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balaclava9's White Thunderbolt | GA-Z77X-UP5 TH | i7-3770 | HD4000

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Joined
Sep 30, 2011
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45
Motherboard
Z390 Designare
CPU
i7 9700K
Graphics
UHD 630
Mac
  1. MacBook Pro
  2. Mac Pro
Classic Mac
  1. Classic
  2. iMac
  3. LC
  4. PowerBook
  5. Quadra
Mobile Phone
  1. iOS
balaclava9's build: Core i7-3770 - GA-Z77X-UP5 TH - 16GB RAM - HD4000

basic video editing machine
based on Stork's Golden Build


1883080-b.jpg

Components

Motherboard: Gigabyte Z77X-UP5-TH Motherboard with Thunderbolt and Intel Integrated Graphics
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008LTB3QW/
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128559

CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K Processor Unlocked for Overclocking and HD4000 Capable
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007SZ0EOW/
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116501

Case: Fractal Design Define R4 Arctic White
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008HD3EA0/
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811352024

Power Supply: Corsair HX 750
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0090I9VZI/
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139010

CPU Cooler: ThermalRight Macho Rev. A.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009MS326U/

Extra Case Fan: Thermalright TY-141 140 mm, 2 ball bearing fan, low noise
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00767HPYO/

Memory: Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3 1600 MHz (PC3 12800)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006EWUO22/
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233246

SSD (x2): SanDisk Extreme 120GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006EKJCWM/
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820171567

SATA Card: Syba 2-Port SATA PCI Card
http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2011/08/increasing-disk-performance-sata-6gbs.html

WirFi: TP-LINK TL-WDN4800 Dual Band Wireless N900 PCI Express Adapter
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007GMPZ0A/
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833704133

Blu-ray r/w: LG Electronics 14x SATA Blu-ray Internal Rewriter without Software, Black (WH14NS40)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007VPGL5U/
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136250

Firewire Adapter: 6-Pin & 4-Pin IEEE 1394a FireWire Expansion Bracket
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0046VYLOA/

Keyboard: Apple Wired Keyboard with Numeric Keypad
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005DLDTAE/


Already Owned

Hard Drives: (7x) Various SATA 3.5" Internal HDs

Display: Dell U2713HM 27" 2560x1440 Display

Mouse: 1999-era iMac mouse


Comments

  • debug LED on the motherboard was great! helped my find that I didn't seat my RAM properly and that was preventing the machine from booting up.
  • with a case that can fit 8 drives and two media drives, I realized that I needed two more ports than the motherboard offered. I got the asm 1061 card. It works! I have 6x storage drives as JBOD, 1x ML boot SSD, 1x w7 boot SSD, 1x optical drive running now.
  • there are two spots on the back of the motherboard mounting plate that can mount two SSD drives. I didn't put them there initially because I thought it might bring extra heat close to CPU. But, if I turn out to need more drives, as having lots of storage is important to me, I might rethink this, and change my 2 port data PCI card for a 4 port if there is such a thing.
  • the Fractal Design case comes with one front fan one rear fan, both 3 pin. I put both those fans in the front of the case connected to the 5v - 7v - 12v switch. and then the Thermalright case fan on the sys1 fan header. Though the motherboard does seem to change its speed, it hands around 1050rpm most of the time. I was hoping it would go quieter and slower than that.
  • WiFi card worked out of the box! :D
  • the Firewire bracket works nicely. :D I unscrewed the 4pin cable from the bracket.

Issues

  • FIXED: After my MultiBeast install, I had a problem where after the machine booted. I had to unplug my monitor and plug it in again to get the picture to show up. I used the graphics mode key in the /Extra/org.chameleon.Boot.plist with instructions I found in this post, and now it works like a charm.
    I have to unplug/plug my monitor after booting. now my 27" 2560x1440 dell u2713hm works on both MDP1 and MDP2! see thread with the solution: I have to unplug/plug my monitor after booting
  • MOSTLY FIXED: audio skips randomly. big pain when working with movies! :( the problem is intermittent. see threads: GA-B75M-D3P Audio Skipping, GA-Z77X-UP5 Audio Glitch, ALC898 Audio Dropouts. Currently trying the orange rear audio output as suggested in the ALC898 thread. will report back here if the skip / glitch / dropout continues or doesn't! Edit: I've watched 5 or 6 movies and listened to lots of music on the orange port. No more dropouts! :D Edit: Orange worked great for several months, now trying the black rear port as suggested in a new post on the above thread: no problems noticed so far listening to music for 7 hours :D

