Alienware Area 51-r2 (2015)

[kowyzg0moo]

Alienware Area 51-r2 (2015) Installation Issues, X99, Intel i7-5820k Haswell-E

Hey All!

As a die-hard Mac fan, it's strange for me to have a PC - but figured it would be great to have a dual-boot system like this machine.

Recently got a heck of a deal on a new Alienware Area 51-r2. The thing is built like a tank, and runs beautifully. But thought on the side, wouldn't it be great to replace the 2012 Mac Pro that I have? Absolutely.

These are the Specs:
Intel Core 5th Generation i7-5820K Processor (6-cores, 15MB Cache, Overclocked up to 3.8 GHz w/ Turbo Boost)
Alienware X99 0XJKKD Motherboard LGA 2011-v3
Intel 7260AC Dual-Band 2x2 802.11 ac WiFi + Bluetooth 4.0
Dual 1TB Samsung 850 EVO SSD (2TB Total)
4TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s
4GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980
32GB Dual Channel DDR4 at 2133MHz

The biggest issue I've seen, is the fact that the motherboard is an "Alienware" branded board and I have yet to be able to get any additional details about who made it, or a way to flash it to an OEM BIOS.

That being said, I've been running through all the forum posts, and thanks to some of the different threads, I've been able to boot to the Clover Load screen. But once I go past, it fails.

Currently I'm using boot commands "-v nv_disable=1 npci=0x2000" to get this far. It hangs on this screen.



Any help would be appreciated!

 

[AGuyWhoIsBored]

Hey All!

As a die-hard Mac fan, it's strange for me to have a PC - but figured it would be great to have a dual-boot system like this machine.

Recently got a heck of a deal on a new Alienware Area 51-r2. The thing is built like a tank, and runs beautifully. But thought on the side, wouldn't it be great to replace the 2012 Mac Pro that I have? Absolutely.

These are the Specs:
Intel Core 5th Generation i7-5820K Processor (6-cores, 15MB Cache, Overclocked up to 3.8 GHz w/ Turbo Boost)
Alienware X99 0XJKKD Motherboard LGA 2011-v3
Intel 7260AC Dual-Band 2x2 802.11 ac WiFi + Bluetooth 4.0
Dual 1TB Samsung 850 EVO SSD (2TB Total)
4TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s
4GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980
32GB Dual Channel DDR4 at 2133MHz

The biggest issue I've seen, is the fact that the motherboard is an "Alienware" branded board and I have yet to be able to get any additional details about who made it, or a way to flash it to an OEM BIOS.

That being said, I've been running through all the forum posts, and thanks to some of the different threads, I've been able to boot to the Clover Load screen. But once I go past, it fails.

Currently I'm using boot commands "-v nv_disable=1 npci=0x2000" to get this far. It hangs on this screen.

View attachment 159731

Any help would be appreciated!

Welcome!

A couple things I noticed:
-Install FakeSMC, as it looks like you don't have it
-Install VoodooTSCSync, as you need that for CPUs w/ more than 4 cores
-Why are you booting with npci=0x2000? Don't boot w/ flags that aren't needed...

And some other notes:
-You're going to need to get rid of the Intel AC card and replace it with something OS X compatible if you want it to work in OS X:
-You're most likely going to need to patch USB to get all of your USB3/2 ports working, as that was one of the major changes in El Cap, they rewrote the USB drivers.


Lastly, check out these threads for more help on install:
Big List of Solutions for El Capitan Install Problems
[Guide] 10.11+ USB changes and solutions
Explaining OS X El Capitan Security Changes - Workarounds and Current Information
[Guide] Booting the OS X installer on LAPTOPS with Clover

Also, make sure you add your system specs into your signature...

Cheers!

 

[kowyzg0moo]

Wow, thanks so much for all the details so quickly - and detailed-ly! I'm really surprised and thankful.

I've updated my profile per your post and I'll look into the details and post back my results.

Cheers!

 

[petezilla]

Kowyz i have the same system as you and have been working with it (with some luck). Will update this with what i can manage, as well. Currently freezing after the line "Ethernet, link down on en0"

 

[ammulder]

AGuyWhoIsBored: actually, npci=0x2000 or npci=0x3000 is typically needed on x79 or x99 boards to get them to boot at all.

petezilla: it doesn't help to say what line of the verbose boot you get a freeze on. Any particular line you pick out is probably not the important one. Please post a full screen photo if you'd like help.

Also, please put your specific motherboard model, CPU model, and GPU model into the system description area on the left and/or your signature. It's hard to give you good advice without having that information available every time you post.

 

[kowyzg0moo]

Ah! That's exciting. Sounds good. Definitely post up your progress as I will do the same.

Cheers.

 

[kowyzg0moo]

Sorry for being noob but how do I do the following?:
-Install FakeSMC, as it looks like you don't have it
-Install VoodooTSCSync, as you need that for CPUs w/ more than 4 cores

Specs added!

 

[ammulder]

Is there a particular guide you're following?

If you've got a Clover USB install drive set up for UEFI booting, you should see some directories under EFI/CLOVER/kexts/ on the EFI partition of the USB drive (which you can mount with e.g. EFI Mounter v3). The most sure way to proceed is to move all the kexts in any of the numbered directories to Other/ and then remove all the numbered directories.

If you're left without FakeSMC.kext in Other/ then download it and copy it in. I don't have a link for VoodooTSCSync but you'd also copy it into the EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other/ directory.

You should be aware that x99 boards are very problematic compared to many others, and you might want to have a look at some of the other extensive x99 threads in this forum.

 

[kowyzg0moo]

So an update here. I've moved to these screens.



Changed the following Clover Settings:
SMBIOS Product Name: MacPro3,1
SMBIOS Board version: MacPro3,1
Set OS Version if not: 10.11

I followed the instructions in the attempt to fix the org.ntp.sntp.117 error posted here: http://www.tonymacx86.com/el-capita...n-spinning-ball-when-booting-installer-4.html but still have the same error.

Current Kext in the EFI > CLOVER > kexts > Other
FakeSMC.kext Null
CPUPowerManagement.kext
VoodooTSCSync.kext (6 Core Version Courtesy of http://www.tonymacx86.com/yosemite-...motherboard-temporary-guide-os-x-10-10-a.html)

Current Boot Commands:
dart=0 -v nv_disable=1 npci=0x2000 cpus=1

Thoughts?