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

[tonyarnold]

Any pointers on what I might have missed? I'm happy to edit and modify the SSDT, but this doesn't seem to be happening at that level. I don't understand why my system would move XCH5 from DSB2 to DSB1.

 

[kgp]

Any pointers on what I might have missed? I'm happy to edit and modify the SSDT, but this doesn't seem to be happening at that level. I don't understand why my system would move XCH5 from DSB2 to DSB1.

Neither do I, but as you see, on my system everything behaves as expected with the TB-SSDT distributed few posts ago und newly implemented in the originating post of this thread.

However, note that there are some dependecies to the X299-SSDT. You need to implement both.

 

[tonyarnold]

Thanks @kgp - I'm using that SSDT that you posted today - I re-ran through the guide after you said that you'd updated and reapplied anything that had changed. I'll keep digging later on.

 

[flmmkr]

Not really..

I might be wrong, but I had fluctuating numbers in Geekbench until I realised that I had other programs (which got auto started) interfering with the test. Can that be a similar reason during your tests?

I'm a little under 38k for the 7900x, no OC (my memory isn't the best, running at 2666MHz). I did notice about a 500pt drop or so from when I replaced the AHCI PCIe to NVME.

Probably a bug in Geekbench.

Use Cinebench as a benchmarking tool.

I updated my EFI to the new recent changes. Now back up to 40,003 multi-core with no OC. Temps are low too. Maybe I hit the silicon lottery?

Cinebench score is 2190 and 139.83fps. Not sure how that compares to other 7900X's.

 

[kgp]

I updated my EFI to the new recent changes. Now back up to 40,003 multi-core with no OC. Temps are low too. Maybe I hit the silicon lottery?

Cinebench score is 2190 and 139.83fps. Not sure how that compares to other 7900X's.

Your Cinebench i9-7900X (10-core) @?.?GHz score of 2190 at least suits well my Cinebench Broadwell-E i7-6950X (10-core) @4.3Ghz score of 2252...

 

[izo1]

I updated my EFI to the new recent changes. Now back up to 40,003 multi-core with no OC. Temps are low too. Maybe I hit the silicon lottery?

Cinebench score is 2190 and 139.83fps. Not sure how that compares to other 7900X's.

This is my current best in Geekbench.

For Cinebench it's about the same as yours same with OpenGL.

I'm pretty happy with this score for now. In the future I'll just pop in a 7980XE.

My main apps: All Adobe apps + Davinci Resolve.

 

[kgp]

This is my current best in Geekbench.

For Cinebench it's about the same as yours same with OpenGL.

Which CPU turbo frequency?

Also your i9-7900X (10-core) @4.3 GHz Geekbench score of 37386 suits well my i7-6950X (10-core) @4.3 GHz Geekbench score of 38750...

 

[izo1]

Which CPU turbo frequency?

Also your i9-7900X (10-core) @?.? GHz Geekbench score of 37386 suits well my i7-6950X (10-core) @4.3 GHz Geekbench score of 38750...

View attachment 333754

It's all default for now (3.30Ghz Base / 4.30Ghz Boost), I am not a fan of OC'ing due to extra time it takes to tweak it to perfection. I have a large BeQuiet! AIO so not too worried about cooling it down.

I had a Geekbench score of what you posted before on 10.13.2 I think, for some reason it went down a bit, but not too worried about Geekbench. It's not a score I care about.

The 7900x for me was the perfect balance between single core performance and multicore capability. Many applications are not able to take advantage of so many cores. (at least the ones I use day to day)

For example, After Effects is garbage when it comes to rendering and previewing with multiple cores, so you have to use a python script to set a render to multiple cores to max out all your cores.

The biggest hurdle macOS has is to increase performance in OpenCL because CUDA supported applications are killing it. OpenCL performance is worse under macOS than Windows by a large margin.

macOS itself is a good OS, but performance isn't in it's vocabulary compared to Windows.

 

[kgp]

It's all default for now (3.30Ghz Base / 4.30Ghz Boost), I am not a fan of OC'ing due to extra time it takes to tweak it to perfection. I have a large BeQuiet! AIO so not too worried about cooling it down.

I had a Geekbench score of what you posted before on 10.13.2 I think, for some reason it went down a bit, but not too worried about Geekbench. It's not a score I care about.

The 7900x for me was the perfect balance between single core performance and multicore capability. Many applications are not able to take advantage of so many cores. (at least the ones I use day to day)

For example, After Effects is garbage when it comes to rendering and previewing with multiple cores, so you have to use a python script to set a render to multiple cores to max out all your cores.

Anyway it is nice to see that Skylake-X/X299 and Broadwell-E/X99 iMacPros behave in a very similar way and yield nearly identical results in terms of performance.

Some interesting conclusion. Isn't it?

 

[izo1]

Anyway it is nice to see that Skylake-X/X299 and Broadwell-E/X99 iMacPros behave in a very similar way and yield nearly identical results in terms of performance.

Some interesting conclusion. Isn't it?

Very true. I think this guide you wrote and one you continue to update is the best Hackintosh guide available.

The fact that you are not limited by iMac Pro chassis thermals and that you can customize it for less than half the price of higher end iMac Pro is really good.

And also since Apple doesn't even have a desktop variant (besides a 5 year old 2013 Mac Pro) without a monitor, this makes it the best Mac available by far right now in my opinion.