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Buying Advice: Gigabyte Z370 Gaming 3?

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Joined
May 19, 2020
Messages
7
Motherboard
TBD
CPU
8600k
Graphics
Vega 64
Hi everyone! I built a Hackintosh about two years ago. It was my first computer build. I had tons of help from here back in the day, but it just never improved. It had some of these are surely do to clover config, and some of these are hardware. That being said, I think a motherboard and wireless adapter change is in order to fix slow response times and wifi that'd come in and out. I was recently given an old desktop that I will virtualize MacOS on to act as a server for two of my HDD's I will move over (Backup drive, Misc old files drive). I want quick backups still, and so that's why ethernet is crucial in this next build.

The Hackintosh itself will have two SATA drives (SSD and trying to convert the other to SSD), a VEGA 56 (64 BIOS) GPU, 16GB of 3000Mhz RAM, and an 8600k and a standard size modular power supply.

I am looking for some motherboard recommendations for one's that are "easy to set up" or have a lot of support behind them, and obviously can support all my hardware. 4 RAM slots is a plus but I know how to take an L if not. Also looking for a wireless card rec. I want to use an Apple one but I want the antenna's for extra range and strength. I was looking at this one? Current Wifi card a fv-t919.
 
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bump. Looked at the golden builds. I'm eying this one as the CPU is the same family as my 8600k, but the Gaming 7 prices seem inflated with Gaming 5 nowhere to be found. What determines Motherboard compatibility? The Gaming 3 board is plentiful in options to me and nicely priced. The buyer guide puts emphasis on network and audio, which are the same on both boards. According to COMPARE the 7 just has more bells and whistles but the same family.

Will the Gaming 3 likely work for me? I mean from a manufacturing standpoint I assume so.

Edit: It is worth noting I bought an H370M DS3H. With no BIOS adjustments, I had access to USB 3 slots (no verification on speed) and ethernet (labeled as bluetooth but who cares). Boot still took long and it hung on shut down but Ethernet is crucial to me and USB 3 in any amount would be amazing for my workflow...
 
bump. Looked at the golden builds. I'm eying this one as the CPU is the same family as my 8600k, but the Gaming 7 prices seem inflated with Gaming 5 nowhere to be found. What determines Motherboard compatibility? The Gaming 3 board is plentiful in options to me and nicely priced. The buyer guide puts emphasis on network and audio, which are the same on both boards. According to COMPARE the 7 just has more bells and whistles but the same family.

Will the Gaming 3 likely work for me? I mean from a manufacturing standpoint I assume so.

Edit: It is worth noting I bought an H370M DS3H. With no BIOS adjustments, I had access to USB 3 slots (no verification on speed) and ethernet (labeled as bluetooth but who cares). Boot still took long and it hung on shut down but Ethernet is crucial to me and USB 3 in any amount would be amazing for my workflow...

I like Asus motherboards. Asus Z370 and Z390 motherboards that come with Wi-Fi/Bluetooth can have the cards replaced with macOS compatible ones. Can't do this with Gigabyte Z390.
 
I have a Fenvi-FT919. Do you have any link on how swapping WiFi/Bluetooth cards work?Found your thread. I almost followed in your footsteps. How are internal Wifi/bluetooth antennas compared to an adapter like the Fenvi? I didn't know they were board replaceable. I assumed everyone was using some adapter you could put Apple Wifi/BT cards in to have antenna's like a "standard network card"

Edit 2: Could I get an Apple network card and use something like this to make it on PCIe?
 
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I have a Fenvi-FT919. Do you have any link on how swapping WiFi/Bluetooth cards work?Found your thread. I almost followed in your footsteps. How are internal Wifi/bluetooth antennas compared to an adapter like the Fenvi? I didn't know they were board replaceable. I assumed everyone was using some adapter you could put Apple Wifi/BT cards in to have antenna's like a "standard network card"

Edit 2: Could I get an Apple network card and use something like this to make it on PCIe?

You can use any antennas you like.

Yes, you can use a PCI-e adaptor like that but I feel things work better when using the M.2 slot. For example, my Z390 (which has an Apple made Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card) wakes from one click of my Magic Mouse while my Z390 (which uses an Apple made card on a PCI-e adaptor) needs multiple clicks.
 
Very useful information. Thank you. I think I'll go that route for wireless :). Any specific version of the BCM94360 I should be looking for? I see there's a few variations. The range is fairly good?

Looking at this M2 adapter with either this (BCM94360CS2) or this (BCM94360CD) wifi card?

this post states the differences but this post insinuates that all purchasable cards support BT?
 
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Very useful information. Thank you. I think I'll go that route for wireless :). Any specific version of the BCM94360 I should be looking for? I see there's a few variations. The range is fairly good?

Looking at this M2 adapter with either this (BCM94360CS2) or this (BCM94360CD) wifi card?

this post states the differences but this post insinuates that all purchasable cards support BT?

I've only been using BCM94360CS2 cards. Range depends on your environment and the antennas you use. I don't have any issues to range.

There's also a new card on the market, the BCM94360NG that an A/E M.2 card so it won't need any adaptors.

All the BCM94360xxxx cards have Bluetooth.
 
I have been using Z370 AORUS Gaming 3 for one and a half years. It is easy to set up but it must be discontinued now as manufacturers now prefer Z390 and Z490.
 
Thought I'd post a reply. I graduate uni tomorrow and have been filling in Hackintosh stuff in between study breaks :)

Bought a GIGABYTE H370M DS3H, no overclock support so I dumped it. In my brief time with it, I was happy to see without any UEFI modifications, I immediately got ethernet and USB 3, features I never got with my Z370P D3. So I'm already stoked. The VERY bad news is I was with my non-hackintosh friend who strongly encouraged I update my windows partition, and now both my backup UEFI (on SATA SSD) and primary UEFI (on NVMe) both got messed up beyond recovery. At this point I could not boot into MacOS.

I returned the H370M and bit my upper lip and took a leap of faith on the Z370 AORUS Gaming 3, and I'm happy to see u/bustycat has had success with the board. I bought it under the precedent it'd be similar to this build. Couple trips to Best Buy for USB's and transfer the UEFI from one of the later posts of the thread. Black screen. I try again with the UEFI on my internal drive and get to the login screen. Once I enter my password, the loading bar takes about 30-50 seconds, goes to the end, and reboots. I assume it can't determine how to go from the preboot to MacOS. So through the recovery drive I start the installer, but it freezes up once it needs to finish the installation on the encrypted drive. I assume once I have a FileVault 2 UEFI ready, it will finish the install and be up and running.

To recover my UEFI's on the computer, I made a new unencrypted partition and installed macOS Catalina. This is where I currently sit. On the first reboot, with no changes to me UEFI, once I log in to Catalina (fresh install), bluetooth hangs and then drops my Mac keyboard and trackpad. Since there is no onboard wifi, I'm currently exploring my options on getting an Apple Card onto the motherboard. I'm just undecided on which chip I'll use

I'm off to pick up a wired keyboard. My next plan is to completely erase the UEFI on my NVMe, and rebuild from the ground up with Multibeast then Clover configurator until I can get FileVault 2 support. Then I'll finish the re-Install on Catalina on my original MacOS drive. I suspect that'll fix the FileVault reboot issue.

Edit: and my Vega 64 GPU fan is at 100% all the time. I heard this was fixed by MacOS but I still have the custom kext maker someone designed from back in the day.
 
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