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

[RyanC]

Hi, I am currently pondering options to upgrade from my dual Xeon setup and was wondering if anyone could provide some advice.
I am a music pro and require more single core speed than the e5-2699 v4s can provide.
I have found a buyer for my current system for roughly 4k.
I recently built a coffelake 8700k from pastrychefs golden build for a fellow producer and it overclocked quite well and was hard to fault though I haven't thoroughly tested USB and PCI slots.
Reasons for going with this IMac Pro build here would be foremost native HWP , native USB ,more PCI Lanes (I run 2 PCIe audio cards and 2 DSP accelerators) and a higher multicore score with a 7960x (apparently DAW's cant use more than 32 threads anyway so no need for a 7980). This is roughly 2k more than the 8700k. I understand the performance/price goes way down with high end cpu's but with 550 pages to wade through I was wondering if there might be other stuff to weigh in the balance. Thunderbolt is of no use to me and I'm thinking of a GTX 1050 for basic 3 screen use.
Any advice well appreciated before I plonk my cash.

What DAWs are you using? I believe that Logic has been updated to use up to 18 cores, and I think pro tools can as well. More cores don't help as much for the lowest buffer settings, but with daws moving to the hybrid buffers you still see the benefit. If you aren't in a huge rush you may want to wait until some more user experiences comes in with the imac pros and these hacks...

Somebody has at least a screen shot in windows and it looks like it's using all the cores-

https://www.gearnews.com/can-intels-18-core-core-i9-cpu-models-revolutionise-music-production/

Then again you could always upgrade the CPU later on.

 

[kgp]

I confirm this behaviour with SNs generated from Clover Configurator (4.60.2.0) Other versions possibly affected.

@canyondust , @rushstrike ,

The SMBIOS iMacPro1,1 SNs, generated by Clover Configurator are totally fine and valid! It rather seems that everymac did not update it's library for iMac Pros. That's why this part of an idiot guide for iMessage does not work for now. However it is also not needed. We can blindly believe in the SNs generated by Clover Configurator.

Everything clearly stated and explained within my guide.

Enjoy and have fun,

KGP

 

[kgp]

I don't think I am getting full video acceleration even with the nVidia's web drivers. The screen flickers when I drag a window across the desktop. When I open a graphics intensive website, any video running on VLC kinda hangs. It is just like having no drivers for graphics card. Can someone please help me with this? I am using a GTX 1080 Ti on High Sierra

Did you enable the patched Nvidia web driver within the Nvidia Driver Manager at all?

 

[jaraheel]

Did you enable the patched Nvidia web driver within the Nvidia Driver Manager at all?

Do you mean selecting nVidia web driver, instead of Default macOS graphics driver? I have done that, yes

 

[kgp]

What DAWs are you using? I believe that Logic has been updated to use up to 18 cores, and I think pro tools can as well. More cores don't help as much for the lowest buffer settings, but with daws moving to the hybrid buffers you still see the benefit. If you aren't in a huge rush you may want to wait until some more user experiences comes in with the imac pros and these hacks...

Somebody has at least a screen shot in windows and it looks like it's using all the cores-

https://www.gearnews.com/can-intels-18-core-core-i9-cpu-models-revolutionise-music-production/

Then again you could always upgrade the CPU later on.

Until some Logic-X user experience comes in with the imac pros and these hacks? What are you talking about ,man?

@DSM2 and I myself already repeatedly confirmed that Logic-X behaves as expected on Skylake-X/X299. All former bugs like the SKZ7 Intel bug have been removed by ASUS microcode updates, thanks to our common efforts.

Did you read Section E.12 of my guide and post #5471 at all?

Cheers,

KGP

 

[kgp]

New Nvidia Web Driver 387.10.10.10.25.159 released for 10.13.3 SA (17D2102)

Download: https://images.nvidi...0.10.25.159.pkg

Enjoy and have fun,

 

[kgp]

Do you mean selecting nVidia web driver, instead of Default macOS graphics driver? I have done that, yes

Did you properly modify NVDAStartupWeb.kext as, outlined in my guide?

Anyway, you can use now officially released Nvidia Web Driver 387.10.10.10.25.159 for 10.13.3 SA (17D2102). See post
#5553.

 

[kgp]

Hi,
I have an IOGear Bluetooth 4.0 USB adapter (listed in the accessories portion of the hardware compatibility list here no Tonymacx86). It worked perfectly with my previous Yosemite/El-Captian/Sierra hackintoshes but is not working with 10.13.3. Is there a way to get it to work? Also I am a noob when it comes to SSDTs. Do we really need one? If so, how to create/extract it?

I already repeatedly answered these questions along this thread.

No further feedback from my side.

You do have all information you need to properly adopt the ACPI replacements and SST-X299-iMacPro.aml.

The IOGear Bluetooth 4.0 USB adapter does not support Airdrop, Hands-off and continuity.

For a working Airport implementation, you need a natively implemented BT/WIFI solution.

I provide several native BT/WIFI adopter solutions between 25$ and 135$ within my guide.

Onboard BT should be anyway natively implemented for most of the X299 motherboards available on the market.

You are just wasting my time, my friend.

 

[jaraheel]

Did you properly modify NVDAStartupWeb.kext as, outlined in my guide?

Anyway, you can use now officially released Nvidia Web Driver 387.10.10.10.25.159 for 10.13.3 SA (17D2102). See post
#5553.

Thanks so much. I really appreciate it. After installing the newest driver you linked to, things have improved, but only marginally so. Videos still get stuck. Is there an app that can help me check if the driver/hardware is working properly?

The OS is not working smoothly, there are micro-hangups here an there. The activity monitor does not show any resources being hogged. Memory usage is at mere 9GB, and CPU load is < 2%. So I don't know what's going on. I remember there used to be a boot flag, CPUS=1 with Yosemite (or before that). But with Sierra when I used it the first time, and noticed how slow the system was, it turned out that the flag was only enabling the OS to use a single core! I feel things are kinda similar to that. I'd greatly appreciate any suggestions.

 

[kgp]

Thanks so much. I really appreciate it. After installing the newest driver you linked to, things have improved, but only marginally so. Videos still get stuck. Is there an app that can help me check if the driver/hardware is working properly?

The OS is not working smoothly, there are micro-hangups here an there. The activity monitor does not show any resources being hogged. Memory usage is at mere 9GB, and CPU load is < 2%. So I don't know what's going on. I remember there used to be a boot flag, CPUS=1 with Yosemite (or before that). But with Sierra when I used it the first time, and noticed how slow the system was, it turned out that the flag was only enabling the OS to use a single core! I feel things are kinda similar to that. I'd greatly appreciate any suggestions.

CPUS=1 causes your system to boot with one core/thread only, the last thing you want to do.

Please further bug fix your system configuration.

Good luck,

KGP