- Joined
- May 10, 2011
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- Motherboard
- Gigabyte B550 Vision D
- CPU
- Ryzen 5900X
- Graphics
- RX 6800
- Mac
- Classic Mac
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This is a guide for the Gigabyte Z590I Vision D Mini ITX motherboard.
Origins of the build
I had been using a Gigabyte Z170N WiFi as a backup hackintosh on Catalina at work for many years and felt it was time to upgrade my system. As I already had a Rocket Lake i9-11900K in my other Z490 Aorus Xtreme motherboard at home and I wanted to maximize the full use of the chip's capabilities but didn't want to spend any extra money on the build I decided to swap it out and use it in a new Z590 motherboard.
When the Gigabyte Z590I Vision D first came out some months back I was already thinking it could become a very useful 'Mac Pro Mini' motherboard because of the mini-ITX design but didn't have much time to explore the idea. I was always a fan of the mini ITX boards for its small and compact size. As Alder Lake began to release recently [November 2021] and my local computer dealer notified me all older Z590 boards would soon be phased out by their distributors, I felt it was time to get hold of a Z590I Vision D board before they were no longer available to test out the board and see what how good it really was.
The Z590I Vision D came in a very small box and was packed with minimal parts. Unlike previous Gigabyte boards that I had owned such as the Z490 Aorus Xtreme which had all manners of goodies such as a USB-DAC, dozens of cables, metal stickers and so forth this had nothing else other than some small screws, a manual, some SATA cables and a WiFi antenna.
COMPONENTS
- Gigabyte Z590I Vision D board
- Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO 16GB 3200Mhz DDR4 RAM
- Intel Core i9 11900K 5.3GHz Chip
- Asrock Challenger RX6600 GPU
- Samsung 980 EVO 500GB PCIE 4.0 NVMe
- Samsung 860 EVO 500GB SSD
- 750W Corsair CV750 PSU
- Noctua NH-U12S heatsink
- Segotep Lux II PC Case
What works
NVMe detection and bootup
USB 3.1, 3.0 & 2.0 (hot-plugging and eject on USB 3.1 works)
Full sound with volume adjustment
Full screen 1040P
Video playback
Graphics acceleration
2.5GBe Ethernet
Thunderbolt 3 (board is TB4 Maple Ridge)
VDA Decoding
(from OC 0.7.8)
WiFi
Bluetooth
Airdrop
Screen-mirroring
Sleep/wake from USB
What doesn't
Thunderbolt hot-plugging
BIOS settings
AHCI Mode
VT-d disabled
Above 4GB Decoding Enabled
Thunderbolt enabled
CSM Disabled
TPM Disabled
Secure Boot disabled
UEFI Boot Mode
(First release: 1st December 2021)
With this build I have managed to get most of the functions enabled for Monterey working on the Z590I Vision D on Opencore 0.7.4 build. I am using an Asrock Challenger RX6600 card to boot the system on both macOS and Windows, and it is running stable. As it has no standard HDMI out on the board itself the Intel IGPU has to be disabled.
Performance from the system is excellent, almost matching the Geekbench 5 results of my other recent Asus Z690 Prime P D4 Alder Lake setup. In fact the Geekbench scores have been so good on this system that I think it matches even the Comet Lake i9-10900K speeds (despite it utilizing less cores because 2 cores have been assigned to TB4/PCIe4 functions). And the PCIe 4.0 spec Samsung 980 EVO M.2 NVMe 500GB SSD works fine with Monterey (despite the recent warnings by the Opencore team).
Although the system can only run Monterey (as it uses the RX6600 card which is only recognized by macOS 12.1) I am sure it is more than capable of booting Big Sur if paired with the right card.
The only downside I found with this board is a surprising lack of HDMI and extra sound output ports. There are no digital outputs on this board only a phono in and mic out, so this makes it not really ideal for home theatre use (unless you use a USB-based DAC for output).
(8th April 2022 update)
With this update I have made some minor improvements to the build. EFI is now updated to OC 0.7.8. and Intel wireless and Bluetooth should work after update 12.3. SSD write speeds on Aja System Lite also seem to be a little 10% quicker. Airdrop and Screen-mirroring now also works.
(12th April 2022 update)
I have added a few SSDTs and kexts to resolve the AMD RX6600 dGPU sleep/wake issue, namely SSDT-BRG and SSDT-XSPI which should further make the system more stable. Also removed the dGPU device properties and added in RadeonSensor.kext and SMCRadeonGPU.kext to improve the RX6600's sensor functions. CPUID is now spoofed to proper Comet Lake values (55060A).
(3rd October 2022 update)
With this update I have brought OC up to version 0.8.4 and also cleaned up the SSDTs for Thunderbolt - TB3HP is the one we now use for best connectivity. Bluetooth is now fixed thanks to OpenIntelWireless' latest v2.2.0 update.
The issue we had before was because IntelBluetoothFirmware.kext wasn't updated and did not have new IntelBTPatcher.kext added for the latest firmwares. To add to the confusion, for BT to work on Monterey, BlueToolFixup.kext must also be present in the kernel whilst IntelBluetoolInjector.kext is only used for 10.15 Catalina or earlier (in place of BluetoolFixup.kext which is only used for Monterey+).
Also the EFI is now Ventura-compatible.
However I have also made a startling discovery with regards to system performance. It seems that the IPC can now be lifted a little further to around the 9800 mark (Rocket Lake on average achieves only around 8200). This is thanks to vit9696's guide on the Z590's CPUFriendData mod here which injects proper frequency vectors for Rocket Lake chips. The mod can also be used for Comet Lake chipsets. > https://github.com/dortania/bugtracker/issues/190
Also I discovered that iMac20,2 is a better match for overall Geekbench 5 performance than SMBIOS iMacPro1,1.
Attachments
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z590i-vision-d.jpeg194.2 KB · Views: 540
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EFI OC 0.7.4 for Monterey 12.1.zip26 MB · Views: 669
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Z590Ivisiond-atx.png1.3 MB · Views: 305
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Z590Ivisiond-atx-2.png348.2 KB · Views: 307
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Z590Ivisiond-atx.png1.3 MB · Views: 601
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EFI OC 0.7.8 for Monterey.zip32.5 MB · Views: 399
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EFI Monterey OC 0.7.8 Sleep Wake.zip38.2 MB · Views: 564
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EFI OC 0.8.4 for 12 13.zip30.1 MB · Views: 581
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