- Joined
- Jun 28, 2012
- Messages
- 201
- Motherboard
- Asus Z97i-itx
- Graphics
- GTX 970 - 4GB
- Mac
- Mobile Phone
Buckeyes1995 Build: Core i7 3770k - Asrock Z77E-ITX - EVGA GTX 570
Updated for BIOS 1.80!!
Components
Apple Mac OS X Version 10.8.2 Mountain Lion
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/os-x-mountain-lion/id537386512?ls=1&mt=12]
ASRock Z77E-ITX LGA 1155 Mini ITX Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157312&Tpk=z77e-itx
Intel Core I7-3770K Ivy Bridge 3.5Ghz Processor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116501
Lian Li Q08 Silver Mini-ITX Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112266
Corsair H60 Liquid CPU Cooler
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181015
Corsair TX650M 650 Watt Semi-Modular Power Supply
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139031
Crucial M4 256B SATA III Solid State Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148443
Vantec NexStar CX SuperSpeed 2.5" SATA to USB 3.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817392043
Dell DW1515 Half-Height Mini Wireless N Card (Atheros AR5BHB92)
Purchased on Ebay
Already Owned
EVGA GeForce GTX 570 HD 2.5GB DDR5 Graphics Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130687
ASUS VE257H Black 23.6" Monitor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236112&Tpk=ve247
G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 32 GB (4x8GB) DDR3 SDRA {Note: Used only two modules for 16GB Total)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231490
Western Digital Scorpio Blue 1TB 5200RPM 2.5" Hard Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136545
Apple LED Cinema Display (27" Flat Panel)
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC007LL/A/apple-led-cinema-display-(27"-flat-panel)?fnode=53
Razer Naga Gaming Mouse
http://www.amazon.com/Razer-Laser-Gaming-Mouse-RZ01-00280100-R3/dp/B002MPPRPO
Razer Black Widow Mechanical Keyboard
hhttp://www.amazon.com/Razer-BlackWidow-Mechanical-Gaming-Keyboard/dp/B003ZJ1VD8/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1348405787&sr=1-1&keywords=razer+blackwidow
Comments:
Background
I've been casually playing around with Hackintoshes for a couple of years. My latest creation was based upon an Intel 930 and EVGA Classified motherboard. I found that there were several items in this build that did not work and was very frustrating. I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so I wanted a build that was cleaner and more functional.
About a year ago, I bought myself a Mac Mini Server 2011. I love the ease of use of Apple products, and the Mac Mini's form factor was very appealing. After using the mini for a year, the one drawback was the lack of solid graphics performance. I'm not a hardcore gamer, but I do like Blizzard games and wanted to be able to experience great performance on my 27" Apple LCD. Hence, I began looking for a powerful build that could incorporate a non onboard graphics card.
Selection of Components
As I wanted to maintain as small of a footprint as possible, I decided to go down the ITX route. Being an engineer by trade, I am hung up on having the latest and greatest technology. I decided I was going to go the Ivy Bridge route with a Z77 chipset.
I reviewed a couple of the Z77 ITX builds in the User Builds and settled on the Asrock. Appleg33k85 had started a build thread based upon the Z77E-ITX and thus I leapfrogged off of that. I decided to go with Intel's top of the line 1155 processor, the 3770k.
I reviewed several of the ITX case options out there, and settled on the Silver Lian Li Q08. This selection was primarily based upon wanting to maintain as much "Apple-like" feel as I could. The Q08 is a gorgeous case. While certainly much bigger that the Mac Mini I loved, it looks very good on my desk. Also, as I wanted to play with overclocking a bit, this case also houses the 27mm line of self contained cooling systems from Corsair and Antec.
For video, I had already been using an EVGA GTX 570HD 2GB card so decided to stick with that. It offers plenty of performance for my gaming needs. My frame rates in Diablo III are very good, even at high settings. Similarly, I stuck with my existing DDR3 memory from G.Skill.
The Wifi card provided with the motherboard is not compatible with OSX. Instead, I replaced it with the Dell DW1515 half height Wifi N card. It works out of the box and is recognized as an Airport Extreme.
