Beskone's GA-Z170X-Designaire - i7-6700K - GeForce 980ti Build (Skylake, iMac 17,1)

[Beskone]

Beskone's Skylake Thunderbolt Build
GA-Z170X-Designaire - i7-6700K - GeForce 980ti

Components

Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Designaire Motherboard [Thunderbolt 3]
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01H74VOY2/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0Ghz Skylake Processor
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B012M8LXQW/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

Corsair Hydro Series Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler H100i
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009ZN2NH6/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

Corsair Carbide Series 330R Blackout Edition Ultra-Silent Mid-Tower Case
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00R0ZHWC2/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

CORSAIR HXi750 (Platinum rated) Power Supply
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00M2UINC8/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

CORSAIR Ballistic Sport LP 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin PC4-19200 DDR4 2400MT/s Memory
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AG9EZ6E/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

AMD RadeonPro WX9100 Video Card
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076CWK6ZF/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

Crucial MX300 1TB SATA 2.5 Inch Internal Solid State Drive x 4
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IAGSDUE/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

Samsung 960 EVO Series - 500GB PCIe NVMe - M.2 Internal SSD
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LYFKJR7/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

BCM94360CD / BCM94331CD to PCI-E PCI Express x1 Adapter
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017YQHEA6/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

ITTECC® Wifi Airport Wireless Card Bluetooth 4.0 Card Broadcom For iMac 802.11ac Mini PCI-E
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01DJAE99A/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

LG WH16NS40 Super Multi Blue Internal SATA 16x Blu-ray Disc Rewriter
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00E7B08MS/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

IO Crest 4 Port SATA III PCI-e 2.0 x1 Controller Card Marvell Non-Raid with Low Profile Bracket
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AZ9T3OU/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

Dell Ultra HD 4k Monitor P2715Q 27-Inch Screen LED-Lit Monitor
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00PC9HFO8/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

SSD Mounting Bracket | ORICO 5.25 Inch to 3.5 2.5 Inch
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010V4EREY/?tag=tonymacx86com-20


Comments

My 2011 iMac 27" was starting to die so I figured it was time to get something new and thought hacking together a CustoMac would be a fun project to take on.

My iMac had a 240Gb SSD + 2TB Spinning disk setup, and I wanted to really push the boundaries of performance and storage with the new rig. So I decided on 4TB of SSD storage + 4 TB of spinning disk as an internal Time Machine volume for the Mac side of things and a 500GB M.2 drive for a Windows 10 install that I'll only use for Steam / Gaming.

I originally was going to just use the on-board graphics for the Mac, and get a 1080 for the gaming side, but ended up compromising and getting a 980ti and using it for both environments for simplicity.

I use a pretty old Firewire audio interface, so getting a board with Thunderbolt connectivity was a must have so I went with the Designaire as it has 2 Thunderbolt 3 ports, allowing me to leave the audio interface always connected and leaving me one port for future connectivity.


Installation Notes

Installation was fairly straightforward, I wanted to start with a fresh install so I used the Serria guide located here:

https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...ierra-on-any-supported-intel-based-pc.200564/

Now here's where it gets a little tricky.

Once booted to the installer, I created a 4 drive RAID 0 array in disk utility, then installed Sierra normally.

The thing with RAID arrays and Clover, is even though you have 1 Volume you see on your desktop, you will have 4 different EFI partitions. The installer will *RANDOMLY* pick one to install the EFI/CLOVER folder to. When using MultiBeast, it will get freaked out and will only write to the /EFI/CLOVER folder at the root level of the bootable volume (Macintosh HD/EFI/CLOVER/)

Once I figured this out, I was able to use MultiBeast to install the necessary Audio Codecs and then simply copy them from the HD location to the EFI partition. The EFI/CLOVER folder only needs to be on one of the partitions, and it doesn't matter which one.

One thing to note, although the Designaire has 6 internal SATA connectors, using the m.2 slot for my Windows drive disables SATA 4 & 5. This is why I bought the SATA PCI-E card, with my 4 SSD's taking up SATA 0-3 and the m.2 drive disabling SATA 4 & 5 I was a couple ports short of what In needed. S the card is running my 4TB time machine drive and the BluRay writer. I can't boot from the BluRay player, but that's fine as I can do USB installs.