Things to Improve

  • a drive plugged into the 7th port on the motherboard or into the Syba PCI Card appears as eject-able in OS X ... I'm not sure why exactly, or if I can fix that, but I would like to. EDIT: In comment #5 DBP explains this issue. :D I'm going to try the 3rd Party ktext!
  • FIXED: during the POST screen the Syba Card holds things up. It shows that the card has loaded, and it asks "Press Any Key to Exit". The system pauses for a bit, then continues to boot with a rapid flicker of the Gigabyte POST image. Then it boots normally. EDIT: as per DBP's reply #5 to this thread, I edited my BIOS settings and improved this! :D
  • fan cooling. I'm running the two front fans at +7V so that they're quieter. not sure what to do here. I may try to do pressure positive cooling to keep dust out. I'd need to add intake fans. the PMW 4-pin fan on the top rear exhaust is now usually around 1050 RPM. it's a little louder than i'd like. EDIT: Running the intake fans at +12V for the last while. no change in CPU Fan RPM (550) or Exhaust fan RPM (1050) a bit louder, but maybe more dust-free. i'm thinking of adding an intake fan on the bottom as per DBP's great build: http://www.tonymacx86.com/user-buil...z77x-up5-th-photography-beast.html#post519852
  • haven't tried several things yet: Blu-ray read or write, daisy chaining on the 1394a bracket, thunderbolt drive, thunderbolt FW800 adapter.

Multibeast Configuration

I used the same configuration as Stork's

Updating to 10.8.3 According to Stork's Post


Benchmarks

I've added an attachment with the system benchmarks from xBench. the thread test didn't seem to be working properly for me. i haven't looked into it.

Yosemite Update

My 10.9.5 install lost sound for some reason, and so I decided to upgrade. First I tried Clover and El Capitan, but ended up with a garbled boot screen, which I tried to fix according to some patch recommended in the forums for a garbled boot screen. It partially helped, but then I applied another patch and started causing kernel panics. :( I'm a little short on time, so I decided to dial it back to something a bit more reliable. I'm going with Chimera and 10.10.5. This is my important production machine, so I need something really stable, so I can focus on work. This install went more smoothly, but I'm still getting a garbled screen after seeing the first progress bar, but before login. :( Otherwise the system seems to be in good shape. Will work more on this when I get the chance.
 

Attachments

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I had a very early version of the GA-Z77X-UP5 TH motherboard. I finally got my audio working by using the Black audio plug. IIRC, I had to use both the System Preferences Sound pane and the Audion MINI Setup (/Applications/Utilities) to arrive at getting sound. However, we thought this was confined to the early motherboards. Gigabyte has since come out with a new revision.

I've got a black Fractal Design Define R3 which I think is the best case for my environment. It's very quiet in it's stock condition. However, on the advise of a fellow moderator, I replaced the stock fans with
GELID Solutions FN-SX12-10 120mm Silent Case Fans
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001K6XYWY/
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835426016
which go on sale often at Newegg if you're a Newegg email newsletter/specials subscriber. :thumbup: With the Gelid fans, I can not hear the case running at all.
 
I had a very early version of the GA-Z77X-UP5 TH motherboard. I finally got my audio working by using the Black audio plug. IIRC, I had to use both the System Preferences Sound pane and the Audion MINI Setup (/Applications/Utilities) to arrive at getting sound. However, we thought this was confined to the early motherboards. Gigabyte has since come out with a new revision.

Were you experiencing little half secound audio dropouts? or no audio at all? I've been using the orange C/Sub out for the past several hours with no audio dropouts yet, as per the thread mentioned above: http://www.tonymacx86.com/audio/70741-alc898-audio-dropouts-rear-jack-only.html.
 
I have the same problems that the UD5H motherboards have because I have a very early production UP5H TH motherboard (like 1st one produced or close to it). I fooled around with it only long enough to discover that the Black port works like the Green port should. I don't have any drop outs or stuttering but I have not done extensive testing (long story). I will perform some more robust testing before the end of this month and post my results here or (more probably, in my Thunderball build description).
 
Nice build!

