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

[Loloflatsix]

Almost everything. "PC00-> PCI0" has to stay.
Here is an updated version:

Edit: Please look in the patches. These are for the ASUS PRIME X299 DELUXE Mainbard. Certainly, much of it basically goes into other X299s. But certainly some other devices are installed, sometimes on other addresses.

Thank's for this patch first,

Yes of course this patch is for ASUS PRIME X299 DELUXE, but I did put with no issue the SSDT-X299-iMacPro from Kgp in Clover/ACPI/patched and if i apply the patch in my DSDT it returns no error : I'll try and report ;-)

 

[macs_forever]

850W is on the lower end of thing. The processor alone can easily reach 500W if you OC it.
1000W is on the comfortable side of things. I recommend the Seasonic Prime 1000W titanium, it's super quiet, you won't hear a thing with it.


Any 1000W and more Pau are super hard to find.
If you're after quiet, check this site
https://www.cybenetics.com/index.php?option=database
It has many PSU, you can search by efficiency or noise.




I have both the define C and R6. If you know what graphic card you're going to put in there and you know they aren't longer than 28cm, then get the C. That's assuming you put a water cooler at the front (otherwise up to 32cm)

They are both as quiet
The R6 is too big for my taste. You'll have trouble fitting a 360mm cooler at the front, it's not a supported configuration; you'll have to remove the 3.5" slot at the top. 280mm Max. It's all on the fractal manuals available online.
They are. Much quieter case than the lianli one.
The R6 is made of higher quality material (steel VS plastic for the front and top). If you don't plan on having custom water cooling, the C is plenty. It's quiet, can be well ventilated.


So you bought a 2 grands CPU, but no power supply? What a waste of money...

Waste? No... Just buying parts as they come on sale. Saved $50 on motherboard. I have a business associate with ties to Intel. I was able to get a discount on the CPU. The 7960 would have been OK, but it was not available. Don't ask what I paid for the CPU. I'm not allowed to say.

Thanks for the advice on the design C. I need to compare the size with the Design S. I make mostly M-ITX builds so I will likely get a card that is 172mm or shorter.

 

[mysticmerlin]

Hi, I finally built my iMacPro based on KGP's excellent guide. It's a bit disappointing because I have nothing more to report than it works perfectly. The little difficulties I ran into were with the EKWB reservoir that was really hard to stop leaking, just had to be overly tight. Hurt my hands doing that and they're big mits. Struggled a bit preventing 10.3 from absolutely insisting that my system drive be apfs which I am absolutely not having. Kontakt my main tool doesn't work with that file system and I've heard of other apfs weirdness. But typing 'avoid apfs' showed me an easy way round. Had to clear the cmos after upgrading the bios and it took me a while to figure out that profiles were saved under overclocking. OS X offered an upgrade with the same number that went fine.
Next step will be figuring out how to implement my PCI cards and getting the SSDT straightened out in IASL and IOREG but after having read it twice it just gave me a headache so I'll try another day. I was worried about finding the right overclock but I just went with KGP's bios settings and left CPU core voltage on auto. I did not experience any weirdness as described in that section of the bios settings and everything clocks just perfect. I get a 58000 Multiscore and a 5600 single with temps in the 70°max. This is ideal for me as I don't want to delid my cpu and with two cores less than a 7980Xe a lower score is to be expected. The fully native HWP is really impressive and the water cooling really tracks the temperature immediately. I put my radiator on CPU fan header and the pump on the CPU opt header.
As I said earlier everything works boringly well. Sleep, Shut down, USB, native NvME (blazing fast), the RX580 , the two Lan ports, the overclocking, the memory, Istat menus, HDMI audio, the cute ImacPro splash screen. I have no use for Wifi, onboard audio or bluetooth so I can't comment on those since they are turned off in the bios. Once I have figured out the ioreg ssdt thing I'll give some feedback on how well it handles my 4 PCI sound cards. With a bit of luck and a PCI riser cable I might even be able to get the thunderbolt card going for a total of 6 pci cards but that's just icing on the cake.
As a comparision my dual Xeon 88core had a 55000 bench but a measly 2400 single which was often a problem as it could hardly turbo at all. The 8700K coffelake rig I built a few weeks ago is more than decent for less than half the price of this imac pro but it's also half the geekbench and dawbench VI score. In my work the convenience of having one rig rather than messing with slaves is well worth the price difference.