I generated a custom SSDT for native power management using the guide here:

https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...-power-management.177456/page-21#post-1427865



I generated a custom SSDT for my USB ports using the guide here:

https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/10-11-0-10-11-3-skylake-starter-guide.179221/

Using the Designaire's built in overclocking profiles I'm running at a very stable 4.6Ghz and with a acceptable vcore of ~1.3v

Once I installed Windows, I updated the BIOS to F21, and installed the Thunderbolt firmware patch. Now my Firewire audio works fine as long as it's connected to the computer at boot.

Benchmarks

​

So far this thing is a beast, I'm loving the speed and power and am looking forward to more tweaks and improvements as I get more familiar with the new rig!

 

[Crimson1989]

Looks awesome! I'm planning on building my own hackintosh with similar specs in a few months.
I'm also going for a GA170X Designaire + i7 6700 skylake, but will probably go for a cheaper graphics card ( I won't do any heavy gaming but will use the hackintosh for video-editing and some 3d work).

Two questions:
- Why did you go for 2.5inch SSD's?
- That Wifi card looks like a great option! Was it difficult to get the Bluetooth and the Wifi to work or did it work 'straight out of the box'?

Congrats on your build, enjoy!

 

[Beskone]

I went with the SSD's because they were relatively inexpensive ($250 ea) so I was at $1000 for 4TB of SSD storage. Can't do it much cheaper than that. The overall speed is amazing.

The WiFi/BT card is a native Mac card, so it works natively out of the box with no patching required, and continuity and handoff should work with no issues as well.

 

[LowRob]

@Beskone

I got a similar setup (same mobo, cpu, memory and graphics). If i change from 14,2 to 17,1 i got a blackscreen after reboot. (monitor is going to sleep). Did you have the same issue? How did you fix that?

Would be grateful for your help

Greetings
LowRob

 

[Stork]

@Beskone

I got a similar setup (same mobo, cpu, memory and graphics). If i change from 14,2 to 17,1 i got a blackscreen after reboot. (monitor is going to sleep). Did you have the same issue? How did you fix that?

Would be grateful for your help

Greetings
LowRob

See https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...-imac-15-or-imac-17-system-definition.183113/

 

[LowRob]

Thanks Stork. I've already read this but in my opinion there're different ways to solve this problem and i want to know how Beskone has made it (because same hardware)
I've tried using AGDPfix but i'm not able to disable SIP because Revocery wont boot. It would interest me if he had the same problem.

 

[HackToshNoob]

I generated a custom SSDT for native power management using the guide here:

https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...-power-management.177456/page-21#post-1427865

View attachment 233461

I generated a custom SSDT for my USB ports using the guide here:

https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/10-11-0-10-11-3-skylake-starter-guide.179221/

Using the Designaire's built in overclocking profiles I'm running at a very stable 4.6Ghz and with a acceptable vcore of ~1.3v

So far this thing is a beast, I'm loving the speed and power and am looking forward to more tweaks and improvements as I get more familiar with the new rig!

Hey Beskone, I need some help. You just built the exact same Hackintosh I built mid last month. Same motherboard, graphics card, processor, etc. I am struggling with my USB ports and power management. I see you built a custom SSDT for power and your USB ports. Is this something you can share with me and I can simply copy/paste somewhere? I have read all the guides you reference in your post but it is super confusing as I am a complete noob to not only building a computer but to Hackintosh as well. If you would be willing to share the actual SSDT's with me I would really appreciate it. Any other advice in noob terms would be great too. Appreciate your time.

 

[LowRob]

@HackToshNoob

try the settings from here. Has worked for me. No problems with my USB ports. After that i've installed the ssdt-i7-6700k-aml.161866 file in \EFI\CLOVER\ACPI\patched\ for CPU Power Management.

I hope this will help you.

 

[HackToshNoob]

@HackToshNoob

try the settings from here. Has worked for me. No problems with my USB ports. After that i've installed the ssdt-i7-6700k-aml.161866 file in \EFI\CLOVER\ACPI\patched\ for CPU Power Management.

I hope this will help you.

@LowRob I finally have my USB ports fixed and running. I am ready to do power management now and see that you installed the ssdt-i7-6700k-aml.161866 file in the patch folder. Where did you get this file and I can simply get and use this same file in my system? Thanks for the help.

 

[HackToshNoob]

@Beskone Compared your benchmarks to mine and I'm not far off of your results with the exception of my Black Magic scores. I have not overclocked anything yet but don't understand why Black Magic scores are so low compared to yours? My internal HD is a Samsung 500Gig SSD. Any thoughts or advice would be great. Also, how do I overclock my CPU like you did? In the BIOS?