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Advice on Upgrading Mini ITX Build to Kaby Lake

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EddyMac

EddyMac

Joined
Oct 29, 2011
Messages
955
Motherboard
GA-Z170X-UD5 TH
CPU
i7 6700K
Graphics
RX 580
Mac
  1. MacBook Air
  2. MacBook Pro
Mobile Phone
  1. iOS
I built an Ivy Bridge-based Mini ITX system in 2012 for my wife and am now ready to update it for her to a Kaby Lake based system. Hopefully by the time these parts arrive there will be an updated Unibeast/Multibeast procedure for getting Sierra installed on a Kaby Lake system.

Here is my list of proposed parts:

Board - GIGABYTE GA-Z270N-WIFI LGA1151 Intel Mini-ITX DDR4 Motherboard
CPU - Intel Core i5-7600K LGA 1151 Desktop Processors (BX80677I57600K)
RAM - Ballistix Sport LT 32GB Kit (16GBx2) DDR4 2400 MT/s (PC4-19200) DIMM 288-Pin BLS2K16G4D240FSC (White)
Cooler - Noctua Low-Profile Quiet CPU Cooler for Intel 115x Based Retail Cooling NH-L9I
Boot drive - Samsung 850 EVO - 500GB - M.2 SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-N5E500BW)

Already owned:
Case - Lian Li PC-Q11A
PSU - SilverStone Technology 450W SFX Form Factor 80 PLUS GOLD
Hard drives - 3TB Red Drive and 3TB Green drive
Optical Drive - (can't recall the brand or model right now - can update this if current one doesn't work with new system)
Monitor - Dell 24 inch
Keyboard and Mouse - Apple

Everything but the cooler was found using the August buyer's guide.

If anyone has any advice I am open to hearing it, specially on the M.2 drive and RAM. I'd also like to have WiFi and I understand the module on this board doesn't work with macOS. Pointers? Also need bluetooth as my wife has an Apple bluetooth mouse.

Thanks in advance.
 
Try to check to see if your current power supply is "Haswell Ready". If it is not, it may affect the power states of Haswell generation of newer CPUs.

Your optical drive should work fine.

When installing, try to install macOS Sierra 10.12.6 as this was the first version to include built-in support for Kaby Lake CPUs.

I don't have any first hand experience with NVMe SSDs, so I don't have any info regarding that...

Assuming that the included Wifi/Bluetooth card on your new motherboard is an M.2 card (formerly known as NGFF), it can be replaced with a Dell DW1560 to get Wifi/Bluetooth working. This card is BCM94352Z based and will require kexts and patches in your config.plist to work properly, but once configured, it works well.

Alternatively, you can go with a Dell DW1830 card. This card should be natively supported and should be easier to get working in terns of software and configuring. However, this card requires 3 antennas where as the DW1560 only requires 2 and all the motherboards I've seen that include Wifi/Bluetooth only have 2 antennas.
 
Thanks pastrychef!

On the PSU: Although I listed it as already-owned, I've just had to replace it because it got fried by an electrical problem at our house. So it's actually brand new, though the same model number, etc. as the one I bought in 2012. Maybe Silverstone has updated it to be Haswell Ready in the meantime. Is there an easy way to test this? Also, what kind of problems will I run into if it's not Haswell Ready?

NVMe SSD: It was on the buyer's guide, so I assumed it works. When I updated my machine last year, there were some problems with them, so I went with an SM951 but those seem to be phasing out.

Thanks for the pointers on the WiFi/Bluetooth. I'll do some more digging. I looked at Gigabyte's site, and the slot for the module is an M.2 slot. And I found this on eBay:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Broadcom-BC...-867Mbps-WiFi-Bluetooth-4-0-Card/172128291598
 
Last edited:
You'd have to check to see if the power supply has been updated to be "Haswell ready". My understanding is that Haswell and newer generations had different requirements for some low power states. How would using an older non-Haswell ready power supply affect things? I don't know...

If you have an SM951 AHCI M.2 SSD, those are natively supported by macOS. As of today, NVMe still requires additional work to get working.
 
pastrychef said:
You'd have to check to see if the power supply has been updated to be "Haswell ready".
Click to expand...

How does one check?

pastrychef said:
If you have an SM951 AHCI M.2 SSD, those are natively supported by macOS. As of today, NVMe still requires additional work to get working.
Click to expand...

I don't have one and it seems they are not readily available, at least the Samsung brand.
 
OK so I went ahead and bought all of the parts listed, except I went with a 2.5 inch solid state drive instead of an M.2. My wife probably isn't going to notice the extra speed of the M.2 and it lets me avoid any headaches getting it to work.

To get this up and running with macOS 10.12.6, can I just use the latest Unibeast and Multibeast, or is it not as simple as that? What is the best SMBIOS to use for this motherboard/CPU combination?
 
Thanks.

It looks like iMac 18,3 is the closest SMBIOS for my processor.
 
OK I have the machine built and ready to install macOS. Should I complete the setup using a temporary admin account, then use Migration Assistant to import my wife's user account from the old startup drive? Or is there a better method?
 
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