First hackintosh - GA-Z170X-UD3 - Skylake - M.2 boot

[rockpilp]

Hi all,

I've been watching for months as Skylake compatibility slowly coalesced, and I'm ready to jump the gun. I'll use this machine for software development, photo processing and windows gaming.

Here's my initial parts list, could you check it for inconsistencies?

• Gigabyte GA-170X-UD3 mainly so I can use two M.2 drives (one each for osx and Windows), and because I don't foresee a need for Thunderbolt (if it ever even works on that board in osx) and have an old 30" DVI monitor (not that it will stay plugged into the integrated GPU long)
• 6700K pretty standard, odd how the CPU is no longer something you have to agonize over
• Crucial Ballistix Sport LT DDR4 2 x 8Gb, which I intend to upgrade to 4 x 8Gb after a few months
  
• Corsair RM750x because the RM650x is out of stock pretty much everywhere in my neck of the woods
• Fractal Design S, which seems nice and roomy, also quiet and without useless optical drive bays
• Corsair Hydro Series H110 sounds like a quiet solution without too many frills
  
• Samsung 950 Pro M.2 512GB only one to start with, I'll add another if all goes well, for Windows
• Samsung 850 Evo 1TB to create a fusion drive with some of the SATA drives from my old Mac Pro 3,1
• old GTX 770 to start with, then upgrade to the new batch of nVidia beauties

I've seen posts about how using M.2 drives on these types of motherboards may cause sleep / shutdown problems, and that's my main concern. Seems osx 10.11.5 alleviated these issues for some.

Another potential concern about the watercooling: Corsair now likes to use USB to drive the pump and fans, and of course there's no osx software. There are some work-arounds but my initial instinct was to go with an older model that just uses the standard CPU_FAN headers. Any suggestions in this area? Or should I just give up on the neatness of watercooling and go with a big ugly lump of metal on top of the CPU?

Finally, I've seen many successful builds with the UD5-TH motherboard. Should I be afraid of sound or ethernet issues with this one (there's at least one successful build)? I don't care about handoff or iMessage. As long as the app store works, I use very few Apple apps, especially now that they've given up on Aperture .

(thanks to the ModBot for quickly restoring my post following a deletion due to an invalid link)

 

[rockpilp]

I didn't have time to update this soon after the build, but following the z170x-ud3 guide by cnrd, I was able to get this build working with minimal effort (thanks to the heroic efforts of this community), and survived the first OS update. Everything that I use (which excludes Thunderbolt) works fine, including sleep and shutdown.

Dual-booting Windows worked, but migrating my existing W10 drive to UEFI was a huge pain in the neck…

 

[DjVance]

I want to do a similar build. How do you boot into Windows, please? Thanks!

 

[kiiroaka]

rockplip,

Did you go with water or air cooling?

 

[PFG]

I'm doing the same build. I went with a corsair H45. Very easy to fit using fan connectors.
No paste to worry about as it is already applied.

Struggling with the guide you suggested as this is a complete install and not an upgrade.
Any help you can give would be great.

Thanks

 

[Lensjocky]

Hey Rockpilp,

How's the rig running? I'm about to do a very similar build and was wondering if the m.2 drive is giving you and troubles? Does the rig "sleep"? Have you upgrade to OS X 10.12?

Thanks in Advance,

Lensjocky