ASUS ROG STRIX Z390-I Gaming Motherboard specs

[Monkey303]

You should copy my EFI to the EFI on your 970 EVO m.2 drive, and bios set boot from UEFI on 970 EVO m.2.

Thanks, I've used the BIOS settings posted here and your EFI and I get working USB 3 after a fresh boot, but if I unplug the device and then plug it back in, it is not recognised unless I reboot.

Also, I have an RME Babyface Pro USB audio device and after a fresh boot, it works fine, but if I unplug it and back in, or switch ports, the sound is garbled, crackly and intermittent.

Does anyone know what could be causing this? Any help is much appreciated, cheers!

Edit: Tried a few devices and I have a Patriot USB 3 thumb drive that works in all the ports. USB 2 devices seems to work ok in all the ports. I have several external drives, Seagate backup plus etc and none of those will work on any of the ports unless it's a fresh boot with it connected and if disconnected, they won't reconnect until reboot.

 

[Sorizion]

@pastrychef For a new buyer, is the Z390i now on par with the Z370i compatibility wise? I noticed you and some other members were able to figure out the 9 series iGPU acceleration. Is the iGPU acceleration working just as it should along with everything else you'd expect, compared to the Z370?

Thanks for the hard work everyone. Really laying the groundwork for new Z390 users!

 

[pastrychef]

@pastrychef For a new buyer, is the Z390i now on par with the Z370i compatibility wise? I noticed you and some other members were able to figure out the 9 series iGPU acceleration. Is the iGPU acceleration working just as it should along with everything else you'd expect, compared to the Z370?

Thanks for the hard work everyone. Really laying the groundwork for new Z390 users!

No. I still feel the Z370 is a bit more compatible.

Z390 still has to use emulated NVRAM. Native NVRAM allows the system to give kernel panic logs on reboot. This is an extremely helpful feature when troubleshooting problems. For example, iIt was because of this logging that I figured out my RAM was bad and had my RAM replaced. Without this logging, I may still be guessing where my problem lies.

Use of non-CNVi Wi-Fi/Bluetooth cards in M.2 slots are hit-or-miss on Z390. This is not a huge problem because users can always use Wi-Fi/Bluetooth cards on PCI-e adaptors. However, I have found that using M.2 for Wi-Fi/Bluetooth allows for Bluetooth keyboards and mice to become active faster when coming out of sleep. On previous Z170 build, I used a PCI-e solution and there was a bit of a delay when coming out of sleep before Bluetooth devices became useable. On my Z370 which uses M.2, there is no such delay.

 

[ioscar]

Guys, please help me out. I just had to return my ASUS ROG Strix Z370-F Gaming mainboard because it gave memory errors. Have been using it with 8700K and 9700K (after BIOS update). I wanted to buy that same model again, but it is out of stock everywhere. Is it advisable to buy a Z390 now (such as the ASUS Z390-F)?

Thanks!

 

[Toad]

@dmdacc I made the changes you suggested but I am still not booting the NVMe. In fact the NVMe is not even an option.

The community tools are incredible, and I really appreciate you helping me as much as you did but this is way more troublesome than the last Hackintosh I built 7 years ago.

When I started this thread, the prospect of building a new hackintosh was exciting but now I am just worn out. As much as it's killing me, I think it's time for me give in to Windows.

Thanks again.

Boy, can I relate! This has been much harder than my last build 8 years ago. Stress with instability, things not working, starting over due to system crashing. Looking back I might have had a memory stick not mounting in its slot correctly. As soon as I did some crazy suggestion and mount my ram incorrectly in the b1 and b2 slots things got a lot more stable. Then, I changed my SMBIOS to the new MacMini 8,1. It has a i7-8700B processor, I have the K. I updated my High Sierra with security updates that also fixed my CPU igfx. Other people's EFI folders only caused kernel panics. Before I could never get the Mojave App Store installer to work, by app or USB installation stick. Now, after the stupid memory trick, it was a cake walk.
So, now I'm on Mojave 14.2, CPU graphics are working with acceleration, fixed the 15 USB port limit, shutdown, deep sleep work correctly. Very stable now. Put RAM back in correct configuration, and system is way fast on EVO 970 NVMe M.2 SSD. Only took me a week of 12 hour days!
Next fix is AppleALC sound which @Toledo just made available for the Asus TUF Z390m-Pro Gaming, and make sure my P-States and CPU multipliers are working correctly.

This has been a difficult and rewarding challenge that was MY FUN during my time off at Christmas. I learned a lot, and Mojave is awesome (set to be light and dark depending on the time of day)

To others, don't give up. Most problems can be resolved with reading and learning. Without short cuts if any does go wrong I know exactly how to fix it.
Cheers everyone!!

 

[metroholographix]

Hi,
I successfully installed and configured my very first hackintosh with High Sierra (10.3.6) on a ASUS Z390-I running a i5-8600K with EVGA 1050 Ti w/ 4Gb VRAM as eGPU.
I'm using this system as my daily driver: USBs are fully functional, the eGPU is recognized. Everything seems kinda working.

There is a feeling of uncertainty every time I boot, though, but, so far, so good .
Sometimes at boot the second screen is not recognized; sometimes the graphics are all messed up to the point that there is no way the system is usable so you have to force a (hardware) reboot. But, struggles aside, I'm pretty happy.

