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

[mgregrs]

I think the Aquantia chip has changed a bit the scenario:
http://www.aquantia.com/products/client-connectivity/aqtion-aqc107/
look at last dot: "Extensive software support – Windows, MAC OS X, and Linux drivers"
Now on Amazon.it the Asus XG-C100C is about 110euro.
Today news:
http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/gi...it-lan-card-bases-on-aquantia-gc-aqc-107.html
I think we will see the proliferation of these kind of cards!

Great, so we have to wait a little -it can be very very interesting card with so great price (wow)
I hope it will works so good like it seems to work

 

[mgregrs]

One additional question: you don't use the SSDT-X299.aml, do you? And you have all ACPI DSDT Replacement Patches enabled? Would you mind to also upload your EFI-Folder?

Thanks!

This is my today/actual EFI
(yes, with all ACPI patches enabled, without SSDT )
I didn't used SSDT since moment of miracle discovered long time ago
...
I'm stupid.. 3rd time I forgot to mention about that...
I mean... I wanted to ask about
1) debug=0x100
2) keepsyms=1
3) I forgot
but ... do I really need them? Because I feel like - it's no needed in my case...
Audio with ALC always works perfect: integrated audio, HDMI, DP etc (OK)
I never had problems with lilu.
So... if I didn't missed some important detail... I shouldn't use it

/PS: I wanted to ask you if..some day you can update images/screens in your guide
because some people still can think, that we have to use KernelPm Apple RTC or sometinglike that
and the same thing with some patches...people look more on images than text

PS2: In EFI folder you will not find whatevergreen.kext, which I stop to use since "today"
Yes... before: AMD Radeon Vega 64 8Gb, today I simple: AMD RX xxx 8Gb...
performance is the same, so it not worth to use whatevergreen....

PS3: FOR ALL:
After 4-10 OS-X reinstallation's per week, I can say (what some people here know very well):
Sometimes only "EFI folder replacement" will not help, will not work like a magic patch....
we HAVE TO reinstall everything to apply some changes, or boot our OS X again
-- I think it's nothing bad to mention about that 1214-th time
One little file can change everything and f....up our system, so... in my opinion
it's not worth to prepare total-perfect-ultra-final config before December and official lunch of new MacPro XYZ

 

[kgp]

This is my today/actual EFI
(yes, with all ACPI patches enabled, without SSDT )
I didn't used SSDT since moment of miracle discovered long time ago
...
I'm stupid.. 3rd time I forgot to mention about that...
I mean... I wanted to ask about
1) debug=0x100
2) keepsyms=1
3) I forgot
but ... do I really need them? Because I feel like - it's no needed in my case...
Audio with ALC always works perfect: integrated audio, HDMI, DP etc (OK)
I never had problems with lilu.
So... if I didn't missed some important detail... I shouldn't use it

/PS: I wanted to ask you if..some day you can update images/screens in your guide
because some people still can think, that we have to use KernelPm Apple RTC or sometinglike that
and the same thing with some patches...people look more on images than text

PS2: In EFI folder you will not find whatevergreen.kext, which I stop to use since "today"
Yes... before: AMD Radeon Vega 64 8Gb, today I simple: AMD RX xxx 8Gb...
performance is the same, so it not worth to use whatevergreen....

PS3: FOR ALL:
After 4-10 OS-X reinstallation's per week, I can say (what some people here know very well):
Sometimes only "EFI folder replacement" will not help, will not work like a magic patch....
we HAVE TO reinstall everything to apply some changes, or boot our OS X again
-- I think it's nothing bad to mention about that 1214-th time
One little file can change everything and f....up our system, so... in my opinion
it's not worth to prepare total-perfect-ultra-final config before December and official lunch of new MacPro XYZ

Thus, if ever on your system you notice a kernel panic (KP), you will be able to clearly investigate the source of the KP by checking these two boot flags! I really recommend to leave these boot flags enabled! They do not harm during operation but are of enormous help in case of problems and issues as they simply freeze the screen in case of KPs and avoid the immediate reboot of your system!

 

[ImaPirate]

Well done, man! You are absolutely in the expected range!

View attachment 290704

One important question though: Apparently you are using CPU Core Ratio set to " Sync All Cores" . But is your system stable with the latter BIOS setting, the i9-7980XE and 10.13? Might my system instability with "Sync All Cores" be related with my 860W power supply? Although freezes and reboots occur mainly during idle (1.2Ghz) and benchmarks perfectly work up to a max. load of 4.4.GHz with all cores for several minutes?

I can tell you that I haven’t had any freezes with Sync All Cores, bit you may be right as you only using a 860W PSU. Do you have a 1200W PSU? Try that.

 

[kgp]

I can tell you that I haven’t had any freezes with Sync All Cores, bit you may be right as you only using a 860W PSU. Do you have a 1200W PSU? Try that.

I will change to the Corsair AX1500i to be at the save side ... Or do you have recommendations for a better power supply?

 

[kgp]

BIG Thank you for checking my cfg.!!
I forgot to uncheck rest of ACPI things, which are "on" now and everything works really nice
I will wait next month for apple devices at home at il will be much easier

about...
Sleep/wake - tested 11-12 times, sleep in max 10sec, wake up max 8 sec

You should meet a cool guy KGP and his great guide to do it
it's 1h of reading but it's worth! It will works great!

... I'm quite interested how it was saved....
2 files - from my bios first with actual setting and 2nd with "everything?"
you have to check it... first txt file is my actual profile
and if you take 2nd is .CMO file (- that 5th profile is actual (named: 10.13.1perf..))