The Installation
BIOS and Settings
There is a great thread in the DSDT forum for modified ASRock bioses. These modifications, done by samisnake, remove the lock in the BIOS that deals with cstates. Therefore, using the modified Z77E-ITX bios (at the time of this writing, BIOS version 1.80), allow us to use native power management without the need for the nullcpupowermanagement kext. The modified 1.80 BIOS is included in the Z77EITX_Package.zip attached to this post. Alternatively, you can patch the stock BIOS yourself following information contained in the thread.
To utilize the onboard HD4000 video with this board, you need to ensure that Onboard video is selected (Northbridge) as the primary video source and the shared memory is 32mb. Any other memory setting caused my system to kernel panic.
Mountain Lion Installation
1.Install Mountain Lion
Install using Unibeast - Mountain Lion 1.5.3 on an 8GB or larger USB drive using the Unibeast Installation Guide. Do NOT try and install from one of the USB 3.0 ports. Ensure your USB drive is plugged into one of the USB 2 ports. After install, reboot.
I suggest you use KextHelper to install the following kexts.
2. Install Networking
As the onboard Broadcom BCM57781 chip is not natively supported in Mountain Lion, you'll need to use the patched IONetworkingFamily.kext. I had copied it to another USB drive so I had easy access to it. It is included in the Z77EITX_Package.zip attached to this post.
3. Install USB 3.0
The Intel Z77 USB ports are supported natively in Mountain Lion, with the following exception: USB 2.0 storage devices do NOT work in USB 3.0 ports. We'll fix this issue via DSDTs. The ASMedia ports require two kexts included in the Z77EITX_Package.zip.
Note: The CalDigit USB drivers included with Multibeast will NOT work. You need to use the ones attached.
4. Multibeast Settings
Use MultiBeast - Mountain Lion 5.2.0, with the following selections:
5. Audio Settings
Audio can be installed one of two ways:
1. No DSDT - If you choose not to use a DSDT, select ALC898 under the Audio->Without DSDT section in Multibeast
2. With DSDT - If you choose to install audio via Multibeast and a DSDT, select ALC898 under Audio -> With DSDT section in Multibeast
DSDT Installation and Edits
With the release of MacIASL DSDT editing is easier than ever before. Follow the instructions below to "roll your own" DSDT. For reference, I've attached my 1.80 BIOS DSDT incorporating the patches below.
a. Download MacIASL from http://sourceforge.net/projects/maciasl/files/
b. Configure Patch sources (via menu bar Prefernces) as:
c. Close MacIASL and reopen
d. You will now have a "Virgin" DSDT. Select the 'Patches' icon, and select and load the following patches:
- Audio HDMI Ivybridge -> AMI-EFI/Clean Compile
This will apply common patches to remove compiler errors
- Audio HDMI Ivybridge -> AMI-AMD-Nvidia-7_Series-A1 -OR- AMI-HD4000-7_Series-A3
This enables HDMI over discrete graphics, HD4000, or both
Select the Nvidia patch if you use a discrete graphics card for your HDMI. Select the HD4000 patch if you use HD4000 for your HDMI
- PJALM General -> ESB2 SATA
This corrects the "orange icon" issues that shows internal drives as external
- PJALM Intel 7 -> USB Power
This applies more power to the USB ports to allow charging of devices like the IPAD
- PJALM USB Multiplex
This corrects the issue with USB2 storage devices not working correctly in USB3 ports
- Long Wake (manual edit)
Find the WAK method at the end of the DSDT. Remove the following line:
Code:
\_SB.PCI0.LPCB.SIOW (Arg0)
e. Select Compile and you should have no errors or warnings.
f. Select SAVE AS and save as "DSDT.aml" in /Extras (make sure to select the ACPI Machine Language Binary file format)
g. Reboot
HD4000 On Board Video
The Native chameleon 1.11 EFI injection does not work for this board's HD4000 for whatever reason, so if you want to use HD4000 instead of a dedicated GPU, do the following:
1. add the following to your org.chameleon.Boot.plist:
<key>device-properties</key>
<string>7f0000000100000001000000730000000200000002010c00d041030a000000000101060000027fff04002c0000004100410050004c002c00690067002d0070006c006100740066006f0072006d002d006900640000000800000005006201140000006800640061002d0067006600780000000d0000006f6e626f6172642d31</string>
<key>Graphics Mode</key>
<string>1920x1080x32</string> <---- update to the resolution of your monitor
2. in the UEFI Bios under Northbridge Configuration, ensure Onboard Video is the primary graphics and set video RAM to 32MB
Mac App Store
You *may* or *may not* have an issue downloading from the App Store. If you get an "Unknown Error" when entering in your Apple ID, you will need to include another EFI injection in your org.chameleon.Boot.plist.
