Gigabyte Z390 M Gaming build with working NVRAM

[ibruno]

Update OpenCore before updating macOS.

At the OpenCore Boot Picker, on the right of the icons of all your bootable drives, there should be an icon to Clear NVRAM. Clearing NVRAM three times should be more than enough.

Thank you!!

 

[Humanate]

Unfortunately, most modern NVMe SSDs use cheap NAND with subpar write performance. To compensate, manufacturers use buffers. The problem with this approach is that once the buffers are full, you end up with the poor performance once again.

The Samsung 970 Pro is one of the very few that use high performance NAND and you should see much better performance if you often write large files.

Got a 970 Pro arriving today. Never been thrilled with the Adata. Thanks for the explanation which makes sense to me now. I have another Adata with my Win10 install on it and it also suffers from poor write speeds so I thought it was likely hardware related

 

[pastrychef]

Yesterday, I found that an internally installed SATA 3 HDD that I had been using for Time Machine got corrupted. Not a big deal since I wasn't in need of the backups at the moment anyway. So, I decided to just re-initialized it with Disk Utility and set it up in System Preferences again. I chose HFS+/GUID. This was the procedure I'd used in the past.

To my surprise, with Big Sur, when trying to set up a drive for use as a Time Machine drive, the setup will ask for permission to "erase" the drive. Afterwards, I ended up with a drive that was initialized as APFS/GUID. This wasn't a big deal to me. I really don't care if HFS+ or APFS is used. What did bother me was that the Time Machine drive could no longer be used for anything but Time Machine. In the past, I kept Carbon Copy Cloner images on the same drive...

To workaround this, I used Disk Utility to add an extra partition to the drive. Now, I can once again use the extra space on the drive for other stuff besides Time Machine.

 

[pastrychef]

Clover EFI updated to r5138.

OpenCore EFI updated to version 0.7.1.

All kexts updated to latest release versions.

Before replacing your existing/working EFI, I highly suggest testing new EFIs with a USB flash drive first.

I also suggest clearing NVRAM a few times if you are using OpenCore.

 

[Humanate]

Unfortunately, most modern NVMe SSDs use cheap NAND with subpar write performance. To compensate, manufacturers use buffers. The problem with this approach is that once the buffers are full, you end up with the poor performance once again.

The Samsung 970 Pro is one of the very few that use high performance NAND and you should see much better performance if you often write large files.

Installed the 970 Pro, what a difference. Wont be cheaping out again. Now I have another little project. I have not been using the USB C on my machine, not needed yet, however, I am getting an external enclosure for the Adata NVME blade that is now on my desk and need to connect to the USB C. Can you tell me which USB ports your USB C has allocated?

 

[pastrychef]

Installed the 970 Pro, what a difference. Wont be cheaping out again. Now I have another little project. I have not been using the USB C on my machine, not needed yet, however, I am getting an external enclosure for the Adata NVME blade that is now on my desk and need to connect to the USB C. Can you tell me which USB ports your USB C has allocated?

USB Type C is just a connector type...

This motherboard has two USB 3.1 gen 2 ports. One has a Type A connect and the other has a Type C connector.

Both ports are configured to work with USB 3 and/or USB 3.1 gen 2 devices. These two ports have USB 2 functionality disabled due to my hitting the Apple 15 port limit.

 

[Humanate]

USB Type C is just a connector type...

This motherboard has two USB 3.1 gen 2 ports. One has a Type A connect and the other has a Type C connector.

Both ports are configured to work with USB 3 and/or USB 3.1 gen 2 devices. These two ports have USB 2 functionality disabled due to my hitting the Apple 15 port limit.

With the type A 3.1 I should get 10 GB/s right so no advantage over the USB C in this scenario...

 

[pastrychef]

With the type A 3.1 I should get 10 GB/s right so no advantage over the USB C in this scenario...

Correct. Both ports should max out at 10Gb/s.

 

[bassetrobar]

Clover EFI updated to r5138.

OpenCore EFI updated to version 0.7.1.

All kexts updated to latest release versions.

Before replacing your existing/working EFI, I highly suggest testing new EFIs with a USB flash drive first.

I also suggest clearing NVRAM a few times if you are using OpenCore.

Clover r5138 :

 

[pastrychef]

Clover r5138 :

Did you have previous versions of my EFI working?

Did you disable CFG lock in BIOS?