* I have only XMP 3000 profile, different than your 3200 Mhz
the rest of CFG is configured with your guide,
because today I reconfigured everything for new test, when I was thinking about last problems ( with new BIOS implementations)
Works great so... at this moment we shouldn't want more than that

Now the interesting part:

When looking to your and my BIOS settings txt.dump , I noticed the following:

CFG Lock [DISABLED]
CPU C3 Report [Enabled]
CPU C7 Report [CPU C7s]
CPU C8 Report [Enabled]

However under CPU configuration I see:

C3 States not available
C7 States not available

And AppleIntelInfo.kext always revealed CFG locked!

So what is going on here?

 

[kgp]

@TheOfficialGypsy ,

I found the guilty guy for breaking sleep wake functionality on Skylake-X/X299!

SSDT-XOSI.aml

Can you confirm and propose a fix?

Cheers,

KGP

 

[justdatruth]

Hey @poshook, @oznem

I can confirm that under windows 10. My i7-7820x uses x12 ratio (1200MHz) over all cores even the audio application (Ableton Live 9) is in red CPU load and I can hear many audio drop outs. I must change power settings for CPU to be always at 100% of performance to be able to play the project. It does not react to background processes but to overall system CPU load. So in Ableton Live I see 100% CPU load but in task manager I see 4% and CPU goes at 1200 MHz

That's kind of what I was seeing, I think I've got my head round what is going on my board, so in windows im all good now.

Hi @justdatruth,

not having received and tested my X299 components yet, maybe I shouldn't speak yet, but let me try to reason in a more generalized way:

1-It CAN be true that Mac OS X ignores some BIOS setting, that is because they are meant and implemented mainly with Windows in mind.

2-That is exactly why a well implemented Power Management specific for Mac OS X should ALWAYS be a good thing, not because It affects your benchmarks, but because it optimizes the way your system uses the CPU for all tasks, continuously all of the time!
In the system I am currently running (Z97 on I7-4790) this was also the case: I was getting good benchmarks, But when I analyzed the CPU frequencies with Intel Power Gadget I suddenly realized It was a mess: I had frequencies Jumping all over even in idle!
After generating a custom SSDT that was gone. So my guess is that you probably still have to refine that, ad as soon as I get my system up and running, since I will be having a similar problem (my mobo is a ASRock Fatal1ty X299 Gaming K6 and CPU is a I7-7820X so they are not exactly the same), maybe we can help each other and all the guys using ASRock mobos.

3-If I correctly understand, you say that even in Windows the X299 systems uses al lot more CPU percentage than it should.
So if it is not even a Mac OS X specific issue, than my guess is that it relates in how the software reacts to the hardware in general. I have to agree with (Klaus) @kgp on that; X299 platform is still VERY fresh, with Intel rushing all The Skylake-X CPUs just because of the fierce AMD Ryzen competition. As far as I know DAW software in general may not be very well optimized for new platforms yet. If that is the case I'm afraid you'll just have to wait (and hope).
After all IT history is full of unoptimized software!

bye

OZ

1. Indeed, that's what appears to be happening

2. I'm more than happy to help if I can, I've quite familiar with the ASrock BIOS now...lol
I've tried my hand at a few custom SSDTs with varying degrees of success. On the surface my power management looks good, benchmarks are what you'd expect for any given clock speed, even without an SSDT...

3. I've sorted things on the windows side now, which is good. We'll get there in the end! Again if I can help at all, more than happy to .

 

[ccozmo]

- BIOS Hardware RAID impossible!

- You can create a software RAID with OSX...

- and of course there are many alternative and partly extremely costive solutions to create hardware raids to be recognised by OSX

10GB ethernet adapter.. no idea...

Sorry

I tried the apple software RAID 0 with 2 x NMVE drives. The speeds with 2 in RAID and 1 by itself were very similar (write perf a bit better with the RAID). Needless to say I switched back to a single one. See attached for speed tests of both




I do also have a LSA megaraid 9260-8i hardware RAID controller running under OSX. It has 4 2 TB HDD in RAID 5 & 4 x SSD in RAID 0 (Windows). It's working fine for storage, backups etc

@TheOfficialGypsy ,

I found the guilty guy for breaking sleep wake functionality on Skylake-X/X299!

SSDT-XOSI.aml

Can you confirm and propose a fix?

Cheers,

KGP

I found the cause of mine waking a few days ago & it has consistently been able to sleep all night & can be woken up the next morning. Even though my wake reason was showing as Ethernet, it was actually a Razor USB mouse that was causing the issue. With it unplugged it works fine, with it plugged in it wakes after x minutes showing
localhost kernel[0]: (AppleACPIPlatform) Wake reason: XHC GBE1 (Network)

 

[mgregrs]

Now the interesting part:

When looking to your and my BIOS settings txt.dump , I noticed the following:

CFG Lock [DISABLED]
CPU C3 Report [Enabled]
CPU C7 Report [CPU C7s]
CPU C8 Report [Enabled]

However under CPU configuration I see:

C3 States not available
C7 States not available

And AppleIntelInfo.kext always revealed CFG locked!

So what is going on here?

My bios is crazy

If I remember well you use the same bios version: 0802

btw: I was almost sure I had C6 checked in Clover CPU section
but 'no' it was little mistake, it should be old config

So I don't even ask How and where did you found SDT-XOSI.aml
but some things should not be always comprehensive for all...
so we can stay with version: Wow, it's cool, that you find a guilty

PS: First day of snow (this year) in my region, it's soooo weird after sooo long time