If you are NOT using HD4000 then you only need one EFI string:
1. add the following to your org.chameleon.Boot.plist:
<key>device-properties</key> <string>4b00000001000000010000003f0000000100000002010c00d041030a0000000001010600031c0101060000007fff0400160000006200750069006c0074002d0069006e0000000500000001</string>
2. In System Preference->Network remove ethernet/wifi devices
3. Delete /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/NetworkInterfaces.plist
4. Reboot
5. In System Preferences->Network add ethernet THEN wifi
NOTE: If you are using both HD4000 and the App Store EFI injection, replace the hex string above with the combined string:
be00000001000000020000003f0000000100000002010c00d041030a0000000001010600031c0101060000007fff0400160000006200750069006c0074002d0069006e0000000500000001730000000200000002010c00d041030a000000000101060000027fff04002c0000004100410050004c002c00690067002d0070006c006100740066006f0072006d002d006900640000000800000005006201140000006800640061002d0067006600780000000d0000006f6e626f6172642d31
Autosleep
Set Darkwake = 10 in org.chameleon.Boot.plist to get auto sleep to work.
Remember that Auto Sleep will not work if you have a USB storage device that is NOT self powered (ie. it is powered by the USB port only.
If you still have problems with Auto Sleep, open Terminal and type "pmset -g assertions" to see what is hanging you up.
Wake on Lan
The board supports both Wake on Lan (WOL) from the SLEEP. To enable WOL to work from power off, a BIOS setting change is required.
Advanced -> ACPI Configuration -> PCI Devices Powered On -> ENABLED
Note that MAC OSX does NOT support wake from POWER OFF if that POWER OFF was due to an orderly shutdown of OSX. It will work if you shutdown from Windows or holding the power button.
What Works:
- Sleep/Wake/Shutdown
- Dual monitor support (DVI & Display port)
- On-board sound
- Ethernet (wired)
- Ethernet (wireless)
- Speedstep; Ran about 30 minutes and saw 9 P States: 16,17,18,19,20,34,35,36,37
- Autosleep (Note: USB devices that are not self powered will prevent Mac's from sleeping)
- Full Intel & ASMedia 1042 USB 3.0 ports
- HD4000 video
- HDMI audio over dedicated graphics
- HDMI audio over HD4000
- Multiple monitors using discrete graphics & HD4000
- Wake on Lan from Sleep & non-OSX Power Off states
- Verify CIR header (I have no need for a remote, but if anyone does.. let us know what you find!)
Performance
4.7GHz Overclock
Edit Log:
[09-23-12] Typographical edits
[09-24-12] Updated DSDT attached with HDEF edits for sound; P-states work; Auto sleep partially working; Updated MB Settings
[09-28-12] Added GTX OpenCL patch information (thanks to Netkas)
[09-29-12] Created 10.8.2 specific section to include SSD Trim Fix; Added Performance section
[09-30-12] Updated DSDT attached with HDMI over dedicated graphics card; Replaced multibeast settings to remove Audio; Added note about using the new ML optimized AppleHDA; Installed ASMedia (Caldigit) 1042 drivers for full working USB 3.0 ports; HD4000 works.
[09-30-12] Added 3 separate DSDTs; Added section on how to enable Auto Sleep; Updated guide to "flow" better
[10-05-12] Upgraded to 10.8.2 Supplemental; no changes required
[10-07-12] Replaced native Wifi card with Dell DW1515; Wireless now fully supported
[12-15-12] Updated Guide to reflect BIOS 1.6 and Multibeast 5.2.0
[01-12-13] Verified Wake on Lan (WOL) support; added section addressing BIOS change required for Power Off WOL
[04-17-13] Updated to BIOS 1.80. Removed DSDT files; added Z77EITX_Package.zip; Rewrote DSDT section to include 'how-to'
[04-28-13] Typographical edits; included 1.80 BIOS DSDT
Attachments
Last edited by a moderator: