GIGABYTE GA-P67X-UD3-B3 Core i5-2500K Build -> WORKING 100%!

[yanismydj]

Hey all,

I've got the parts for a new build comin in tomorrow, I thought I'd share my experiences with the community. I saw that the P67X board was on the list of DSDT compatible boards, but I wasn't sure if anyone had confirmed working builds with it, so I figure I'll post up my experiences here.

I'll keep this thread updated as I make progress.

Thanks to tonymac and all the people in the community who are writing kick ass code to make this all possible!


Here's a newegg wishlist for reference:
https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/MySa ... D=11720189


-Yan

 

[Leitz]

Re: GIGABYTE GA-P67X-UD3-B3 Core i5 - 2500K Build

I´m planning to go for exactly the same build. But with an AMD 6870 graphic card.
Keep us updated.

 

[jagodfrey]

Re: GIGABYTE GA-P67X-UD3-B3 Core i5 - 2500K Build

I installed SB using Gordo's guide with the proper DSDT. System seems to be working find. Took 47 minutes from start to finish. I am a complete MAC noob so that time included looking up how to install programs on a Mac and repair permissions.

My only hardware issue was that there is very little clearance for the sata cables to attach to the ssd. I needed to loosen the screws on the ssd to attach the power cable. Minor issue. Very happy with the hardware.

Installed all Apple software updates without any problems.

Only software issue is that Handbrake does not appear to be using all cores when encoding. CPU is only being loaded to 55-65 percent. Event logs state that it is not able to query (get a response) for the number of available cores.

GA-P67X-UD3-B3 Updated Bios to F4
Core i7 - 2600K
XFX HD-687A-ZNFC Radeon HD 6870

CORSAIR Vengeance 16GB DDR3 1600 CMZ16GX3M4A1600C9B
OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G 2.5" 120GB
Sony Optiarc CD/DVD Burner Black SATA Model AD-7261S-0B
Antec SONATA IV ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 620W Power Supply
ZALMAN CNPS11X

Everything went so well I guess I should make a contribution.

 

[yanismydj]

Re: GIGABYTE GA-P67X-UD3-B3 Core i5 - 2500K Build

So I finally found the time to get this going the other day. Using Gordo's it took me about an hour to have everything working 100%(that I have tested). I did not have DL burner or disks, so I installed the snow leopard image to an external hard drive (by having it 'spoof' the cd, guide here: http://osxdaily.com/2009/09/02/install- ... dvd-drive/). This worked fine. The only hiccups per say were some initial reboot loops, which I never figured out, but it seems to have worked itself out nicely after a few reboots and now boots up reliably everytime.

Additionally, I have a MOTU Ultralite MK3 which I'm using in this setup as my soundcard, as I do music production on it(ableton live, fyi). One of the reasons I opted for this Mobo was the Firewire 400 port which the MOTU uses, and it's working like a charm.

I have a alfa awus036h which I've been trying to use for WIFI, to no avail. I'm using ethernet in the mean time, but I'm hoping to find a pci wifi solution at some point.

Very happy so far, geek bench scores are around the 9500 mark on average.

Best of luck to anyone who wants to use this mobo in the future, I can highly recommend it!

 

[powerpcg5]

Re: GIGABYTE GA-P67X-UD3-B3 Core i5 - 2500K Build

So I finally found the time to get this going the other day. Using Gordo's it took me about an hour to have everything working 100%(that I have tested). I did not have DL burner or disks, so I installed the snow leopard image to an external hard drive (by having it 'spoof' the cd, guide here: http://osxdaily.com/2009/09/02/install- ... dvd-drive/). This worked fine. The only hiccups per say were some initial reboot loops, which I never figured out, but it seems to have worked itself out nicely after a few reboots and now boots up reliably everytime.

Additionally, I have a MOTU Ultralite MK3 which I'm using in this setup as my soundcard, as I do music production on it(ableton live, fyi). One of the reasons I opted for this Mobo was the Firewire 400 port which the MOTU uses, and it's working like a charm.

I have a alfa awus036h which I've been trying to use for WIFI, to no avail. I'm using ethernet in the mean time, but I'm hoping to find a pci wifi solution at some point.

Very happy so far, geek bench scores are around the 9500 mark on average.

