How to build your own iMac Pro [Successful Build/Extended Guide]

[kgp]

Just updated my signature. Funny, I built a Dual CPU system before I finally gave up and sold everything and then used the same case and built a very similar X299/7980XE system before I found out about yours. The only thing is, I am currently using the AROUS 9 and not the ASUS board. It's still a good board and now that I have everything almost built, I think I may just continue using it. I'm also using 2 x AMD Vega Frontier GPUs. The reason for two is because I'm using 3 x 28" ASUS Gaming Monitors and you need two GPUs to run all three monitors side, by side, by side.

I have someone who used Clover to install everything for me (as I'm just a good builder, not a good installer). He only uses the guides that are posted on here on TonyMac. As you know the 7980XE CPU was very hard to get and had to wait a month for it but finally got it. I took it a step further and delidded it and added Cool Laboratory's Liquid Pro (Don't use Liquid Ultra - only use Liquid Pro). So my temp's are very good. I see that on your post page 103 - Post #1028, I'm facing the same screen error where it doesn't go any further than "PCI Configuration begin." I let my installer know about this and he will read up on this in the morning. We are using the latest version of High Sierra (just download tonight) as Apple made some slight revisions to HS that were causing sight install issues that (I think) have been cleared up with this newer update.

If you could let me know what page and section my installer needs to read in order for you not to explain yourself all over again, that would be helpful (as you have quite a bit of detailed info on your initial post). I've always prided myself on being the fastest GB score breaker here and now that I see what you've done, this is very encouraging news that I'm not the only one doing this and that more and more people are embracing this challenge and doing this on their own, thanks to guys like you. Thank you for your quick reply and hope that we can continue to break records and look forward to your reply here soon!

Well I really recommend to at least carefully study once the entire guide! By this you quickly figure out what is important and what is already known by your own experience

 

[TheOfficialGypsy]

@TheOfficialGypsy ,

well, man! The system now reached full forced system sleep/wake functionality with the ThunderboltEx 3 PCIe Adapter already for several days without revealing any issue!

Note that your SSDT-X299.aml to what reason ever still seems to break the else stable and now rock solid sleep/wake functionality.

The only modification since my last report consisted in "DISABLING" the "Above 4G Decoding" in the mainboard BIOS.

All other considerations remained without change and are once more summarised blow:


Full ACPI Table but disabling the PC0x -> PCIx DSDT Replacement patches for unpopulated PCIe slots, thus with respect to the PC0x -> PCIx replacements, just enabling:

Comment:            Find*[Hex]     Replace [Hex]
PC00 -> PCI0        50433030       50434930
PC02 -> PCI2        50433032       50434932
PC03 -> PCI3        50433033       50434933

----

BIOS Settings:

/Advanced/Platform Misc Configuration/

a.) PCI Express Native Power Management: Enabled
b.) Native ASPM: Enabled
c.) PCH DMI ASPM: Enabled
d.) ASPM: L1
e.) DMI Link ASPM Control: L1
f.) PEG - ASMP: ASPM L1​

/Advanced/ Thunderbolt(TM) Configuration/

TBT Root por Selector                               PCIE16_3
Thunderbolt USB Support                             Enabled
Thunderbolt Boot Support                            Enabled
Wake From Thunderbolt(TM Devices)                   Off
Thunderbolt(TM) PCIe Cache-line Size                128
GPIO3 Force Pwr                                     On
Wait time in ms after applying Force Pwr            200
Skip PCI OptionRom                                  Enabled
Security Level                                      SL1-No Security
Reserve mem per phy slot                            32
Reserve P mem per phy slot                          32
Reserve IO per phy slot                             20
Delay before SX Exit                                300
GPIO Filter                                         Enabled
Enable CLK REQ                                      Disabled
Enable ASPM                                         Enabled
Enable LTR                                          Disabled
Extra Bus Reserved                                  65
Reserved Memory                                     386
Memory Alignment                                    26
Reserved PMemory                                    960
PMemory Alignment                                   28
Reserved I/O                                        0
Alpine Ridge XHCI WA                                Disabled

/Boot/

Above 4G Decoding              Off

-----

Now it would be your turn to revise your SSDT-X299.aml until stable sleep/wake functionality has been also achieved after implementing the latter aml-file.

