Gigabyte B550 Vision D (Thunderbolt 3) + AMD Ryzen 7 3700X + AMD RX 5600 XT

[CaseySJ]

Hey Dear Casey and the members of the community!

I've been following these builds and especially Thunderbolt SSDTs for quite a while, and I would kindly ask for your help.

I'm on Asus B550-Plus, Catalina, GC Alpine-Ridge (also tried ThunderboltEX3-TR with same results). I am experiencing an odd Thunderbolt issue with my Universal Audio Apollo + Satellite Quad + Satellite Octo.

Apollo by itself works just fine. When I add Satellites to the setup, I can't load any UAD plugins anymore (device not responding, error code -38), and if I try to authorise plugins in UAD Meter, the system crashes.

Today, however, I made significant progress by adapting Casey's SSDT for Thunderbolt hotplug with a minor modification based on my IOReg (replaced DSB1 to X162). Hotplug now works just fine!

With the Satellites issue, there is some progress, too. I can load one single UAD plugin on fresh system startup, and similarly I can authorise the plugins one time successfully. Immediately afterwards, the system doesn't respond and crashes just as before.

I am wondering if you may know what could cause this issue with Satellites. It seems like Daisy-chaining is not working properly, or Satellites are not initialised fully?

I assume that there is either something to do with the SSDT (modification?), or I need to flash my B550 with Raspberry.

Your help is greatly appreciated. I attach a screenshot of my IOReg at the current state with working hotplug.

Hello @echoesoflife,

Ah, you are indeed treading dangerous waters with Thunderbolt on a Ryzen system! Some questions:

• If you connect only the UAD Apollo, does it work reliably?
• If you then daisy chain one Satellite to the Apollo, do both units work reliably?
• Does the Satellite have a daisy chain port? If so, when you add the second Satellite to the daisy chain, do all three units work reliably?
• Are you using one Thunderbolt port on the GC-Alpine Ridge, or using both ports?

 

[echoesoflife]

Hello @echoesoflife,

Ah, you are indeed treading dangerous waters with Thunderbolt on a Ryzen system! Some questions:

• If you connect only the UAD Apollo, does it work reliably?
• If you then daisy chain one Satellite to the Apollo, do both units work reliably?
• Does the Satellite have a daisy chain port? If so, when you add the second Satellite to the daisy chain, do all three units work reliably?
• Are you using one Thunderbolt port on the GC-Alpine Ridge, or using both ports?

Hi Casey,

Firstly thank you so much for your response, I couldn't appreciate it more.

I've ran some extensive tests this morning, and here are the results:

1. If I connect just my UAD Apollo, it works reliably. Projects open, plugins load fully, and the authorisation update runs with no problems.

2. If I daisy chain a single Satellite to any of the Apollo ports into any of the Satellites Thunderbolt ports, system no longer works reliably - freezes on plugin load, as well as authorisation update.

3. Each Satellite has two Thunderbolt ports. Similarly to (2), if I daisy-chain a second Satellite into any of the first Satellite ports, the problem persists.

4. I am using just one Thunderbolt port on GC-Alpine Ridge. UAD manual specifically highlights that UAD Satellites need to be daisy-chained into the Apollo (reference 1, reference 2), and not connected independently to the computer Thunderbolt ports. I attempted to connect them individually to the second Alpine Ridge Thunderbolt port. They are detected properly both under IOReg and UAD meter, however, as expected, they don't work (system freezes, the behaviour seems to have a subtle difference from my freeze).

5. Additionally, an interesting observation. Even though I have a SSDT hotplug working now, there is a difference on when I add Satellites in the chain. If I turn Apollo and Satellites on cold boot (start my Hack after this), the 3 units in the chain freeze as soon as I try to load the plugin or update authorisations.

If, however, I add Satellites as a hotplug event, after entering Catalina, I am able to update my authorisations just once, or load a single UAD plugin. If I attempt to do it again, the system freezes as previously.

I hope that it makes sense and that you would have an idea of what I could explore and work on next.

Thanks again for your time.

 

[Middleman]

did you try opencore 6.5 for sounds ?

Nope I haven't yet, but thanks for the suggestion I'll give it a try.

 

[CaseySJ]

Hi Casey,

Firstly thank you so much for your response, I couldn't appreciate it more.

I've ran some extensive tests this morning, and here are the results:

1. If I connect just my UAD Apollo, it works reliably. Projects open, plugins load fully, and the authorisation update runs with no problems.