Best of luck to anyone who wants to use this mobo in the future, I can highly recommend it!

Thanks for the post and report. I also have a MOTU 828mk2 and nice to know this mobo plays nice with it. I'm leaning more and more to this motherboard.

 

[cnrtechhead]

Re: GIGABYTE GA-P67X-UD3-B3 Core i5 - 2500K Build

Additionally, I have a MOTU Ultralite MK3 which I'm using in this setup as my soundcard, as I do music production on it(ableton live, fyi). One of the reasons I opted for this Mobo was the Firewire 400 port which the MOTU uses, and it's working like a charm.

I just got 10.7.3 running on this board and I'm not having any luck with FireWire. Trying to connect an external RAID over the FW400 port. Drive works fine over USB and System Profiler shows that FireWire is present. Anyone have experience with the onboard FW and Lion?

Update: I booted my MacBook Pro in FireWire Target Mode and it showed up instantly. Wondering if I should look into a firmware update for the RAID, it's a Fantom something-or-other dual-drive RAID.

 

[borbo120]

This P67X Gigabyte board uses a Via Firewire chipset(VT6308), which is not well supported in Mac OS. If firewire is important, then use a PCIe Firewire card. Consult the OSX86 forum for what Firewire cards work well with Lion and Snow Leopard. Firewire 400 Cards with Texas Instrument chipsets seem to be OK, and there is a specific Syba FW 800 card with an Atheros chipset(as I recall) that is pricey but also works. The Via Firewire chipset on this motherboard seems to work OK until a sleep cycle, then works no longer thereafter until a reboot. With this Via chipset, if a firewire device is not unmounted before sleep, OS X will freeze up when it tries to come out of sleep and remount the firewire device. The VIA firewire chipset also throws up errors in the kernel log repeatedly. Gigabyte's choice of the VIA firewire chipset for this motherboard is unfortunate. All of their older Core2Duo/Quad and LGA1366 mobos all used TI chipsets.

My chief complaint with this motherboard is that sleep does not work(Lion and Snow Leopard) unless the video card is put into the X8 PCIe slot. It goes into sleep mode but the monitor(s) won't light up on wake. This is a common enough problem in Lion on a lot of these LGA1155 mobos until the kernel flag darkwake=1 is put into the org.chameleon.boot.plist(not necessary to do with 10.6.8). However, if the video card is not in the X8 PCI slot, it won't wake up/come out of sleep no matter what you do. This appears to be a motherboard problem and it happens regardless of whether "Init Display First" is set to "PCI," "PCI X16" or "PCI X8" in the bios(within the "Advanced Bios Features" section of the bios). This problem may have something to do with the ATI/nVidia crossfire technology built into this motherboard, but unfortunately there is no way to manipulate it in the CMOS setup. I am using the F7 bios with the most recent TonyMac dsdt... my rev. 1.0 board came with a F4 bios, which did not play well with my i5-2500K processor. I am using a 9500GT video card. With no overclocking, my Geekbench score averages around 10K, a little less in Lion. The 10.7.4 update cut the score in half by forcing the turbo ratio down to 16(as many have reported - there is a lengthy thread on this subject) until dropssdt=yes replaces GeneratePstates=yes in org.chameleon.boot.plist. If you are using this board as an audio or video workstation, I would run 10.6.8, not Lion, which is what all of the pros do as far as I can tell...

Every SandyBridge motherboard(including this one) I have fooled around with also comes with the "Device Removal Error" problem if a USB storage device is mounted on the desktop just before a sleep cycle. I know some wake from sleep USB port issues have recently been fixed with TonyMac's Gigabyte DSDTs but this removal error issue unfortunately is not one of them.

 

[metavirusx]

How are you guys managing to install it on this board?

I had a 10.5.7 install from another drive that, after this board came in today (switched it out because I had an unsupported board) I could not boot into 10.5.7 any longer unless I used -x. And now I can't boot into it at all anymore.

My roommate helped me out with getting Unibeast and Snow Leopard/Lion for installation, but nothing works.

I either get a KP or hang after stuff like: MAC Framework Initialized, AppleTyMCE, AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement, etc.

I also can't boot his working SL hackintosh drive, and I even flashed the bios to F7.

I'm about to try to load the DSDT from the database and see what happens.