Gigabyte X299X - Catalina Support

[oreoapple]

I concur with @TheBloke : other than annoying BIOS crash bug (which in my opinion is a non-issue as long as we know when it happens how to get back to normal.), my experiences with this build is fantastic. By no means, it's reliable as Casey's golden Z390/490 builds. But given we can have more than 10 cores, 2 full x16 pcie, 256G RAM, and most importantly 1/3 of price compared to Mac Pro, I have nothing to complain

@TheBloke , does the smalltree driver for 10G work in BS? I thought smalltree only release driver for Catalina.

Sorry to hear you're having such a bad time!

While I too am hesitant to recommend this MB to any new user, I'm definitely not having anything near as bad a time as it sounds like you are. I would say my system is now fully stable, reliable, and highly effective. I have every on-board feature working, am getting great performance, and it feels 100% usable as a day-to-day workhorse. In terms of a complete system all I feel I'm lacking is a decent GPU (my new AMD 6900XT is not yet supported.) But that's unrelated to the MB.

The only practical problem I am affected by right now is the VCCSA bug. That is certainly annoying for an overclocker and has caused me to remove my RAM OC. But it's not a deal-breaker, and wouldn't be a factor at all for anyone not planning a fairly significant overclock; it'd also be a non-issue if the machine was on 24/7, or if the user was willing to re-set VCCSA on every cold boot and never did sleep/wake.

The main worry I have in the longer term is the boot issue. It works right now, and hopefully will for the foreseeable future. But unless/until the patch can be officially incorporated into OpenCore, each new release will bring with it the risk of the patch no longer cleanly applying. At which point we'll need JTR to update it, or try to work out how to do it ourselves. That risk goes away if it becomes an official OpenCore quirk. Hopefully JTR will find the time to submit his patch to Acidanthera sometime soon.

I've not experienced any of the other issues you mention. All my USB audio interfaces work fine, and I've never had any sudden, show-stopping crashes or OS problems. Admittedly I'm still on Catalina at the moment so I can't speak for Big Sur; I have booted it multiple times on this machine and it always seemed OK, but I've not yet spent any real time in it.

I have heard reports of USB audio issues in Big Sur, along the lines of the crackling you mentioned, but I thought that was affecting many Big Sur users, not specific to this MB? I plan to update to Big Sur soon so I'll see how I get on.

 

[Midphase]

Sorry to be coming a bit late to the party, but I'm getting ready to purchase a Gigabyte AORUS Master X299X board along with a 10980EX 18-core CPU.

I'm reading quite a lot of this thread and another couple of threads, but I was wondering as of today, what is the consensus on this configuration? Good idea? Bad idea?

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?

P.S.

Also, in a weird coincidence, Apple just discontinued the iMac Pro yesterday....a sign?

 

[TheBloke]

@TheBloke , does the smalltree driver for 10G work in BS? I thought smalltree only release driver for Catalina.

Yes, works fine. I'm not sure why SmallTree still list Big Sur as not supported, but the latest 3.8.6 driver works on BS just fine.

If SmallTree have stopped updating those drivers then it does raise some concerns for the future, like maybe macOS 12 or whatever. But for now it's all good.

 

[byteminer]

does the smalltree driver for 10G work in BS? I thought smalltree only release driver for Catalina.

It does, I'm using it on Big Sur (latest Beta) with no issues.

 

[TheBloke]

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?

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.

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.)

 

[Midphase]

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.)

Oh boy. I've been hackintoshing for almost a decade so I'm not a newcomer to weird issues, but my pressure starts going up at the mere thought of the workarounds and other tweaks because a board is poorly designed or the BIOS is buggy.

Is ASUS a better option? Prices are through the roof at the moment, with most ASUS board going for north of $700.

P.S.

Another option for me would be the GIGABYTE X299 DESIGNARE EX. I heard that X299 are better than X299X boards, so even though the Designare is less powerful overall than the AORUS, I will gladly take less SATA ports and less headaches.

 

[TheBloke]

I've no experience on any X299 MB except the X299X Designare 10G, which - as described in recent posts here - has a lot of hardware onboard, but one of the buggiest BIOS' around.

I'd imagine you'd be better off asking these questions in the X299 Big Sur thread, as there's a lot more users following that thread than this one, and between them they have a wide range of X299 original and refresh boards. This thread is 99% about the Designare 10G.

 

[Midphase]

Thank you. Yes I did already post there, but there doesn't seem to be as much activity on the topic as on this thread.

 

[BerndVP]

@TheBloke thanks for al you're shared information about you're experience with this board.
I'm not afraid to got for it.

What CPU cooler do you recommend with the i9-10980XE?

Point 2 is that I want it in an 19 inch enclosure so I can put it in a server rack.
So need to find one, that's easy to modifier if an AIO is required.

 

[byteminer]

Point 2 is that I want it in an 19 inch enclosure so I can put it in a server rack.
So need to find one, that's easy to modifier if an AIO is required.

To that end I've heard good things about Rosewill, specifically the L4500, which one might even be able to snag off eBay for a good price. It has a good bit of room and there have been several people who managed to fit 360mm rad's into it.