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Gigabyte Z390 Designare, i7-9700K, 64GB, Sapphire Pulse RX 580 8GB

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Not open for further replies.
Joined
Jan 5, 2014
Messages
86
Motherboard
Gigabyte Z390 Designare
CPU
i7-9700K
Graphics
RX 580
Mac
  1. MacBook Pro
Mobile Phone
  1. iOS
MacMarshall's Build: Gigabyte Z390 Designare - i7-9700K - RX 580

IMG_3915.jpeg
Components

Gigabyte 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.

IMG_3921.jpeg


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.

geek.png


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?

monitor.png


Otherwise all good, and I am in the process of moving everything over from my old Mac Pro!

IMG_3928.jpeg


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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This is so helpful - thank you so much for posting.

I've got a very similar build that I am in the middle of, and while I'm relatively Mac savvy, I haven't built a computer since I switched over to Mac ten years ago. So let's just say my fingers have grown larger and less skilled over the years.

At any rate, I've got the same motherboard with the i9-9900 and still can't get the Mojave install to take. I have seen from other folks that there are a series of blank screens and resets that happen on the install, but my install seems to die before I even get to the "Select your Language" screen, which I'd assume means that I haven't even been able to get through the bootload process.

Sorry for the rambling! So here's a couple specific questions:

1) I'm still in in BIOS F7, and had read that I shouldn't flash BIOS until I knew I needed to. Do you think that's holding up the bootload.

2) I'm wondering about this concern you mentioned with the memory fix EFI. I'm wondering which one you ended up using as I've read that there's a little trial and error there with these boards.

3) Trying to get the Sapphire Radeon VII working as well, and I know that may be a challenge, but I'm just taking my monitor out of the iGPU for now, so I don't feel like the Sapphire is holding up the Mojave install process. But could it be?

Thanks for posting. I'm gonna be using this for Final Cut and Davinci, so I assume you've either got a kickass editing station or a sweet gaming build. Either way, congrats on the build, and I hope to emulate it!
 
1) I'm still in in BIOS F7, and had read that I shouldn't flash BIOS until I knew I needed to. Do you think that's holding up the bootload.

I doubt this is the problem, I think there are plenty of people who are/were running F7. That said, I think the warnings about updating BIOS are a little overdone, as long as there is not a power interruption I don't think it is risky to update your BIOS and F8 seems to be working OK for people.

2) I'm wondering about this concern you mentioned with the memory fix EFI. I'm wondering which one you ended up using as I've read that there's a little trial and error there with these boards.

I used OsxAptioFix2Drv-free2000.efi, which seems to be the recommendation for now, but with additional testing it seems like people are having good success with OcQuirks-4/FW Runtime Services. CaseySJ talks about advantages of latter here, and here is the "conclusion" of the testing here. I just made a post asking if this is ready for prime time.

3) Trying to get the Sapphire Radeon VII working as well, and I know that may be a challenge, but I'm just taking my monitor out of the iGPU for now, so I don't feel like the Sapphire is holding up the Mojave install process. But could it be?

GPU for me was plug and play. But if you have any doubt I think the consensus of the forums is that you take it out of the equation and use the iGPU. For troubleshooting here maybe best to post to CaseySJ's Designare 390 thread, he and others there are super supportive and much more savvy than I am.
 
Awesome. Thanks so much for the help. I did manage to get it working but the GPU is still not firing up. I'll recheck my hardware install on that. One last question - shouldn't the EFI Partition still show up on my computer after finalizing install? I only see the Mojave disk at this point?
 
Awesome. Thanks so much for the help. I did manage to get it working but the GPU is still not firing up. I'll recheck my hardware install on that. One last question - shouldn't the EFI Partition still show up on my computer after finalizing install? I only see the Mojave disk at this point?
No, EFI partition does not show up on its own. You have to mount with EFI Mounter, or I think you can mount using Hackintool, or from Terminal if you know what to type in …
 
Got it. Thank you! Do you run FCPx on your machine by any chance? I'm having trouble getting it up and running on this guy...
 
Got it. Thank you! Do you run FCPx on your machine by any chance? I'm having trouble getting it up and running on this guy...
No, but iMovie would not launch until I set up the headless platform ID per the instructions here, and I think FCP requires the same thing.
 
In preparation for updating to Catalina I just made a couple of other updates:

Changed over from FakeSMC to VirtualSMC. There is a spoiler in the @CaseySJ build indicating this is not recommended for 10.14.3+, but I followed the instructions here and everything seems fine.

Edit - See note below, I read the spoiler incorrectly and VirtualSMC is recommended.

Then I updated to Clover 5100. 5102 is available, but 5101 references changes to kext folder structure and @CaseySJ's guide for Clover updates used 5100, so that's what I used. I pulled down latest versions of Lilu (1.4.0), WEG (1.3.5), and AppleALC (1.4.4) and used those. As part of this update OsxAptioFix2Drv-free2000 was replaced with OcQuirks and FwRuntimeServices.

These updates went off without a hitch. I will wait a day or two to make sure things are stable, update my backup, and then give the Catalina update a whirl!

EFI 123019.png
 
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@MacMarshall

To set the record straight on VirtualSMC, we actually do recommend it for all builds of Mojave and Catalina. The spoiler you're referring to concerns an X299 version of FakeSMC that should no longer be used on Designare Z390.
 
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