STILL AN ISSUE: audio skips randomly. big pain when working with movies! :( the problem is intermittent. see threads: GA-B75M-D3P Audio Skipping, GA-Z77X-UP5 Audio Glitch, ALC898 Audio Dropouts. Currently trying the orange rear audio output as suggested in the ALC898 thread. will report back here if the skip / glitch / dropout continues or doesn't!
That seems a bit weird to me. I'm also using MacPro3,1 as my system definition, and audio works great.
However, all I've done is connect the green socket to the amplifier beside my desk for stereo output.
No hangs, no pops, no dropouts.

a drive plugged into the 7th port on the motherboard or into the Syba PCI Card appears as eject-able in OS X ... I'm not sure why exactly, or if I can fix that, but I would like to.
Sounds like you want the "3rd Party SATA" kext from MultiBeast. With that any drives connected to the ASM1061 (Syba) or Marvell (motherboard "GSATA" and eSATA ports) will be treated as internal drives. Unfortunately it's an all-or-nothing selection: I'm not aware of a way to specify different behaviour for different ports.

during the POST screen the Syba Card holds things up. It shows that the card has loaded, and it asks "Press Any Key to Exit". The system pauses for a bit, then continues to boot with a rapid flicker of the Gigabyte POST image. Then it boots normally.
If you don't need to boot from a drive connected to the Syba card you can disable the on-card BIOS for all storage cards. See post #9 in the lammergeier build for details. "Storage Boot Option Control" is the particular setting.
As OS X boots it will find the card and drives, but the BIOS won't know about it.
 
thanks DBP

great build you've got going too! i like what you've done with your cooling as well! I might add an intake fan on the bottom too, just to try to build more positive pressure inside.


your BIOS edit for my POST screen issue worked perfectly! :-D

i'm going to try your 3rd Party ktext fix, too.

i've been running MacPro 3,1 as my system definition as well. so far the orange output to my bose computer speakers have not exhibited any dropouts. i've watched 5-6 movies and listed to lots of music thus far. but i'm still curious as to what the problem might be.
 
Hey there
nice build you got there, congrats!

So, could you share a bit your feedback on how silent is R4? Like idle and peak state and overall experience. Thanks in advance!
 
So, could you share a bit your feedback on how silent is R4? Like idle and peak state and overall experience.

well i wish i could give you a more quantifiable feedback, but roughly it's this:

i don't do any gaming. the hardest i make the machine work is during video encodes from After Effects & FCPX. some of those exporters only use one or maybe 2 cores. i can't remember which, but only one encoder so far split nicely across 6 or 8 cores. i.e. i saw 600% CPU utilization. under that circumstance the sound was still noticeable but quiet. remember i have no graphics card only hd4000 which i think makes a big difference. i also have been doing large file copies between drives which are also almost as quiet as idle.

on the flip side, my bed is in the same room as the computer, and lately i've been leaving the two front panel fans at +12v on the controller, and i can't hear it at all when going to bed. i also was running the front panel fans at +7v because +12v seemed a bit louder, but i went up to +12v for the last several weeks, and under normal conditions there doesn't seem to be much difference.

right now, as i type, if i switch off the music, i can hear the machine making a quiet whirr. which is mostly coming from the rear exhaust fan, it seems. it's 4-pin a CPU PMW controlled fan. for some reason the BIOS always has it around 1000rpm like i mentioned. being able to bring that fan down in speed would make the machine quieter. the machine also doesn't seem to run much cooler at +12v than +7v. i'm still considering that bottom of the case fan.

overall though, for me, it's pretty quiet.
 
Hi,

Sorry for the newb inquiry but I have the same problem as this on my 27 inch display:

balaclava9 said:
  • FIXED: After my MultiBeast install, I had a problem where after the machine booted. I had to unplug my monitor and plug it in again to get the picture to show up. I used the graphics mode key in the /Extra/org.chameleon.Boot.plist with instructions I found in this post, and now it works like a charm.
    I have to unplug/plug my monitor after booting. now my 27" 2560x1440 dell u2713hm works on both MDP1 and MDP2! see thread with the solution: I have to unplug/plug my monitor after booting
The problem is I really don't know how to edit the chameleon.boot.plist. I know where the the file is located in my /extra folder but do I copy and paste the script from the link or do I have to edit scripts within the plist. I would experiment with the editing but the hackintosh experience has been so far a rough one for me. The system runs but this bug is really annoying me. Thanks for your help.
 
Use Apple's TextEdit (in /Applications).
 
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