Gigabyte Z490 Vision D (Thunderbolt 3) + i5-10400 + AMD RX 580

[CaseySJ]

Can you elaborate a little on why asrock are a poor choice? I understood the phantom itx/tb3 is one of the boards with good support for the jhl7540, and even a flashable firmware to fix Issues for example with antelope devices.

My experience with ASRock X570 Taichi and X570 Creator have left me with a lasting negative impression of ASRock’s firmware (BIOS). Thunderbolt hot plug barely works if at all. The DSDT is very non-standard and the Thunderbolt SSDT (in BIOS) is not compile-able because of too many syntax errors.

The Gigabyte Z490 Vision G is hands-down the better choice even if a Thunderbolt add-in-card is needed.

 

[trs96]

Can you elaborate a little on why asrock are a poor choice?

If you look at it this way, you'll understand. Casey's 3 golden builds with 5 million plus views and probably many 10s of thousands of builds by followers of these, all utlilize Gigabyte motherboards. That's not just a coincidence. They're the most hackintosh friendly. Asus is a very close second. They are also used by many with success. Asrock is a very distant third or fourth. Which one do you want to invest in for your build ? If you want stability, reliability and the best support you'll choose the Gigabyte board over the Asrock or any other brand.

 

[canyondust]

My experience with ASRock X570 Taichi and X570 Creator have left me with a lasting negative impression of ASRock’s firmware (BIOS). Thunderbolt hot plug barely works if at all. The DSDT is very non-standard and the Thunderbolt SSDT (in BIOS) is not compile-able because of too many syntax errors.

The Gigabyte Z490 Vision G is hands-down the better choice even if a Thunderbolt add-in-card is needed.

I’m a full time audio professional and use this board and it has been rock solid. I don’t use thunderbolt though.

 

[CaseySJ]

…
Do you think I could get the thunderbolt and aquantia 10Gb working on this board @CaseySJ ?
Are the custom firmwares specific to each board, or can I flash an existing one?

Note that it is not necessary to flash Thunderbolt firmware in order to connect Antelope Audio Thunderbolt devices. We just need an Intel-based system with VT-d enabled. The OpenCore 0.7.2 EFI we provide for Z490 Vision G already has the necessary changes. You will only need to enable VT-d in BIOS and add a Thunderbolt PCIe card.

For 10GbE your choices would be:

1. PCIe card if space is available on motherboard.
2. Use a Thunderbolt 10GbE adapter or dock connected to the Thunderbolt add-in-card.

 

[dehjomz]

Asrock is a very distant third.

After Gigabyte and Asus, MSI is good too.

 

[arpaterson]

If you look at it this way, you'll understand. Casey's 3 golden builds with 5 million plus views and probably many 10s of thousands of Gigabyte builds by readers, all utlilize Gigabyte motherboards. That's not just a coincidence. They're the most hackintosh friendly. Asus is a very close second. They are also used by many with success. Asrock is a very distant third. Which one do you want to invest in for your build ?

Thanks, but while consensus can be a good initial guide (that’s why I’m here), when I look for information I dive a bit deeper than that. I’m not looking to go in blind. That assumes too much. I’m quite happy manually making xxDT changes and using in circuit programmers, although this time around it seems there are some very nice new ease of use tools.

Casey put forward some good info about the oem asrock thunderbolt ssdt being in a bad state. That’s good purchawe choice info to me.

Sorry if this is getting too far OT, I am here to find out *why* the ga vision boards are doing so well, to understand how much of that is feasible to transfer to other boards or not as the case may be.

 

[trs96]

I’m not looking to go in blind. That assumes too much. I’m quite happy manually making xxDT changes and using in circuit programmers, although this time around it seems there are some very nice new ease of use tools.

If you have the free time to invest into trouble shooting and researching an Asrock build for Pro Audio production you can certainly go that route. If you have to get work done and make money to stay in business then going with a Gigabyte Z490 based build makes the most sense. All the testing and research has already been done on the Z390/Z490s and is documented here. No need to reinvent the wheel as the saying goes.

 

[eos1d3]

Hi @CaseySJ and @eos1d3,

many thanks for the input. It did not help to connect the designated pins. I then removed graphics card, ram, cpu, and ... from the motherboard and tried the Q-Flash procedure. Nothing happened, the mainboard seems to be just dead.

I have similar experiences for other motherboards. For BIOS setting issues, what can do done are:

1. remove power cable of PSU first
2. remove the cell battery for a while
3. replace the cell battery with a new one (low battery voltage will cause similar problem!)
4. and at the same time, do CMOS reset by changing CMOS reset jumper positions.

Any combinations of the above may have chance to fix the problem.

 

[marth]

Hello! I am reading this topic, I decided to build a computer on this board. I do everything according to the instructions from the first message and the assembly OC-072-Intel-Wireless-VISION-D. Installed bios F5D. I'm trying to install Catalina, but I can't. After starting the installation, I get an error message. I dance with a tambourine all day, but there is no result. I tried to put High-Sierra from this topic. Installation was successful, but I cannot enable hardware video acceleration and network cards.
Help me please!

 

[PeterAF]

I have similar experiences for other motherboards. For BIOS setting issues, what can do done are:

1. remove power cable of PSU first
2. remove the cell battery for a while
3. replace the cell battery with a new one (low battery voltage will cause similar problem!)
4. and at the same time, do CMOS reset by changing CMOS reset jumper positions.

Any combinations of the above may have chance to fix the problem.

Thank you, eos1d3,

I tried all your suggestions but the board does not respond any more.