G5 Case Mod — GA H370M D3H GSM — i5-8500 — RX580 Pulse 8GB

[trs96]

Unfortunately the brand new PSU seems dead on arrival. I’ll get it replaced and hopefully get a working Hackintosh next week.

Where did you buy this from ? What was the specific model ?

 

[craighazan]

Dude, you're keepin' your Dell !

View attachment 451669

Remember this guy from back in the 1990s ?

I’m originally from the UK, he’s not familiar trs96, please educate me!. Made the BIOS changes and started installing Catalina. This PSU is just magic!. It’s powering the H370M D3H GSM mobo, i5 8500, HP EX900 and the rx 560. A replacement Seasonic PSU is in process and I can connect the front IO then. This PSU though, gobsmacked!. Temperatures holding at 28 last I checked.

 

[craighazan]

Where did you buy this from ? What was the specific model ?

It was from Newegg, the model is a Seasonic S12111 80 PLUS Bronze 550 W

 

[trs96]

please educate me!

Just Google, "Dude, you're gettin' a Dell !" and watch the old commercials.

 

[trs96]

It was from Newegg, the model is a Seasonic S12II 80 PLUS Bronze 550 W

It might have been an "open box" PSU that someone else had returned because it wasn't working. Newegg has had these kinds of problems in the past. They sell such a large volume of PC hardware that things slip through that shouldn't. They likely didn't test it after it was returned and just assumed the buyer didn't like it so sent it back. Of the many Seasonic PSUs I've bought over the years, never got a new one that was DOA. That rarely ever happens.

 

[craighazan]

Of the many Seasonic PSUs I've bought over the years, never got a new one that was DOA. That rarely ever happens.

Yes they're popular here, hopefully just a one off. Looking forward to it arriving so that I can install the rest of the case and finish this build. Creating a new USB installer as the previous one contained an EFI for a HP 6300, causing some boot loops in the middle of installation.

 

[craighazan]

Well that was pretty painless!. I made one change in the BIOS that may have helped make this happen. I was looking for CFG-lock and enabled 'Periperals/Configuration/Security Device Support' instead by mistake. I switched it back to disabled and saved. After creating a new USB Catalina installer I altered the EFI SMBIOS to iMac19.2, idk if that's correct for this build. So either one of those changes or both, helped make this happen. Cinebench says my CPU has 3 cores!, not sure what's happening there. GB4 score was a pleasant surprise. Compared to the GB4 score from windows 10 pro on the 365 board I tried, which was around 17854. Thats quite a big gap in performance. The NVMe seems a little sluggish, didn't score as high for reading compared to when installed in my Ivy Bridge builds. During testing the CPU temperature leveled off at 63 C, currently idling at 32 C.

 

[craighazan]

These are the steps I took to install Catalina on the new build using the H370M D3H GSM motherboard. I Created a new Catalina USB installer following this guide, Unibeast: Install macOS Catalina on any Supported Intel-based PC. This will also install WEG and Lilu.

In step three of the guide, Recommended BIOS settings, I did the following.

1. Load Optimized Defaults. After this I saved and exited
2. If your CPU supports VT-d, disable it
3. If your system has CFG-Lock, disable it. I couldn't find this setting in BIOS.
4. If your system has Secure Boot Mode, disable it. I couldn't find this setting in BIOS.
5. Set OS Type to Other OS
6. If your system has IO Serial Port, disable it
7. Set XHCI Handoff to Enabled
8. If you have a 6 series or x58 system with AWARD BIOS, disable USB 3.0
9. Save and exit.

I also changed the DVMT to 98M, it was originally 32M. I don't know if this step is needed but 32M seemed a bit low, I saved and exited. Before plugging in the USB installer, I loaded the EFI partition and opened config.plist from the installer on my laptap and Changed SMBIOS to iMac 21" 2019 in Clover Configurator. I'm not sure if that made a difference to installing but I was encountering issues and tried it. I plugged the USB into the G5 and switched on the computer. Loading into Clover for the 1st time can be a little slow. I selected 'External' and loaded into Recovery. Opened the Disk Utility App and erased the NVMe, I chose to format it APFS, but it's probably better to format it Mac OS Extended (Journaled), as per guide. Edit It wouldn’t install after formatting as extended journaled. Quit the Utility App and select Install macOS, from there it was pretty straightforward.

 

[craighazan]

Curious about the sluggish NVMe, after a quick chat with trs96 and pastrychef earlier in pastrychef's Asus ROG Strix Z370-G Gaming thread. Looking at the box we can see it's in the x4 PCIe slot, the other M.2 slot above it is x2 PCIe. There is a spare PCIe Gen3 x16 (x4 link) that's available, with an adapter I could utilize that and get higher write speed. Lots of nice options with this board!.

 

[craighazan]

@trs96, seems the PCIe Gen3 x16 (x4 Link) slot is much faster than the M.2 x4 slot, at least 400 MB/s faster when reading from the M.2, (I think I said write before, I meant read). So my top PCI x16 (x4) slot is occupied with the dual USB3 port and the HP EX900 250GB via an adapter which I found via here. I changed my system def to iMacPro 1,1 and received a slight boost in GB4.



Edit: Both HP EX900 are plugged into the motherboard in different slots. Using AmorphousDiskMark you can see the differences. On the left the result from using PCIe Gen3 x16 (x4 Link) slot, and the right using the M.2 x4 slot.