Cheers,

KGP

Update: Having written the above, I just once more encountered sleep/wake issues with the TB EX 3 even without your SSDT-X299.aml

Great news @kgp keep testing
So far I’ve had no luck pinpointing exactly what is causing the sleep issues, there are just soo many variables that testing every one of them as I am is taking it’s time :/

I have been using my SSDT and sleep seems to be working perfectly sometimes and other times I end up with a reboot. This leads me to believe there must be something else holding sleep up.

My suspicion is the issue with not being able to use our naitive CpuID. As I mentioned multiple times, I experience significant lag when using the system once it boots up. After sleep the lag is gone. I am hopeful that the upcoming 10.13.2 update will resolve this

 

[braindeadmac]

@kgp
With respect to your Thunderbolt 3 settings, I need a point of clarification, Security Level SL1 is 'User Authorization', SL0 is 'No Security', so which is correct, SL0 or SL1?

 

[ImaPirate]

Well I really recommend to at least carefully study once the entire guide! By this you quickly figure out what is important and what is already known by your own experience

Thank you again for your quick reply! Since I'm already committed to the AORUS 9 board my current stock speed GB score is 48,000+ (by comparison to your stock GB 51,000+ score). I can tell already where the limitation in speed is going to continue being an issue. I'll probably get no more than 56,000 to 58,000 (Max) using this particular board. Buying the ASUS Prime Deluxe board and new EK waterblock is going to be very costly at this point. I might switch, I don't know yet. In the meantime do you think the AORUS 9 is really that bad of a board for me to continue using long term? What's your thoughts on that.

Just to let you know, since I Delidded the CPU and replaced the TIM with Liquid Pro, my average temps (on idle) are around 30˚C. Stress testing the CPU & GPUs using LuxMark (LM), (similar to using Prime95 for Windows) my CPU temps never went above 40˚C (average 39.50˚C). Also, when using my KillAWatt Meter, my average wattage (on idle) 225 to 230. When stress testing (using LM) it went all the way up to 883 Watts! Pretty amazing.

 

[kgp]

Thank you again for your quick reply! Since I'm already committed to the AORUS 9 board my current stock speed GB score is 48,000+ (by comparison to your stock GB 51,000+ score). I can tell already where the limitation in speed is going to continue being an issue. I'll probably get no more than 56,000 to 58,000 (Max) using this particular board. Buying the ASUS Prime Deluxe board and new EK waterblock is going to be very costly at this point. I might switch, I don't know yet. In the meantime do you think the AORUS 9 is really that bad of a board for me to continue using long term? What's your thoughts on that.

Just to let you know, since I Delidded the CPU and replaced the TIM with Liquid Pro, my average temps (on idle) are around 30˚C. Stress testing the CPU & GPUs using LuxMark (LM), (similar to using Prime95 for Windows) my CPU temps never went above 40˚C (average 39.50˚C). Also, when using my KillAWatt Meter, my average wattage (on idle) 225 to 230. When stress testing (using LM) it went all the way up to 883 Watts! Pretty amazing.

I mean the only disadvantages of the Gigabyte boards are related to XCPM and overall processor performance.. you simply miss the “sync all cores” bios functionality, which results in significantly disturbed idle and max. load frequencies and finally in lower benchmark scores...

If you can live with that it shall be also fine with me

I guess that also the gigabyte bios posseses the multi core enhancement bios functionality. You should give it a try. Maybe this feature can be used with your board and the i9-7980XE already without any issues. On the ASUS prime x299 deluxe the current stability issues are soleyly occurent with the i9-7980XE and are only persistant under 10.13. All other Skylake-X processors do not show any issues and work just flawless with the latter BIOS feature enabled. The next BIOS update shall certainly also fix the remaining stability issues with the i9-7980XE. The geekbench score boost is really amazing: 51.000 (disabled) vs. 58.000 (enabled)!

Cheers,

KGP

 

[kgp]

@kgp
With respect to your Thunderbolt 3 settings, I need a point of clarification, Security Level SL1 is 'User Authorization', SL0 is 'No Security', so which is correct, SL0 or SL1?

You can use SL0 - No Security

 

[braindeadmac]

IOn the ASUS prime x299 deluxe the current stability issues are soleyly occurent with the i9-7980XE and are only persistant under 10.13. All other Skylake-X processors do not show any issues and work just flawless with the latter BIOS feature enabled. The next BIOS update shall certainly also fix the remaining stability issues with the i9-7980XE. The geekbench score boost is really amazing: 51.000 (disabled) vs. 58.000 (enabled)!

