- Joined
- Jun 30, 2016
- Messages
- 163
- Motherboard
- GA-H110M-A
- CPU
- i5-6500
- Graphics
- RX 560
- Mac
- Mobile Phone
Notice 2: Upgrade to Catalina - see the following post. Now also running i5-6500 (plug and play upgrade)
“HackinMouse” Skylake H110 Econo Rig | i5-6500 | GA-H110M-A | 16GB | RX560
Upgrade to 10.14.4 (18E226) Just when I was praising the simplicity of the last upgrade, this one appeared to be a bit tricker from all the feedback, and it was. That said, it was still an easy upgrade and it was a chance to get current on Clover and kexts. Everything seems to be stable and...
www.tonymacx86.com
Notice: Upgrade to Mojave - see the following post.
HackinMouse Mojave Upgrade - i3-6100/GA-H110M-A/RX 560/16GB
Components
Zalman ATX Mini Tower PC Case T4
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00O07448S/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
Gigabyte GA-H110M-A (rev. 1.0)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0165YUDTM/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
EVGA 430W Power Supply 100-W1-0430-KR
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H33SDR4/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
Intel i3-6100
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015VPX2EO/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 8GB Single DDR4 2400 MT/s (PC4-19200) DIMM 288-Pin
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UFBZOVE/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
Patriot Torch 120GB SATA 3 2.5 SSD
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OTY083M/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
Already Owned
EVGA GTX 950 2GB (recently purchased)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B013WQCC8Q/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
Other stuff I had just sitting around:
- Gateway 22” 720p HD Monitor (HDMI)
- Logitech mini speakers (USB powered)
- Apple keyboard (USB wired) - like new from an iMac.
- Shhh Mouse (wireless - plug dongle into keyboard)
- Optical drive/DVD burner (internal) from 2012 Asus PC (mounted and installed after the initial install, plug and play). The Zalman T4 has a built in optical drive door with eject button. This gives the machine a more professional OEM look.
- 1 TB 7200 RPM Seagate HDD (mounted and installed after the initial install, plug and play) - using 500 GB partition for Time Machine and the other 500GB for data.
Comments
This is my second Hackintosh build. I call this one “HackinMouse” because it is smaller and more efficient than my first build. It also turned out to be nice and quiet. See my first build here:
"HackinWorth" Value Rig: http://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/h...i5-6500-ga-h170-gaming-3-gtx-950-16gb.197912/
My goals for this build were as follows:
- Build a useable i3-6100 Skylake “econo” build from Amazon components that would cost no more than $300.00. I went about $11 dollars over budget (pre-tax). I decided to pick up the Amazon Prime Rewards card and save another $70. Final cost, including tax was $257.24.
- System will be used mainly for Internet browsing and other light duty use.
- Utilize the EVGA GTX 950 from the “HackinWorth” build since my son is replacing the GPU in that rig with a GTX 970. The GTX 950 will allow some decent gaming capabilities that rival many so-called gaming laptops. With the added price of the GTX 950, that brings the my total cost to just over $400.
- Finally, I wanted to use the other peripherals we already had.
At first, I wanted to go mini-ITX with the motherboard and spend $50-70 on a “cube” case, but I quickly realized this would quickly take me over budget. This also makes it a bit trickier with cooling, GPU length, and future expansion depending on which case you go with. I decided that the mATX was the way to go for my economy build since there are some decent form factor mATX cases that are around $30-35. Once I found the slim mATX Zalman case with nice built-in optical drive support for $32 and the Gigabyte H110 motherboard for $50, meeting the budget became a reality.
As expected, the Realtek ALC887 audio and Ethernet adapter didn’t work out-of-the-box, but these were easily solved using the methods shared below. If you want to use the onboard GPU (HD 530), traditional sleep (using RAM) will not work appropriately. You can force the computer not to sleep System Settings/Energy Saver, or you can force hibernation (using disk) instead true RAM-based sleep. Once I installed the GTX 950, the sleep issue was no longer a problem.
