- Joined
- Mar 6, 2013
- Messages
- 266
- Motherboard
- Gigabyte X299X Designare 10G
- CPU
- i9-10980XE
- Graphics
- AMD 6900XT
- Mobile Phone
Personally I've always thought Mac Pro 7,1 best fits these boards, and that's what I use. There used to be some annoyances with going with Mac Pro because of the PCIe and memory alerts, but Acidanthera's RestrictEvents.kext sorts that out nicely.Also, what is the indicated machine ID for the Skylake CPU? The Dorthania guide seems to indicate that iMac 17,1 is still the preferred one, but wouldn't a Mac Pro or iMac Pro be closer to the real-world counterpart?
iMac 17,1 definitely doesn't sound ideal - for one thing it has an iGPU, which the i9-10980XE does not.
i9-10980XE is Cascade Lake-X, where the real Mac Pro 7,1 is Cascade Lake-W (Xeon). Not a perfect fit, but closer than iMac 17,1 for sure.
I know many X299 users choose iMac Pro. As far as I'm aware there's not really any practical difference between that and Mac Pro 7,1 - besides the need for RestrictEvents.kext on Mac Pro; both work fine. But the fact that iMac Pro is now discontinued is IMHO another reason to go Mac Pro.
Can't comment on the Aorus Master, but I'm reasonably pleased with the i9-10980XE. Seems like a decent CPU, especially if you're in a position to overclock it a bit (which requires good cooling, most likely with water - at least an AIO.) It's not going to compete with AMD Threadripper, but I for one wasn't willing to risk the various software incompatibilities that an AMD Hack has.
One thing you will want to check regarding the Aorus is whether it has the broken NVRAM that plague many X299 boards. It's not the end of the world but it is quite an annoyance, and requires a workaround for Big Sur install (details are in the X299 Big Sur thread.)