Cheers,

KGP

Not so sure that generalization about other processors holds true, KGP. I've actually found the i7-7820x to be not particularly stable with the ASUS multicore enhancement. Subject to frequent random restarts in particular. Those problem resolved with disabling the feature.

Neverheless, a big thank you for all your hard work on this project. Really amazingly detailed guide.

 

[ImaPirate]

I mean the only disadvantages of the Gigabyte boards are related to XCPM and overall processor performance.. you simply miss the “sync all cores” bios functionality, which results in significantly disturbed idle and max. load frequencies and finally in lower benchmark scores...

If you can live with that it shall be also fine with me

I guess that also the gigabyte bios posseses the multi core enhancement bios functionality. You should give it a try. Maybe this feature can be used with your board and the i9-7980XE already without any issues. On the ASUS prime x299 deluxe the current stability issues are soleyly occurent with the i9-7980XE and are only persistant under 10.13. All other Skylake-X processors do not show any issues and work just flawless with the latter BIOS feature enabled. The next BIOS update shall certainly also fix the remaining stability issues with the i9-7980XE. The geekbench score boost is really amazing: 51.000 (disabled) vs. 58.000 (enabled)!

Cheers,

KGP

When you mention "stability issues," what are you specifically referring to? Is it freezing up (or is something else happening) on your system when your BIOS functionality is Enabled? Do you face those stability issues even when it's Disabled and running at stock speeds? I say this because I face restarting issues; that's when the system just restarts for no reason. Is there something that I should enable or disable? Let me know what you can, thanks.

I did enable the Multicore enhancement, but it quickly restarted twice after about 5 minutes of use. I disabled it and it worked fine (well sort of); still restarts after 2 hours of use. Mind you I'm still using HS Beta and waiting to install the full version of HS.

On a side note, I better understand how you feel KGP, where (on the other Hackintosh site) you said: "I feel extremely stupid of having returned my ASUS X299 Prime Deluxe!" "The ASUS PRIME X299 DELUXE is amazing and I returned it because of this promising but misleading thread!" Well now you get to sing it's praises and as I'm going through the same thing that you went through. Oh well, at least it's cheaper than a brand new Apple that is twice as slow and costs twice as much.

 

[ImaPirate]

Not so sure that generalization about other processors holds true, KGP. I've actually found the i7-7820x to be not particularly stable with the ASUS multicore enhancement. Subject to frequent random restarts in particular. Those problem resolved with disabling the feature.

Neverheless, a big thank you for all your hard work on this project. Really amazingly detailed guide.

Hey BrainDead, long time no talk! I was just posting my issue and was inquiring about what KGP's "stability issues" were, when I saw your post and it looks like you're suffering with the same issue I am. Mind you I don't have any kind of Multicore functionality enabled (at least I don't think I do). I'll have to check with the guy I'm teamed up with helping me with my install process. You too also have the same GPU - Good for you. I have two, because I'm running 3 x 28" monitors and you need two in order for three to work. All 3 monitors do work though; which is something that I needed.

I'm kind of regretting getting the AORUS 9 board (like KGP did), but (again) it seems like you faced the same issue, but now it's corrected since you disabled it. I wonder what is causing it on my end. That's why I gave up on my SuperMicro X9DAi Dual 2697 v2 CPU setup, because it just randomly just kept freezing up every 1 to 2 hours for no reason. I hope there is a resolve to this or might just have to get the Asus Prime Deluxe and EK Monoblock. Man, having to pack up and resell the AORUS 9 and Monoblock in order to get another one.

 

[oznem]

iMac17,1 USB profile for ASRock Fatal1ty X299 Gaming K6

rear ports
HS01 (usb3) SS01
HS02 (usb3) SS02
HS03 (usb3) SS03
HS04 (usb3) SS04
HS05 (usb2)
HS06 (usb2)
HS07 (usb2)
HS08 (usb2)

front ports
HS12 (usb2)
HS13 (both front usb3 headers) SS05

Dear spewny, thank you for sharing USB profile!
As I am looking forward to build a X299 rig and the mobo ASRock Fatal1ty X299 Gaming K6 you seem to be using is interesting from a price/performance viewpoint, could you please be so kind as to share also the main BIOS setting for this mobo please?

many thanks in advance!!!!