the ASRock Z690 Steel Legend motherboard, a fairly simple board with 5 PCIe slots, 3x NVME and Realtek 2.5GbE Ethernet. There was at least one other person, @bootmacos, who built a hack with this mobo, and he/she had been using it as his/her daily driver for at least 6 months without show stoppers or major weirdness. He/she also published a very clear description of the build on this site. This came in handy.

I re-used lots of gear, so I only spent $900 on the ASRock motherboard, the i7-13700K CPU, the TB card and the ultrafast 2TB WD NVMe.

Build
The build went fine. The R5 case is easy to work with, and I already had the right CPU mounting bracket, thermal paste, etc. The giant Noctua CPU cooler blocks easy access to the part of the mobo where a power connector and the CPU fan connector go. So it's easier to plug these in first, then mount the cooler.

I first assembled just the bare system, to make sure everything worked correctly, before filling up the slots, SATA ports, NVMe and attaching all my USB stuff.

I made a USB thumb drive on my Z390 with a Monterey installer using gibmacos, and added the Z690 OpenCore EFI with adapted credentials from @bootmacos:

I didn't change much in the ASRock BIOS (version 9.0.3) CFG lock, etc., where already on the right settings. In the BIOS, you can train the fans with a certain profile (e.g., silent, normal, etc.). I chose silent. This is a very conservative setting. It kicks in a bit too early. I will have a look at this later.

First attempt to boot to the installer didn't work as the structure of your EFI partition has to be EFI/EFI and not EFI/EFI_Z690. Then I got stuck at AppleHDA...the verbose booting would stop there. I replaced the EFI with an alternative version for this board made by @CaseySJ. This got me a bit further but halted with a forbidden sign. Putting the thumb drive in another USB port fixed this, and I could finish installing Monterey on my new NVMe drive.

What was probably not helping: there was a difference in installed OpenCore versions and Ocat editor OC versions. I thought I had everything(all EFIs) on OC 0.8.7 while in fact I had not.

I copied the @bootmacos EFI to the WD drive, and this worked fine for subsequent boots. I adapted the USBmap.kext to my specific needs with PLIST editor. I find this much easier than using the other tools.

Testing was a breeze. I then used Migration Assistant to copy the data of my Z390 bootdisk over to my Z690, NVMe to NVMe. Over 3 million files/1.2TB in just 25 minutes...

I had to change 2 OC quirks to enable my AQ107(Aquantia) and TB card. Made a TB hot plug SSDT for my system using https://hackindrom.zapto.org/

After installing everything, I noticed 2 problems:
1. the system would immediately wake when put to sleep. It didn't when I tested the bare system, sleep worked fine, and
2. the BlueTooth daemon would run at 200% CPU after sleep, and BT would not work anymore. Switching BT off and then on again would fix this problem, until the next sleep attempt. I already had this problem on my Z390 since upgrading to Monterey.

User @guindillas suggested:

For Bluetooth issue: Bluesnooze

For Sleep issues: SSDT-GPRW.aml Disable wake from USB/Bluetooth; wake only with power button

And indeed, problems fixed.

Geekbench 5 results
Results using CpuTopologyRebuild.kext

Single 2100 Multi 17000

Geekbench 6 results
Single 2838 Multi 14691

DAW test
LogicProBenchtestNewLogicBenchmarkTest 2: 305 tracks. As powerful as a Mac Studio Ultra...

In use
The hack works well, sleep/wake (via power button), AirDrop, shutdown, Thunderbolt, USB, WIFI, Ethernet. Quite a step up from my Z390 setup. Not surprising, it is a bit noisier though when stressed, the fans speed up more. The Apple Mx chips are much more energy efficient, that's for sure.

One thing that is irritating: on every cold boot, spotlight indexing goes through the roof for 5 minutes. I rebuilt the database a couple of times, but that didn't help.

What is always a bit of a nightmare: all these stupid copy protection schemes that DAW and plug-in developers use. You have to jump through weird hoops to get your stuff working again on a new system. As I have something like 1000 plug-ins, this is a boring and irritating task. It's about time (in fact, long overdue) that all software companies adapt copy-protection systems that are transparent when the user changes his computer.

Of course, I didn't forget to make backups of my data and EFI partition!

Tools
Ocat(very nice)
PLIST editor
Hackintool
IoRegistry Explorer 2.1
Maciasl
Carbon Copy Cloner
BBEdit
gibmacos
hackindrom website
Apple Migration Assistant

OC EFI folder
ACPI:
SSDT-AWAC.aml
SSDT-DTPG.aml
SSDT-EC-USBX.aml
SSDT-GPRW.aml
SSDT-PLUG-ALT.aml
SSDT-SBUS.aml
SSDT-TB3-RP09.aml

Kexts:
AppleALC.kext
CpuTopologyRebuild.kext
Lilu.kext
LucyRTL8125Ethernet.kext
NVMeFix.kext
SMCProcessor.kext
SMCSuperIO.kext
USBPorts.kext
VirtualSMC.kext
WhateverGreen.kext

A shout out to @CaseySJ, @etorix, @bootmacos, @guindillas and all other contributing members of TonyMac! Thanks for the help! You made this an easy and enjoyable job.

I added a 12cm Noctua fan for extra air intake on the bottom of the R5 case.
In the BIOS, I also reduced the max power limit to the CPU, and set the load line calibration on max/level 5.
Less heat, hence less fan noise.
Logic Pro benchtest is the same, 305-307 tracks.

I did some heavy lifting in Lightroom Classic and Photoshop with Topaz plug-ins over the weekend. This is a good stress test for any system, with occasional heavy loads on CPU and GPU.

LR would load slowly for some reason, but culling/editing/exporting was fast.

I used to have random crashes in Topaz with my old RX480, the Vega 56 is quite a bit faster(a pleasant surprise) and stable.

Also mastered 3 songs in Cubase Pro, and recorded and mixed 3 others in Logic. All with a buffer of 64 samples(@44.1kHz) and a fair amount of heavy VI's and plug-ins. No issues.

zipb said:

LR would load slowly for some reason, but culling/editing/exporting was fast.

Adobe tech support fixed the slow booting of LRC with a remote session. Some folder/file ownership settings were off.

Click to expand...

Before: 45s to launch LRC. Now barely 2...

Also, loading virtual instruments with lots of samples is really quick with the libraries installed on NVME. Nice.

I added another 32GB of RAM(it was cheap) and replaced the 2 Fractal 14cm case fans by Noctua PWM ones. Result: silence, even under load.

Top back fan/top front fan: Noctua 14cm
Bottom fan: Noctua 12 cm
CPU cooler: Noctua D15s/1 x 14cm fan

The only thing that is still noisy is the Vega 56 when doing GPU intensive stuff in LR or PS.

Used it for a year now. Best Hack I've ever had. Very low maintenance. Fast. Stable. Great for Logic, Cubase, Bitwig, Live, LR, PS.

It is, AsRock is made for Rock&Roll

LG 43" 4K Monitor? How far are you from the screen?

guindillas said:

It is, AsRock is made for Rock&Roll

LG 43" 4K Monitor? How far are you from the screen?

Click to expand...

80-90 cm. Works fine for me(2160p resolution). I have multifocal glasses, btw.

I was looking to a tv screen, but finally decided to 2 monitors of 28"
Never know that model of LG. Like it!

guindillas said:

I was looking to a tv screen, but finally decided to 2 monitors of 28"
Never know that model of LG. Like it!

Click to expand...

It's quite nice. I have a good overview of the arrange page & mixer on top of each other(my preferred arrangement) in Logic and Cubase.
Also, colors are OK. Calibration doesn't improve the factory default much.