Asus X299 - Support

[izo1]

Many of my industry specific tools do not work in catalina, yet.

That is understandable. I lost a bunch of old 32bit AE plugins when I moved to Catalina, but figured out workarounds to do the same without them.

Are you using AWAC? It's required with the latest BIOS or else it won't boot. It is also required past 3202 because ASUS added new PCI paths in their BIOS. The audio device paths have changed too, and my latest EFI reflects all that for this board.

You should read the first post in this thread that talks about AWAC.

I will be posting my latest EFI in a matter of hours (we have the same board, but you have a more recent CPU) for OC 0.6.1 (latest) you're welcome to try it with the latest BIOS.

@izo1 same in my scenario. It’s sad because I have Catalina on my new MacBook Pro. After 12 hours of making deals with a deity, it’s super stable...... minus one battery bug I’m working with Apple engineering on.

Big Sur is supposed to be much better than Catalina, which I thought wasn't a very good release but still usable.

 

[djbuddha]

Big Sur is supposed to be much better than Catalina, which I thought wasn't a very good release but still usable.

I’ll probably install it on a Thunderbolt 3 SSD to validate my setup over a month or 2 after the final is released. Security/Privacy is the bain of my existence when it comes to getting everything working lately.

 

[r2tincan]

Are you using AWAC? It's required with the latest BIOS or else it won't boot. It is also required past 3202 because ASUS added new PCI paths in their BIOS. The audio device paths have changed too, and my latest EFI reflects all that for this board.

You should read the first post in this thread that talks about AWAC.

I will be posting my latest EFI in a matter of hours (we have the same board, but you have a more recent CPU) for OC 0.6.1 (latest) you're welcome to try it with the latest BIOS.

This is the first moment I'm hearing about AWAC. I still need it even if I'm running Mojave and Clover? I will install if so, thank you.

Do you have a tutorial about how to fix the audio device paths for clover?

Much appreciated

 

[r2tincan]

This is the first moment I'm hearing about AWAC. I still need it even if I'm running Mojave and Clover? I will install if so, thank you.

Do you have a tutorial about how to fix the audio device paths for clover?

Much appreciated

I downloaded the SSDT-RTC0 (was this the correct one?) I am running 10.14.6 with a 10980xe. I edited the values to PCI0 from PC00 (because that's what I've been using) and now cannot boot. Should I not have edited it or did I download the wrong file? Do I need to change other SSDT / DSDT files in order to boot with new BIOS?

I don't know how to fix this.

 

[izo1]

I downloaded the SSDT-RTC0 (was this the correct one?) I am running 10.14.6 with a 10980xe. I edited the values to PCI0 from PC00 (because that's what I've been using) and now cannot boot. Should I not have edited it or did I download the wrong file? Do I need to change other SSDT / DSDT files in order to boot with new BIOS?

I don't know how to fix this.

You need AWAC for Catalina and Mojave, as per instructions in that list.

Never edit the EFI that's on your SSD, get a cheap USB stick and format as GUID and use the EFI on your USB stick to experiment with a bootloader. When your USB stick bootloader is table, move it over to your EFI on your SSD, this way you avoid any downtime.

 

[djbuddha]

@izo1 So I installed the Noctua NF-12 IndustrialPPC 2000 PWM fans on my H150i

Thank you for all the advice, and everybody else in the thread.

After this, Thunderbolt 3 .........

Set to Sync All Cores
No AVX offsets
Thermal limit is set to 85

Attached the fans to the AIO Pump PWM & the M.2 PWM headers (AIO is one fan, the M.2 is split using a PWM splitter, probably going to get a hub because the one fan on AIO is always cranked).

I have some custom fan curves I defined in the BIOS to be fairly aggressive in terms of ramping things up a little early (I owned an old Macbook Pro for years... this is a habit with me and fan control when rendering ANYTHING) LOL

Running a job in Squeeze keeps me WELL above the frequencies the stock ML120 fans for this AIO had me at. (I'm going to probably end up doing a custom loop- but this is a night / day improvement).

So here's an interesting question. When I ran Prime95 under Windows, it would crash and the red light near the MemOK button came up (telling me it probably crashed because RAM was overheating) ... this doesn't happen under MacOS when I stress the CPU. Is there something in Prime95 that causes that or is this a hardware issue I should be looking into? Only Prime95 seems to do it.

