Asus Maximus VIII Hero

[Helmi74]

Hey there,

this is my first build so please bear with me if I sound like an idiot. I've spent quite some time around the site and forums and hopefully got a basic idea. My parts mostly arrived and I started building and installing.

Here's what I have:

- Asus Maximus VIII Hero
- i7 6700k
- 4x8GB G.Skill TitanZ Memory (from the OVL of the board)
- EVGA GTX970
- M.2 Samsung SM951 AHCI (for OSX)
- Some more stuff: Case, Corsair RMx750, Corsair H80i, Samsung 850 Pro (for Windows), Harddrive for Time Machine,...
- whats missing: the wifi/BT chip (the Apple/Broadcom one)

After building stuff together (wow this was quite an experience after not building a PC for roughly 10 years) i created my USB drive using Unibeast, the ElCapitan installer on annother iMac and basically followed along the ElCapitan installation guide.

I didn't add any kexts or anything else at this point as I don't have a clue and I wanted to do a bit trial and error instead of trying to find out every single thing before hand. And what should I say: That worked better than I thought. I got the stick booted and the installer working. Installation went quite well and the system booted. Using Multibeast I could get network to work with the MausiIntel drivers (the latest from Multibeast) but it wasn't stable at all. It was stable enough to get the Nvidia Web drivers downloaded and installed (and they worked) but after fiddling a bit more with some kexts from Multibeast trying to get network working better and Audio working at all i now loose display when booting up and can only get it working when adding nv_disable=1 to the boot args.

So this was for training. Now probably redo it the right way.

Here are my questions:

- what is a good way to find out what kexts to add to the installation stick already? Network should be intel i-219V, Audio ES9023P?
- Memorywise it currently recognizes 4x4gb. I think this may have to do with the "Mac Pro" type I selected in Multibeast post installation?
- I read about networking should be available during installation to make AppStore stuff working? Therefore it'll probably be a good idea to get that working beforehand.

I'd be very thankful for any advice and again please don't kill me for my dumb questions. I'm really trying hard not to ask too much

 

[Helmi74]

Just wanted to leave a link that I just came across after some more searching for people that will come across this thread through the search later. I haven't tried that all out as its time to go to bed here but that definitely looks awesome.

It's @ammulder 's Skylake Starter guide that should solve most of my problems. Awesome work http://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/10-11-0-10-11-3-skylake-starter-guide.179221/

 

[Jahwerx]

Helmi, I've got nearly the identical setup as yours and I can't get the clover bootloader to even come up.

Can you share your:

• BIOS settings
• The version of Unibeast and the Unibeast settings

If I can get this working, I'll provide a DETAILED step-by-step guide of my setup

My attempts so far:

• 3 different USB sticks of varying speed (2 USB 2 compliant sticks, 1 USB 3)
• Factory shipped BIOS (late 2015), AND latest and greatest BIOS (03/25/2016, v.1701)
• Tried with nVidia GPU and disabling with internal GPU
• Just about every permutation of booting possible (tried 4 different USB ports)
• Setting the BIOS to the system default, then making the recommended changes per the Unibeast guide.

Specs:

• Maximus VIII Hero Alpha
• Intel Core i7-6700K 8M Skylake Quad-Core 4.0 GHz LGA 1151 91W w/ Intel HD Graphics 530
  
• G.SKILL Ripjaws 4 Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 2400 (PC4 19200)
• MSI GeForce GTX 1070 DirectX 12 GTX 1070 GAMING X 8G 8GB
  
• Samsung 950 PRO M.2 512GB PCI-Express 3.0 x4 SSD (which is *awesome!)
  
• Liquid cooled, great power supply, etc..
• Running Windoze absolutely fine and fast.

 

[Helmi74]

Hey Jahwerx,

guess I won't be able to help you too much with that. I basically did only set the stuff from the ElCapitan Installation Guide and that made it work quite easily. All i did in the bios was to set the points described there under STEP 3.

Getting the stick to boot into Clover was kind of done in 5 Minutes. My other problems came afterwards but after another 2-3 hours of trying around and following some stuff from the other link above i'm already quite done. I have Wifi and Bluetooth still missing because the hardware isn't here yet and will have to make the 5k monitor working as soon as it arrives but that shouldn't be too hard.

I don't know how the Hero Alpha is different to my Hero (without Alpha) but maybe that could make any problematic differences. *shrug*

Regarding Unibeast I have only set to UEFI mode, El Capitan and set my USB drive. Nothing special.

Sorry I can't help you anymore.

