- Joined
- Jan 5, 2014
- Messages
- 86
- Motherboard
- Gigabyte Z390 Designare
- CPU
- i7-9700K
- Graphics
- RX 580
- Mac
- Mobile Phone
MacMarshall's Build: Gigabyte Z390 Designare - i7-9700K - RX 580
ComponentsGigabyte Z390 Designare Motherboard
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07K8RJZRG/
Intel Core i7-9700K 3.6 GHz 8 Core LGA 1151 CPU
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HHN6KBZ/
Noctua NH-U12A CPU Cooler
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07PG8F8DF/
Ballistix Sport LT 64GB (4x16GB) DDR4 3200 Memory
https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16820164129
Samsung SSD 970 PRO 512GB NVMe M.2
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07C8Y31G2/
Samsung SSD 860 EVO 4TB SATA III
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07864XY8B/
Ziyituod SATA3.0 Card
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07S8CB398/
Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 580 8GB PCI-E Graphics Card
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06ZZ6FMF8/
Fenvi T919 PCI WiFi & Bluetooth Card
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07VCCZS54/
Fractal Define R6 USB-C ATX Case
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07HQKTH5P/
Corsair AX850 PSU
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07MRF491W/r
Dell U3219Q 4K Monitor
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HDBD9CM/
Comments
This was my 3rd Hackintosh build. The first was sort of a super Mac Mini in a Fractal Node 304 case, using it to run headless Roon Server in my home. The second was a larger build with lots of storage, RocketRaid card, etc., in a Fractal R5 case, using that to run headless Plex Server in my home. Both of these builds have been super stable and are currently running Mojave. This build was to replace a finally failing 2008 Mac Pro 3,1, 30 inch Apple display was on the fritz, memory in the Mac Pro acting up, and running 10.11.X I think. Still a pretty good machine though, 11 years later!
I picked the Z390 Designare because I thought CaseySJ's Golden Build was one of the more detailed and best maintained build guides with higher end components, including onboard Thunderbolt 3 on the motherboard. After ordering all the parts and doing some more pre-build research I got nervous about going with the Z390 over a Z370, several people view the latter as easier/more stable, and more importantly apparently the developer of the recommended Aptio Memory fix file, OsxAptioFix2Drv-free2000.efi says using this driver is dangerous and can damage your hardware[/URL]. But I already had the Z390; lots of people are using this file; and, if there is a better way to handle this fix, eventually it will filter down to the hoi polloi.
The R6 case had kind of a crummy paint job on the PSU shroud, see attached photo. I called Fractal support and they offered to send me a fan. It wasn't bad enough that I wanted to get a replacement case.
Also, I told them I thought the PSU shroud was a bad idea. If you need to plug, or unplug, any of the modular wire bundles after the PSU is installed you need a flashlight and tiny fingers.
I put the NVMe SSD in the top position, so losing 2 of 6 SATA sockets for that. I did not put the metal heatsink back on top of the SSD. It had a blue peel off film and was sticky below that. It seemed to me like thermal through what looked like rubber might not be great, and I didn't want it glued on to the SSD. I thought it would make removal difficult if that was ever necessary. None of the other M.2 drives I have installed have had heatsinks and this case should have pretty good airflow. I rolled the dice and banged all the memory onto the motherboard, which was Rev 1.0.
Fired it up and no problem getting into the BIOS (with DisplayPort cable from GPU to monitor), which was F7. I thought maybe I saw some grumbling about F7. So I downloaded and flashed BIOS to F8. Set BIOS to defaults and made changes per the @CaseySJ guide. I had to hunt around a bit to find all the variables but found all of them.
I had a UniBeast 9.2.0 boot drive with Mohave 10.14.6 on it prepared, with the modifications per the guide, but with a slight snag. For some reason there was something goofy with EFI Partition. It always showed up as a folder without needing to mount it, and I couldn't boot to it. Brand new Kingston DataTraveler 16GB USB 3.0. I changed over to an old Lexar thumb drive and that worked fine.
Only variance from the @CaseySJ's guide pre-post was that in System Information the iGPU was recognized correctly as a Intel UHD 630. In the final post section the only thing I was not sure about was the Devices settings in Clover Configurator. The text says to enable ResetHDA, but the screen shot does not show it enabled. So I did what the text said to do, and ticked the box to enable ResetHDA.
On the machine serial number for iCloud and other, I checked the serial at everyman.com, as described in the Idiot's Guide to iMessage. The original serial was fine, checked it at Apple site, finished up this post section, rebooted, and signed in to iCloud. All good! I have not done the extra mile stuff yet, I guess I should because I use Lightroom and Photoshop.
Geekbench 4 scores are comparable to what others are getting.
After playing around a bit, when leaving system overnight, allowing to sleep, I was greeted in the morning by a "Boot failure detected" screen. I was able to boot by entering BIOS and forcing to boot drive, or saving and exiting. When I manually sleep, the machine it wakes up OK. After a power down, I am now getting the boot failure on subsequent power up. Some trouble shooting left to do on that. If I keep machine from sleeping, it makes it through the night OK.
The Samsung Pro NVMe seems to be running a little hot. With nothing much going on it is 50 degC. Maybe I should try putting that heatsink on it?
Otherwise all good, and I am in the process of moving everything over from my old Mac Pro!
PS - I wonder why Corsair does not provide a single ended PCIe power cable. If you only need one plug makes things look sloppy.
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