What Works?
Everything I have tested thus far! (Ethernet, audio, USB 3, front headphone jack, GPU acceleration, shutdown/restart, sleep/resume short and long term, App Store, USB Mic, Optical drive). The system is very stable and has never crashed. I am very happy with this configuration.
What Doesn’t Work?
Nothing that I know of thus far! Still testing...I don’t use iMessage, so I haven’t tried that. I’m sure it can be made to work using the normal methods etc.
Installation Notes
Update for High Sierra installation, see post #194
BIOS Settings
(DEL to enter using USB keyboard)
- Load optimized defaults first, then:
- Set EFI Boot = On (default to EFI boot)
- Set Secure Boot = Off
- Set Fast Boot = Off
- Set Virtualization VT-d = Disabled
- Set ErP = Enabled - this is necessary to allow shutdown to work properly, i.e. not reboot seconds after shutdown. ErP Support determines whether to let the system consume less than 1W of power in S5 (shutdown) state. When the setting is enabled, the following four functions will become unavailable: PME Event Wake Up, Power On By Mouse, Power On By Keyboard, and Wake On LAN.
- Set OS Type to “Other”
- Set XHCI Handoff to Enabled
- Memory - I used the “Performance” setting for RAM in the BIOS. I have a 2400 module for a motherboard that only supports 2133 RAM frequency, this is not an issue. I went with an 8GB module instead of 2x4 GB so I can upgrade to 16GB later. See notes in Clover config.plist below to allow the OS to properly see the 8GB RAM. If you do some research on Single vs Dual Channel, Dual Channel doesn’t give double the performance in case you are wondering, the performance increase is is actually negligible.
- Make sure the I/O controller (i.e. Super I/O) is disabled in the BIOS.
UniBeast Installer
- 16GB USB3 stick - create as usual per instructions: http://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/u...pitan-on-any-supported-intel-based-pc.172672/
- Used front case USB3 port to boot (use F12 to select a drive, but you can just let it boot if using BIOS defaults without any other bootable drives).
- Used vanilla process to get initial system installed.
- Did not need to disable the NVIDIA card using the bootloader parameter nv_disable=1.
MultiBeast Post Install
- Used MultiBeast for El Capitan 8.2.3
- Do NOT install ALC887 audio as suggested in the Installation Guide.
- Quick Start, choose UEFI Boot Mode - install the Clover bootloader to internal SSD only
- Drivers/Network/Reaktek/RealtekRTL8111 v2.2.1 (check)
- If you want the HD 530 to work without glitches/artifacts, make sure you check the Intel HD 530 under Customize/Graphics Options. I used this mode before I installed my GTX 950 and the HD 530 was working quite well, but without sleep as mentioned above.
- No drivers should have been installed by Multibeast
- Backup stock OSX AppleHDA.kext just in case. It is located in in /S/L/E
- Mount EFI Partition using Clover Configurator.
- Use Clover Configurator and check “FixHDA” under ACPI
- Reboot.
- Download and run audio command script by toleda (audio_cloverALC-110_v1.0r10.command): https://github.com/toleda/audio_CloverALC (directions at the bottom)
- In System Preferences/Sound, choose “Internal Speakers” as “Output”
- Reboot and you should have sound.
- Nvidia Web Driver - download from Nvidia
- Used latest Web Driver 346.03.15f02 for 10.11.6
- http://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/n...cs-drivers-for-os-x-10-11-5-346-03-10.193172/)
- Clover config.plist add boot argument nvda_drv=1
- Reboot
- The Nvidia control panel always says it is using the Default OS X Default Graphics Driver, but it lies. I don’t show the Nvidia icon on the menu bar because it doesn’t show the correct card anyhow.
http://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/quick-guide-to-generate-a-ssdt-for-cpu-power-management.177456/
Ran the script from as describe here:
https://github.com/Piker-Alpha/ssdtPRGen.sh
Placed the SSDT.aml output file into:
[EFI Partition]/EFI/CLOVER/ACPI/patched/SSDT.aml
TRIM
Enabled TRIM support for the SSD.