Aside from those trivial issues, I still have a couple more serious of problems:
1. The machine won't handle reboot / sleep / standby. (I think this happens only when the second display is on, but I can't confirm that.)
2. I can't natively get the resolution of my screens past 1080p (two 24" DELL U2417H connected via HDMI cable), while I know that those screens can handle 2k (2560x1440) easy. If I go in the preferences panel, even while holding opt while choosing "scaled", there is no resolution past 1080p. I circumvented the problem by using a utility called "disableMonitor". It kinda works since I can set the resolution I want. But it has a little of aliasing, and it's not crisp like when I use the same screen hooked up to my MacBook Pro via thunderbolt. On top of that sometime when I reboot, the second screen stays black even if the system recognised it. (it shows up in the preferences.)
3. I don't have WiFi and Bluetooth (for the obvious Intel reasons ). In regard to that, I've read the whole thread but I didn't quite understand which M.2 Broadcom model is the best fit to get the full WiFi/BT package (w/ iMessage, AirDrop and all the juicy stuff).
4. Last but not least. I didn't get if I can install system updates or not. On one of the first boots of this system I got a notification and I installed a couple of pending updates, but I think I read a few threads of some folk who ran into issues like frozen boots of stuff like that after installing S/W updates.

I tried really hard to fix those issues but with no luck at all. Since I stumbled upon this thread that perfectly fits my same setup, maybe you got some solution.

I'm attaching my EFI folder and some screens.
Thanks in advance!

 

[Monkey303]

I've tried everything that I can think of to get my USB to function correctly, but I think lack of knowledge/understanding isn't helping.

My setup is very similar to others here that are fully working, but mine doesn't. Given that I'm using the same EFI folder and settings of those people that are fully working, does anyone think that it may be my install itself that is broken? Do I need a fresh install? If I'm using the working EFI and settings from here, what else could I be missing?

My issue is that my USB ports work fine, once after a fresh boot. Each USB port will work as expected with good speeds just once and if that cable is unplugged and plugged back in, they all fail. USB 3 hard drives are not recognised, but thumb drives are. The USB 2 ports are very flakey indeed, the wireless keyboard I've got hooked up regularly freezes the cursor and then restarts, but more annoyingly, I have a USB audio device for my sound and it will not work at all on the native USB ports, and on the USB 3 ports, it works fine after a fresh boot, but then if unplugged and replugged it is crackly and breaks up until the next reboot.

Everything works well in windows, so that rules out a hardware fault. This only leaves the OS-X install, right?

Any help will be greatly appreciated

 

[Toad]

I've tried everything that I can think of to get my USB to function correctly, but I think lack of knowledge/understanding isn't helping.

My setup is very similar to others here that are fully working, but mine doesn't. Given that I'm using the same EFI folder and settings of those people that are fully working, does anyone think that it may be my install itself that is broken? Do I need a fresh install? If I'm using the working EFI and settings from here, what else could I be missing?

My issue is that my USB ports work fine, once after a fresh boot. Each USB port will work as expected with good speeds just once and if that cable is unplugged and plugged back in, they all fail. USB 3 hard drives are not recognised, but thumb drives are. The USB 2 ports are very flakey indeed, the wireless keyboard I've got hooked up regularly freezes the cursor and then restarts, but more annoyingly, I have a USB audio device for my sound and it will not work at all on the native USB ports, and on the USB 3 ports, it works fine after a fresh boot, but then if unplugged and replugged it is crackly and breaks up until the next reboot.

Everything works well in windows, so that rules out a hardware fault. This only leaves the OS-X install, right?

Any help will be greatly appreciated

It's just how you configure your USB ports.

Ether through kext injection like I did or implementing a SSDT to tell the system which ports are USB3, and limit to Apple's 15 port restriction. Every motherboard is different so I can't just give you a kext to fix USB. It's just not that simple.
This guide helped me understand the USB in's and out's
IF NOT SET UP CORRECTLY YOU WILL ONLY HAVE USB2, with sleep problems etc.

A well done guide: https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/xhc-usb-kext-creation-guideline.242999/

 

[Monkey303]

It's just how you configure your USB ports.

Ether through kext injection like I did or implementing a SSDT to tell the system which ports are USB3, and limit to Apple's 15 port restriction. Every motherboard is different so I can't just give you a kext to fix USB. It's just not that simple.
This guide helped me understand the USB in's and out's
IF NOT SET UP CORRECTLY YOU WILL ONLY HAVE USB2, with sleep problems etc.

A well done guide: https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/xhc-usb-kext-creation-guideline.242999/

Thanks for your reply. So, if I'm using settings and an EFI folder from a working hackintosh with the same hardware, I still need to do some more setting up? My issue seems to be different from having no USB 3, everything seems to work properly after a reboot, but only once and then it all breaks.

 

[Toad]

Thanks for your reply. So, if I'm using settings and an EFI folder from a working hackintosh with the same hardware, I still need to do some more setting up? My issue seems to be different from having no USB 3, everything seems to work properly after a reboot, but only once and then it all breaks.

That's what mine did before I configured the USB. That's not unusual behavior. So what's in your EFI that's USB related?