 

[Stork]

Take a look at my GENE build description as the installation will be about the same, except for the part of using a Samsung 950 NVMe SSD.

 

[bmoag]

I will just say that before the latest 10.11.5 OS X update and the latest UB/MB installing El Cap on Skylake (I have the same hardware except the m2 drive) was only for the obsessive unless you have the understanding of the arcana required that most of us lack. It took me way too long to sort of get it working.

I was able to re-install with the latest tools using only the nv_disable flag. So I do not believe it is necessary to resort to extended changes to the configp file, run scripts etc to get a stable working installation with audio, USB 3, ethernet. I have the same ASUS mobo and video card and run with a stable 15% overclock (the mobo was already overclocked during installation using the mobo based automatic tools).

As with all hacks there are a few minor issues one can obsess over, and perhaps fix, or live with in order to use the computer productively. Anyone familiar with this process has experienced total disaster after a seemingly minor tweak to a stable installation.

I think you would be better off following the basics and achieving a stable installation, which apparently you have not yet done. I would create a restorable clone, before obsessing over fine tuning with configp and kext modifications that you might find not necessary.

 

[Helmi74]

@bmoag thanks for your advice.

Indeed I've gotten much further during the last days though it definitely was some work to do and - foremost - some knowledge to achieve for me as this is a first for me.

I've got everything working now I guess with one exception: What supposed to be the easiest part doesn't work for me. The BCM94360CD Broadcom Wifi + BT4 card just doesn't work. I guess it's due to a hardware defect. I can see it in DPCI but it's not recognized as a network card. As I now also have Windows 10 running on the machine, I can say that it's also not working there (using the drivers from Apples Bootcamp installation package that are supposed to work for it). I've already ordered a replacement. Will see how that goes.

Here's whats working:

• the GTX970 runs smooth and as expected delivering...
• 5k Resolution (5120x2880, 60Hz) for the Dell UP2715k
• Onboard Networking from the Maximus VIII Hero runs nice and is tested for nearly full speed (~850 MBit/s)
• Onboard Audio works great
• The M.2 Card was a good decision. Tested it at 1 GB/s write and 2 GB/s read
• iMessage, iCloud, AppStore, etc. work great and reliable (well for a few days only but still)

Overall I'm quite happy with how this all came to be in under a week.

Besides the Wifi/BT Card there are two smaller things that I like to get fixed:

• Display Audio (via DisplayPort) doesn't work for me yet though others reported it does easily for them with a GTX card and the same monitor.
• Currently I have to switch off the display while booting to make booting work and get 5k resolution. This is a known problem that others have too. Probably we'll find a fix for that anytime soon but it's really only a small issue for me.

 

[rock1998]

Hi Helmi,

Can you paste the screen shot how you build Multibeast in post installation?

How do you get the m.2 drive to boot on itself?
My MB is Asus Maximus VIII Hero,
--SSD is Kingston Savage 480GB (SATA3),
For testing, currently it was normal 2.5" HDD
Graphics is Asus GTX960. (Basically I tried both with or without graphic card)

UniBeast 6.2.0
MultiBeast 8.2.3

I follow the same starter guide at:
http://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/10-11-0-10-11-3-skylake-starter-guide.179221/
The resulted config.plist is attached.

1. Create USB OS X installer with UniBeast was OK
2. Boot from USB OS X installer and start install OS X was OK
3. During Mac OS X installation, I need to use default language, location, and no network to complete installation
4. Boot with USB clover boot loader then select SSD boot into Mac OS X was OK
5. But I could not make it happen to boot from SSD itself

I tried to install both UEFI or legacy boot loader in MultiBeast but I always stuck at following message:
Waiting on <dict ID ="0"><key>IOProviderClass</key><string ID="1">IOResources</string>...
AppleUSBXHCI:: createPorts: failed to allocate port 1
PTIDSensors: started

If I boot from USB OS X installer and select SSD in Clover, it was OK to boot OS X.

Please comment.
Thank you.

 

[Helmi74]

Hi @rock1998,

I fear I can't really post a screenshot from Multibeast as my setup with Multibeast was long ago but you are basically not missing so much. As i'm not expert i can just guess but this smells a bit like you're missing either one of two things:

- setting up Multibeast for UEFI Boot Mode
- setting up your BIOS to boot from the UEFI from your respective Drive.

In my case the M.2 SSD is handled a bit differently but it's basically been the same. You need to write the needed UEFI stuff to the disk and then select it as a boot device (important: The one you select in your BIOS should have "UEFI" written just before the name of the Disk) and you should be able to boot Clover and OSX from your disk.

Good luck,
Frank