Here's some iStat Menus screenshots of it running right now.

 

[r2tincan]

You need AWAC for Catalina and Mojave, as per instructions in that list.

Never edit the EFI that's on your SSD, get a cheap USB stick and format as GUID and use the EFI on your USB stick to experiment with a bootloader. When your USB stick bootloader is table, move it over to your EFI on your SSD, this way you avoid any downtime.

Ok I'll do this next time. Per the instructions i wasn't sure if i needed the awac file or the one for cascade lake x chips... Or both? Should i not have modified it?

 

[izo1]

@izo1 So I installed the Noctua NF-12 IndustrialPPC 2000 PWM fans on my H150i

Thank you for all the advice, and everybody else in the thread.

After this, Thunderbolt 3 .........

Set to Sync All Cores
No AVX offsets
Thermal limit is set to 85

Attached the fans to the AIO Pump PWM & the M.2 PWM headers (AIO is one fan, the M.2 is split using a PWM splitter, probably going to get a hub because the one fan on AIO is always cranked).

I have some custom fan curves I defined in the BIOS to be fairly aggressive in terms of ramping things up a little early (I owned an old Macbook Pro for years... this is a habit with me and fan control when rendering ANYTHING) LOL

Running a job in Squeeze keeps me WELL above the frequencies the stock ML120 fans for this AIO had me at. (I'm going to probably end up doing a custom loop- but this is a night / day improvement).

So here's an interesting question. When I ran Prime95 under Windows, it would crash and the red light near the MemOK button came up (telling me it probably crashed because RAM was overheating) ... this doesn't happen under MacOS when I stress the CPU. Is there something in Prime95 that causes that or is this a hardware issue I should be looking into? Only Prime95 seems to do it.

Here's some iStat Menus screenshots of it running right now.

Looks about right for an AIO. You can set the max temp to 86c instead of 85c actually since your CPU is 86c max (it is actually above that but they put a thermal limit for safety purposes).

I suggest lowering the multiplier. What do you have it now? 46? I suggest 44 or 43 so you kind of kiss the thermal limit you set. I set mine to 46 but it's a custom loop and I still throttle with the limit I set, which is fine by me. The extra heat is not worth it imo if it's marginal gains in the multiplier. The whole point of syncing all cores is for them all to boost at the same time. You can actually look at your temps and only put your best cores in the high multiplier range, so lets say Core 0-10 you set to 45 and then Core 11-17 you set to 44 and so on. Or you can individually control each cores multiplier.

Also glad you're seeing a big performance gain for your work, which will save you time I hope so you can make more money

In terms of Prime 95, it's not really a good tool for this stuff and actually not recommended to do burn in tests for CPUs. But I remember I did do Prime 95 tests (blend test I think) and it passed ok. If RAM is overheating on your end, maybe the heatspreaders aren't great on the RAM modules or there isn't enough cold/clean air coming from the front of the case? Can you pump up the intake fans from the front or add more fans?

Also Prime 95 pushes the AVX instructions so hard, you might want to try 3/2 offset and then run Prime 95 again. Or disable AVX and run Prime 95 to see if it passes.

I think the best test is Cinebench R20 on loop and then watching temps in HWInfo (for accuracy) and then your mobo temps. Make sure you're not pushing your system too hard given that you don't have proper cooling yet.

 

[izo1]

Ok I'll do this next time. Per the instructions i wasn't sure if i needed the awac file or the one for cascade lake x chips... Or both? Should i not have modified it?

AWAC or RTC0 should work for both. I will post my latest EFI soon and give it a test to see if it helps you in any way. Put it on a USB Stick in the EFI partition, just make sure to add your own serials/UUID because if you boot without a serial you may have issues in iCloud.

 

[r2tincan]

AWAC or RTC0 should work for both. I will post my latest EFI soon and give it a test to see if it helps you in any way. Put it on a USB Stick in the EFI partition, just make sure to add your own serials/UUID because if you boot without a serial you may have issues in iCloud.

To be clear, I attempted to boot 10.14.6 with the RTC0 file and it did not boot at all, with BIOS 2002. I am not clear on which file I need for the bios upgrade. I will upgrade the BIOS now to 3203 and see if it boots with only the RTC0 file. I look forward to your EFI! Thanks