From a Terminal session:
Code:
sudo trimforce enable
A reboot is required after enabling TRIM support. To confirm that it is working, check the status in About this Mac/System Report.../SATA Devices. Click on the SSD device on the right and note that TRIM support is now enabled.
Clover Configuration
I used Clover Configurator 4.30.0 for viewing/editing my config.plist and for mounting the EFI partition.
Resources:
[EFI Partition]/EFI/CLOVER/ACPI/patched/SSDT.aml
config.plist
- Acpi:
- FixHDA (checked)
- Boot:
- dart=0 (already present as a default, disabled VT-d. Not really required as it should be disabled in the BIOS already)
- nvda_drv=1 (only add this after Nvidia drivers are installed)
- On Sierra I suggest you boot with darkwake=8 or darkwake=10. Also make sure you leave Power Nap off under Energy Saver in System Preferences.
- CPU: defaults
- Devices:
- Audio = 1
- Disable Drivers: defaults (nothing)
- Gui: defaults
- Graphics: defaults (Inject Intel is all that is checked)
- Kernel and Kext Patches: defaults and whatever was enabled by audio_cloverALC-110_v1.0r10.command script and the HD 530 Multibeast install. I added nothing manually here:
- Apple RTC (checked)
- Asus AICPUPM (checked)
- KernelPm (checked)
- KextsToPatch (5 total) - nothing manually added.
- AppleHDA (3)
- AppleAHCIPort (1)
- AppleIntelSKLGraphicsFramebuffer (1)
- Rt Variables: defaults
- SMBIOS:
- iMac14,2
- Memory definition required, or OS only sees 4GB.
- Slot 0, 8192, 2133, Crucial
- System Parameters: defaults (Inject Kexts = Yes, Inject System ID is checked)
Now upgraded to Sierra and Gigabyte BIOS F20
See posts #50 and #66 for details:
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...h110m-a-gtx950-8gb.199438/page-5#post-1393687
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...h110m-a-gtx950-8gb.199438/page-7#post-1413238
Clonezilla Disk Imaging
Being a Linux geek, I decided not to purchase an Apple specific backup utility to supplement the Time Machine backups. At first I was tempted to purchase SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner since they seemed to be OS X staples for many. I'm sure they are great products from what I have read. But, after doing some research, I found that Clonezilla would be best for me since this single utility can clone/image OS X disks just like it can for Linux and Windows.
I also found that the aforementioned OS X specific backup utilities don't actually backup the bootloader EFI partition. Their "bootable" recovery drives actually need to have a bootloader installed manually onto the cloned drive. While this is a non-issue for many, and is easy to do post-backup, there is an extra step to to get Clover installed and properly configured to boot the OS. And, since I prefer to use network storage as backup media for disk images, Clonezilla is a better and simpler option for me. And, it is free!
- Download Clonezilla and create a bootable USB flash drive (follow the instructions at http://clonezilla.org/). I used the 64-bit (AMD64) alternative Ubuntu-based version.
- Boot from USB (F12 at BIOS screen, choose Clonezilla USB device)
- Follow their instructions to clone your disk in the preferred manner. In Clonezilla, I mount my Samba share on my fileserver and clone my SSD disk image to network, just like I can do for Linux and Windows machines. Restoring is just as easy. If you should ever need to, simply restore the disk image of your choice and you have your whole rig back up and running again in no time. Since it backs up the EFI partition as well, there is nothing to do after the restore.
- Properly shutdown Clonezilla and remove the USB flash drive.
- Reboot into OSX as normal.
Benchmarks
64-bit Geekbench 4:
32-bit Geekbench 3:
Heaven 4.0 (default settings):
Hahaha, I didn't realize the "HackinMouse" was posted\tweeted by tonymacx86. Pretty cool!
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