[Guide] Z97MX-Gaming 5 | i7 4790K | GTX 970 G1 | OS X 10.11

[iknowmyabc]

I'ver been gifted the same parts except the MB. It's the Z97x-Gaming 7.

My question is can I basically still follow this guide or is the board not similar enough? Am I better off just selling that board and getting the same one here? Just looking for the simplest solution.

TIA

 

[CyCLoBoT]

I'ver been gifted the same parts except the MB. It's the Z97x-Gaming 7.

My question is can I basically still follow this guide or is the board not similar enough? Am I better off just selling that board and getting the same one here? Just looking for the simplest solution.

TIA

I think you'll be fine following this guide. Most of the motherboards that support uEFI have the same steps for installing OS X. The only difference that you might see is where all the settings are in BIOS.

 

[Sergiqu]

Try turning off XMP in BIOS and see if it prevents Photos from crashing. I had the same problem and was able to get Photos to work once XMP was turned off. I had tried setting the memory timings manually but it did not help. Photos did not crash when RAM was set to 1333 MHz.

The odd thing is that now that I have switched to an Asus motherboard, Photos app is working just fine with XMP enabled.

Indeed , I have XMP Off, But I solo works well 1333. If the speed climb something , CRASH !!!! These base plate using Asus ??

 

[CyCLoBoT]

These base plate using Asus ??

Sorry, what do you mean by this?

 

[Sergiqu]

Sorry, what do you mean by this?

Sorry, use Google translator, and I wondered why I mobo were using. I see that is the H97M-Plus model. Such performance with respect to Gygabite?

 

[CyCLoBoT]

Sorry, use Google translator, and I wondered why I mobo were using. I see that is the H97M-Plus model. Such performance with respect to Gygabite?

In terms of performance, I don't see any difference whatsoever. I believe the Asus motherboard only supports RAM at 1600 MHz max but that's more than enough for my needs. Also the Gigabyte motherboard may provide more overclocking options than the Asus one but I don't overclock so I'm okay with that. I have not had a single crash since switching to Asus motherboard. System is running smoothly.

Just out of curiosity, have you tried using the latest BIOS for the Gigabyte motherboard? If you are using the Z97MX Gaming 5 motherboard then there is a beta BIOS available that supposedly provides more memory compatibility. Search for "gigabyte beta bios" in Google and the Tweakdown forum has a link to the latest BIOS. Please note that this is a beta BIOS so proceed cautiously.

 

[Sergiqu]

In terms of performance, I don't see any difference whatsoever. I believe the Asus motherboard only supports RAM at 1600 MHz max but that's more than enough for my needs. Also the Gigabyte motherboard may provide more overclocking options than the Asus one but I don't overclock so I'm okay with that. I have not had a single crash since switching to Asus motherboard. System is running smoothly.

Just out of curiosity, have you tried using the latest BIOS for the Gigabyte motherboard? If you are using the Z97MX Gaming 5 motherboard then there is a beta BIOS available that supposedly provides more memory compatibility. Search for "gigabyte beta bios" in Google and the Tweakdown forum has a link to the latest BIOS. Please note that this is a beta BIOS so proceed cautiously.

Exactly that is the bios use. Moment occurs to me exactly the same, I can only operate at 1333 even changing the timmings

 

[Tony9000]

Thanks for the excellent write up. Based on your success with this setup, I bought the same CPU and similar motherboard to try to stick with the simple theme. My setup:

Z97X- Gaming7 Bios F8
i7-4790k
Big ass air cooler capable of cooling a small power plant
16gb DDR 1600
WIFI PCI card from my old Hackintosh, natively supported
250GB Samsung SSD
GeForce 650 Ti 2gb (left over from my 2013 Mackintosh build)
SATA SSD to USB 3.0 connector (very useful for pulling the SSD and mounting it to my Macbook to try and fix EFI boot problems).
Corsair 650 watt PSU
QNIX 27" 2560 x 1440 - again recycled from my old Mackintosh

I stuck with the 650 Ti because it's natively supported in OSX. On my i7-3770k/Z77 10.9 build I didn't need to do anything to get it to work. The 3770k died when I shorted the power supply on accident, so I recycled many of the things inside that build for this build.

I followed your BIOS settings exactly and the Unibeast setup.

The problem I'm having is I get a kernal panic when booting from the USB:

"Unable to find driver for this platform: \ACPI\"

Any ideas on where to start with this?

Edit:

I was able to get it to work by making several new Unibeast drives. Finally one of them worked. Reading through other threads, USB drives seem to be super flakey and for whatever reason, probably are causing more install grief that necessary. Having a recommended brand and type of USB drive might save people hours (days?) of unnecessary agony. I will likely use a SSD in a USB adapter to avoid the related agony in the future.

After getting a working USB that could boot, I have to say this was the simplest Hackintosh build possible. I left the GeForce 650 in for the install and didn't need to add any boot flags. Everything just works with no fuss, no muss.

Everything installed without any problems. Wifi worked natively. Followed the Multibeast procedure verbatim and everything works. Sleep works. I need to add the ssdt thing in yet too.

My install was 10.11.3. Once everything was working, I upgraded to 10.11.6 through the app store. I didn't have to fix anything after upgrading.

Overall, this is quite amazing. Geek bench came in at 3950 on 32 bit single core, without XMP enabled. I'm not over clocking.

This was possibly easier than installing Windows 10 on a 5960x machine.

 

[tom.cornell]

Thank you for taking the time to do this writeup. It went almost flawlessly for me.

I have the same setup z97mx-gaming 5.....

I was unable to get the hd4600 working above 1900x1080. So I hijacked an vida gtx 950 which works, ut I have the same issue. I know the monitor is capable of more bc it is display 3840x2160 on my linux boot. It is an lg 27ud68.

Attached is my config.plist in case I am missing something.

Any help is appreciated.

Tom

 

[bestplay]

Hey! This tutorial fully worked, i've exactly same parts. But few days ago Mac OS Sierra was released. Do you guys know is this tutorial compatible with new Mac OS?