Big thanks to KGP for his tremendous effort. I often see weird vibes on this thread which is really unfair when you think that after almost 600 pages he is still hanging in giving advice and making contributions to his original post. It's baffling to me.
As someone who only has a basic hackintosh knowledge he has enabled me to replace my dual xeon 88 core setup with a machine that is much more appropriate for my specific needs in a very professional and throrough way. Honestly without the original post I would never have jumped on this iMacProwagon that requires open loop watercooling an expensive cpu, expensive MB. It's a bit early to say 100% success as I've had issues with PCI cards in the past but so far so good.

 

[JH1]

Hey @kgp love this thread, thanks so much for a great iMac Pro clone!

I have one issue, I followed @izo1's very helpful idea of swapping Intel Wifi/BT chip with the Broadcom and everything works fine. However, Bluetooth drops out some times.

Is this related to the lack of DSDT? Is there a power distribution issue with the BCM94352Z since BT uses USB?


Thank you

 

[NWSnowBum]

To be able to use all 3 DisplayPorts on a Vega Frontier Edition I installed the NvidiaGraphicsFixup.kext
This allowed me to run triple 4k displays over DisplayPort. Previously I could only run 2 through DisplayPort and 1 through HDMI

I got this from a user in another thread and thought some could use it here since I've seen some people claim it can't be done and you need to buy an additional card:

There may be a better way to solve this; if so please let me know.

 

[jyavenard]

Struggled a bit preventing 10.3 from absolutely insisting that my system drive be apfs which I am absolutely not having.

The UnSolid.kext file did that very nicely for me.

That allowed to install macOS 10.13.3 with HFS+, makes it a breeze to boot the SSD from windows under VMWare.

 

[jyavenard]

To be able to use all 3 DisplayPorts on a Vega Frontier Edition I installed the NvidiaGraphicsFixup.kext
This allowed me to run triple 4k displays over DisplayPort. Previously I could only run 2 through DisplayPort and 1 through HDMI

I'm going to try this right away...
will report ASAP, this is the one thing that annoys me the most with my build...

I got a HDMI -> DP adapter, it works great under windows, but on mac the picture it shows is red saturated.

 

[NWSnowBum]

I'm going to try this right away...
will report ASAP, this is the one thing that annoys me the most with my build...

I got a HDMI -> DP adapter, it works great under windows, but on mac the picture it shows is red saturated.

I didn't like running at only 30 hertz when connected via HDMI. I thought I could put up with it...but nope.

 

[jyavenard]

I didn't like running at only 30 hertz when connected via HDMI. I thought I could put up with it...but nope.

Did you have to install Lilu kernel extension too ?
reading about this nvidia fixup, it says it works in combination of lilu..

With the HDMI->DP adapter, my screen ran at its native resolution (2560x1440 @ 60Hz) I used this one: https://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/B0752D33PJ/?tag=tonymacx8607-21 (I also got this one, but it works just as poorly, and was twice the price, going to return it: https://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/B00R4NITCM/?tag=tonymacx8607-21).

I was just about to pull the plug and get another Vega, that screen issue is driving me nuts.

 

[NWSnowBum]

Did you have to install Lilu kernel extension too ?
reading about this nvidia fixup, it says it works in combination of lilu..

With the HDMI->DP adapter, my screen ran at its native resolution (2560x1440 @ 60Hz) I used this one: https://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/B0752D33PJ/?tag=tonymacx8607-21 (I also got this one, but it works just as poorly, and was twice the price, going to return it: https://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/B00R4NITCM/?tag=tonymacx8607-21).

I was just about to pull the plug and get another Vega, that screen issue is driving me nuts.

It looks like I already had lilu in kexts/other where I installed NvidiaGraphicsFixup.