2. If I daisy chain a single Satellite to any of the Apollo ports into any of the Satellites Thunderbolt ports, system no longer works reliably - freezes on plugin load, as well as authorisation update.

Let's pursue this particular problem first, namely: UAD Apollo with one daisy-chained Satellite.

• Which satellite are you connecting in this scenario? The Quad or the Octo?
• Are both items running the latest firmware (this is firmware that is installed into the UAD devices)?
• Have both items been "hardware reset"?
• Are latest UAD drivers installed in macOS?
• The Asus Prime B550-Plus contains a Thunderbolt header. Is your GC-Alpine Ridge or Asus ThunderboltEX3-TR connected to that header?
  • If so, please check the Thunderbolt settings in BIOS Setup. Is there a "Thunderbolt Boot" option? If so, does it have a "Boot Once" choice?
• Does macOS freeze on plugin load when either the GC-Alpine Ridge or ThunderboltEX3-TR is used?

 

[RyanC]

Nope I haven't yet, but thanks for the suggestion I'll give it a try.

This is what Gigamaxx posted regarding the newest patches (as I understand)

The latest patches have fixed and caused the audio stuttering. The last few patches for fixPAT are duplicated. One is from Algrey, the other from Shaneee. It is advised to disable one of the patches. Test to see which one gives the best result.

So, it looks like there are a few things to play with in terms of getting it to work. I'd love to know if you get it working as well. Which interface are you using?

 

[Ploddles]

The latest release of Lightroom Classic, V10.1.1, no long seems to need the AMD Adobe patches/fixes to work.

Let's hope that Photoshop etc follow this lead.

 

[anthera93]

Hello Community!

If you are an owner of UAD Apollo FireWire with Thunderbolt 1 expansion card - you have to activate your TB bus in order to make it work.

@CaseySJ can you please add this information to some guide posts please?

But windows doesn't see Thunderbolt interface now, how do I fix it? I've tried installing drivers from Z390 Designare, but no luck. Thank you!

 

[CaseySJ]

Hello Community!

If you are an owner of UAD Apollo FireWire with Thunderbolt 1 expansion card - you have to activate your TB bus in order to make it work.

@CaseySJ can you please add this information to some guide posts please?

Added to Troubleshooting / FAQ section:

But windows doesn't see Thunderbolt interface now, how do I fix it? I've tried installing drivers from Z390 Designare, but no luck. Thank you!

We caution users that flashing the Thunderbolt controller can have adverse consequences in Windows. This is because Windows expects the Thunderbolt controller to manage device connections by itself, which is also known as Thunderbolt Internal Connection Manager (ICM) mode.

MacOS, however, can handle both ICM mode and OS-Managed mode. When we flash the controller, we switch it to OS-managed mode.

Nevertheless, we do see some amount of Thunderbolt compatibility in Windows even after flashing the firmware. If a particular device no longer works in Windows even with (a) being pre-connected on cold start, (b) being pre-connected on warm reboot, (c) hot plug, then there's nothing more we can do. It's then a matter of deciding which is more important -- Windows or macOS.

 

[CaseySJ]

** GPU Update for this Build **​

This B550 Vision D build was created with an old AMD R9 380X GPU. Today I replaced it with an ASRock Challenger Pro RX 5600 XT from Newegg. I am pleasantly surprised to see that:

• 4K 60Hz is immediately activated with my Asus Designo 4K monitor. No need for SwitchResX.
• Launching Hackintool multiple times back to back no longer causes the entire system to freeze. With the older GPU, a second launch of Hackintool would always freeze the system.
• Clicking the Finder icon on the Dock also works properly every time. This function simply opens a Finder window showing the most recently accessed files, but it would regularly freeze the system with the old GPU.
• Safari seems to be working reliably as well. In Post #1 there is a warning to avoid using Safari due to occasional crashes, but I haven't encountered them so far. This is being posted using Safari.

Lesson: Use either RX 400 series, RX 500 series, or RX 5000 series GPUs for most reliable performance.

 

[Stork]

** GPU Update for this Build **​

This B550 Vision D build was created with an old AMD R9 380X GPU. Today I replaced it with an ASRock Challenger Pro RX 5600 XT from Newegg...

Wow! The prices for the RX 5600 XT range from $300 to $900 on Newegg. Amazing!