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

[naive666]

You don't seem to have follow the guide such as setting your SMBIOS nor the serial board number.
Follow the steps of the guide *precisely* another it's not going to boot...
You can't just start thing and expect to work with no work from your part.
Especially when you're not using the recommended motherboard

Actually, I do have a complete SMBIOS. Here I attach my config.plist

Currently, I successfully installed mac OS, but I still sometimes get stuck on the booting stage (verbose).

After the installation, the lag is very serious and the graphics memory is only 22MB. I think it is the problem of the graphics driver, and I will install the NVIDIA web driver later.

I am wondering if it is normal to take a lot of time boot into the mac OS and why I often get stuck at the booting stage?

Thank you.

 

[egroys]

Can you suspend/resume with your board.
Glad I could be of some help. I've improved the set-up a fair bit with the last ssdt injection. I'll update the EFI folder accordingly

I've been following your designare progress for a while and I wanted to see if you had any luck or new developments, or general outlook with hot plugging TB3? I wanted to stick with the Designare but hotwap makes it tempting to go with the Asus Prime Deluxe.

Thanks in advance!

 

[RuleBreaker01]

I've been following your designare progress for a while and I wanted to see if you had any luck or new developments, or general outlook with hot plugging TB3? I wanted to stick with the Designare but hotwap makes it tempting to go with the Asus Prime Deluxe.

No hotplug unfortunately.
I made progress yesterday in that I can put the machine to sleep (that never worked before), and now the list of attached PCI devices are properly showing in the PCI section of System Information.

Still working on it.
I've ordered an ASRock MB with the ASRock Thunderbolt card though... Will try there, if it easily work there, I'll ditch the designare.
If that still doesn't work, I'll try once again with the Asus MB with the ASRock TB3 card...

Edit: I think the Designare TB doesn't support hotplug in macOS due to the way it's wired on the motherboard. It's not directly connected to a PCIe lane (like a PCIe TB3 card would do, or like the iMac Pro has them configured)....

 

[x-9er]

So I've prepared two different install disks and neither one will boot on the X299 DELUXE. Bringing up the boot menu with F8 presents them as options, but hitting enter on them just brings up the BIOS setup. Attempting to run them from the Boot Override does nothing.

I've installed successfully on a half-dozen other systems, but have never seen Clover simply refuse to load, so it seems it must be something in the BIOS (though I have triple-checked that I have it set up identical to the guide).

 

[mysticmerlin]

What watercooling system do you have? Your temps are very low, I wish I could achieve it with my 360 mm cooler.

I used the EKWB x360 kit and added a monobloc when I realised the VRM was likely to suffer more than the cpu. Nothing on the gpu. It seemed a bit overkill at the time but I am glad I did since all this power is actually really useful in my specific workflow . I keep my computers in a separate machine room so noise is not an issue another advantage over the IMac pro

 

[levifig]

It seems .161 version of the Nvidia Web Driver isn't as good as previous versions… Is this true for other people? Is 159 still the best option for a 1080 Ti? Thanks.

 

[rushstrike]

This is seriously impressive! Thank you for taking the time to write your process so thoroughly!

As a developer I have a question: Did you benchmark compiling anything with this machine?

I'd be very interested in seeing how this machine performs using Xcode.

Would be great if you find the time to do this somewhat standardized test:
https://github.com/ashfurrow/xcode-hardware-performance

xcode 9.2
MacOS 10.13.4 beta5
did a build of eidolon https://github.com/artsy/eidolon
fresh build + time to finish launching ipad 10.5 simulator = 1 minute and 53 seconds ( 1:02 compile time, and 50 second to start up simulator)

incremental build + time to finish launching ipad 10.5 simulatr = 51 seconds (00:07 compile time, and 43 seconds to start simulator)

Strange that my fresh build result is much slower compared to the machines on the list even though i have 32gb and i9-7900x. My SSD is just a standard 1 TB sata3 so not an NVME drive (318/389 Read write). My incremental build takes the same time for compile but much slower on simulator start time as well.

 

[naive666]

After installation the Mac OS and the NVIDIA web driver. I am now stuck on the booting phase.

Could someone help me...

 

[Leukipp0s]

Find your Thunderbolt PCI adres in boot log and create arbitrary for TB3 device (1578 device id)
You can apply this for all your device. So there are no need for using ssdt. Everything can by concentrate in one config.plist.
View attachment 318363 View attachment 318360
But I thing this technic is not compatible with your guide.

@borysbass That is really awesome! I'm doing my best to understand exactly what you mean. I keep reading and trying, but I haven't tried everything. Where exactly within the text mode of the Clover Configurator file do I place that snippet you posted? I copied it and closed my tags but it gave me an error. The device is plugged in and powered on but is not recognized.

I see nothing for Thunderbolt:

But I see an audio device recognized in the PCI slot, and the UA Arrow audio drivers are installed:

Update:

I'll try to use that information in a way similar to what you outlined, but in case I run into any problems: What are the in-between steps in your post? Could you break it down a little more? Thanks again! (As fun as this all is, I want to make music!)




@kgp I think I wasn't accurately describing my (other) problem. The machine boots without issue and I've used it with a non-Thunderbolt audio interface for three months, as you can see:

However, when I look at my BIOS settings, it recognizes only the USB -- in other words, I have to boot from the USB drive. The BIOS does not show my HDD.

Despite this, when I open Clover Configurator, on the home page I see [Volume Name]/EFI/CLOVER/config.plist. What am I missing? What do I copy to where to get the machine to start up without the USB? I can't seem to easily copy the files from the USB (and why would I want to do that if the config.plist file on the main drive is correct and works with the system?). Thanks! It's late.



Thanks again everyone for your help.

 

[zzmadd]

Guys, I'm experiencing an issue with sleep and possibly wake from it that leads to kernel panic.
I followed the guide almost to the pip.
Same Motherboard i9-7900X, flashed bios, same Bios configuration.
Same WiFi/Bluetooth Card o the same slot.
Have AMD RX580 as Video Card.
ASUS Thunderbolt 3 Card in the same slot as the guide suggests.
And an added Maxwell PCIe 1x 4 ports SATA card

When I let the PC sleep it works the first time.
I wake it and it's all good and well.
Then the second time the PC tries to sleep but it fails and Reboots
This happens both with USB keyboard/mouse and Bluetooth unplugged and with Bluetooth Keyb and Mouse.

One of these reboots lead to macOS wrapping the console info and wanting to sent to Apple, I copied these info in a text file.
Any help if how to approach the issue would be appreciated.
Thanks everyone.

UPDATE:
After unplugging all the PCI cards the one that breaks sleep and leads to reboot is the ASUS Thunderbolt 3 Card