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erik's "Tiny But Mighty" HTPC: ASRock Z370M-ITX/ac - i5-8400 - UHD 630 Graphics - High Sierra

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Nice build! Without the HDD it's probably just about silent.
Are there any H370 boards yet? Seems like all the boards I see are Z370. With a Z board, maybe you should have gone with the i3 K version.
 
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LOVE the build! Any reason you went for all-custom instead of the Deskmini 110?

I'm still debating whether I need a GPU or not.. if not, tiny case like yours. If I do, Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ITX build!
 
OK, I did a clean install and this time did not select any audio in MultiBeast. Copied over the files from Erik's post #1 and all is good! I am awaiting my Broadcom card and after that I should be in great shape. Here are the specs:

i7-8700 (6-core, 3.2 gHz)
500 GB Samsung m.2 SSD
2TB 2.5" Samsung hard drive (5400 rpm)
Asus Blu-ray burner
16 GB RAM

My In-Win case fans is a bit noisy, so this will get replaced. The stock CPU fan is also noisy and I may replace it, too.

Big thanks to Erik for the detailed posting.
 
I'm still debating whether I need a GPU or not..

If you're playing 3D games, then the sky is limit for a video card price & heat. But I don't think you're building a gaming rig.

I'm driving a 1080p display and find my onboard HD4000 is plenty fast for my modest needs. Also, the newer CPUs are considerably faster than my 5 year old machine. Running Parallels Desktop with Windows 7 to play some 10-year-old favorites works just fine too. The Intel built-in graphics, lame as it is compared to expensive discrete setups, is plenty fast for most general macOS needs. I use a breathtakingly expensive 12-core Mac Pro at work every day and still feel that my home machine is snappier for web surfing.

If you are driving a 4k display, then a basic modern video card is probably justified. If you check Apple's 4k iMac, you'll see that the basic model uses CPU-based video, the "good" model uses a Radeon that barely measures up to the the NVidia GTX 1050, and the "best" model uses something along the lines of the GTX 1050 Ti. With the 5k iMac you can get a card competitive with the GTX 1060. I recently built a 4k machine with a 1050. The 1050 is max 75 watts and 5 watts at idle (measured at the wall plug). During general web surfing and other productivity uses, the card's fans don't even turn on. I'd have full confidence with regards to heat with the 1050 or 1050 Ti in the tiniest case. The card vents the heat directly out of the case right through the card slot, so you're still not heating up the inside of your tiny case. I'm not sure that the Ti's 4GB of RAM (instead of 2) is useful to macOS; but maybe the 1060's additional speed has some benefit.
 
Thank you for the reaction @pwagner, I would indeed drive a 27" 4K display.
Reason I asked is not because I really want to play games, but rather because when I dock my Macbook Pro 2016 (i7 2.4Ghz, Intel Iris 540) to the display, I sense 'some' kind of lag during use but not sure whether it's CPU or GPU-related.

Really hard to explain unless you use it for a bit.
 
Editing the amount of RAM dedicated to your video card may help glitching. I haven't experienced any glitching yet.

As far as turbo, how are you checking? Intel power gadget?

I think you have two options: 1) Make sure you have it generating p-states in Clover 2) Create a SSDT using ssdtPRGen. There are directions floating around for Coffee Lake.

Thanks for the response!

I managed to solve the turbo issue by changing some bios settings. However I still have problems with the graphics - suspect it could be some power saving or something. The computer starts okay but when a launch a somewhat heavier application than say finder, like safari, it freezes for a sec and then the window kind of glitches and won't go away and sticks so nothing is displayed properly.

My plan is to get a rx560 in the future, perhaps I just should hurry and get that and hope that the problem goes away.
 
I would indeed drive a 27" 4K display. ... I sense 'some' kind of lag during use but not sure whether it's CPU or GPU-related.

A built a family member a 7th generation i3 (3.9 GHz) machine with a 4k display. With built in video there was a little lag; noticeable when moving a window around on the screen or other operation requiring a lot of pixels to be drawn. Also, the Displays System Pref by default doesn't give you all the in-between resolutions unless you dig for them (option-click the Scaled radio button)—probably because Apple knows the machine will be a bit more sluggish in those modes. The GTX 1050 basically fixed that.
 
Broadcom BCM94352Z NGFF Dual Band 802.11ac 867M Wifi BT 4.0 Lenovo FRU 04X6020
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Broadcom-BCM94352Z-NGFF-Dual-Band-802-11ac-867M-Wifi-BT-4-0-Lenovo-FRU-04X6020/191855727748?ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649
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Networking

Ethernet works easily with IntelMausiEthernet. Wifi and Bluetooth work with the installed chip and patches.

OK, I am now struggling with Bluetooth. I bought this exact card and was able to get the kexts installed using KextBeast. Wifi works great, but I have no Bluetooth. Pretty sure I'm missing something. On I.1.5 of this link under the Bluetooth Injection Method, I installed to:
/System/Library/Extensions:
  • BrcmFirmwareRepo.kext
  • BrcmPatchRAM2.kext
However, I did not do I.1.2 "Correctly configured USB, see RehabMan/OS-X-USB-Inject-All" because I have the impression that Erik's files should have taken care of this. Is there a way to test if USB Inject All has been applied to my build?

This is the last thing I need to resolve for my build.

Thanks for any help.
 
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