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

[Majatnic]

hi guys. Your guide very helpful, @kgp, thanks. i have installed high sierra 10.13.1 to my asus x299 TUF Mark I w/ i7-7800X and MSI GTX1050 Ti. QHD monitor with 2560x1440 resolution. All drivers of this original guide have been installed successfully. but, from first day my mac are so laggy. it have randomly freezes(especially safari), too long loading(over 50 sec) for NVMe Samsung, and too long waking up or returning from away mode. sometimes only black screen and mouse are visible. what is it? it's so nerviously. using finder.app at projects directories with many files in tree mode are impossible. lags. i'm tired. same of this things(like lags) can be found on my macbook pro 2013 Late Retina high sierra 10.13.1. Anyone have same issues?

 

[kgp]

hi guys. Your guide very helpful, @kgp, thanks. i have installed high sierra 10.13.1 to my asus x299 TUF Mark I w/ i7-7800X and MSI GTX1050 Ti. QHD monitor with 2560x1440 resolution. All drivers of this original guide have been installed successfully. but, from first day my mac are so laggy. it have randomly freezes(especially safari), too long loading(over 50 sec) for NVMe Samsung, and too long waking up or returning from away mode. sometimes only black screen and mouse are visible. what is it? it's so nerviously. using finder.app at projects directories with many files in tree mode are impossible. lags. i'm tired.

Did you install the Nividia Drivers? Otherwise, change the mainboard..

Cheers

 

[Majatnic]

Thanks for your reply @kgp. of course i've install it. i can work, can play games, can edit high resolution graphics. it's working so fast. basically that problems continuous after monitor goes sleep and system work at background. that promlems related to safari, finder or other desktop application like Dash, Webstorm, Telegram which have an original cocoa-applications UI. As simple i can said - UI, system UI are so slow. Not from start, from few hours after work.

 

[oznem]

hello @kpg and others!

System Blocked! “No Entry Sign”

After running my rig for a week in an absolutely stable manner I knew that sooner or later something would happen, but this time I didn't really see it coming...
Everything started when I decided to finally add a 960 Evo NVMe M2 SSD to my system. I shut down, got power off, inserted the M2 into the slot, turned on the computer, but soon after the clover ui it came a big entry sign like this:



from then on every time I reboot, the system hangs immediately after showing the manufacturer's logo, even BEFORE showing clover ui with boot options.

notes:
-unfortunately I turned verbose boot off (my bad) so I don't even know WHEN it hung the first time.
-the SSD is brand new so I suppose is unformatted.
-no windows disk is yet present.
-Bios setting are accessible and seem to me as absolutely unchanged; the M2 SSD is recognized by the bios, it even shows firmware version.
- the System Disk was booting Mac os 10.13.1 from a ordinary SATA SSD. I had to change the SATA port in the motherboard because it was written that putting a M2 on that slot would disable the SATA port the startup SATA SSD was connected to.
-NO software or Bios changes were made.
-After the halt I tried to roll-back on EVERYTING, so I took off the M2 SSD, put back the startup SATA SSD in the same original port; but it still HANGS.
-Since I do not have 10.13 on other systems, the startup SATA SSD with the Mac os (APFS) is non accessible by other macs, so I cannot check if software is corrupted. Can I still access EFI partition with clover configurator?
I thought I had a backup boot disk cloned by the means of CCC but I does not start either, same behavior. It is a rotational Sata HDD, so it is HFS+ formatted.

So if anybody has a clue of what happened I will be glad to hear it, rather than spending another 5+ hours reinstalling everything.
thanks a lot in advance.

OZ

 

[kgp]

hello @kpg and others!

System Blocked! “No Entry Sign”

After running my rig for a week in an absolutely stable manner I knew that sooner or later something would happen, but this time I didn't really see it coming...
Everything started when I decided to finally add a 960 Evo NVMe M2 SSD to my system. I shut down, got power off, inserted the M2 into the slot, turned on the computer, but soon after the clover ui it came a big entry sign like this:

View attachment 295758

from then on every time I reboot, the system hangs immediately after showing the manufacturer's logo, even BEFORE showing clover ui with boot options.

notes:
-unfortunately I turned verbose boot off (my bad) so I don't even know WHEN it hung the first time.
-the SSD is brand new so I suppose is unformatted.
-no windows disk is yet present.
-Bios setting are accessible and seem to me as absolutely unchanged; the M2 SSD is recognized by the bios, it even shows firmware version.
- the System Disk was booting Mac os 10.13.1 from a ordinary SATA SSD. I had to change the SATA port in the motherboard because it was written that putting a M2 on that slot would disable the SATA port the startup SATA SSD was connected to.
-NO software or Bios changes were made.
-After the halt I tried to roll-back on EVERYTING, so I took off the M2 SSD, put back the startup SATA SSD in the same original port; but it still HANGS.
-Since I do not have 10.13 on other systems, the startup SATA SSD with the Mac os (APFS) is non accessible by other macs, so I cannot check if software is corrupted. Can I still access EFI partition with clover configurator?
I thought I had a backup boot disk cloned by the means of CCC but I does not start either, same behavior. It is a rotational Sata HDD, so it is HFS+ formatted.

So if anybody has a clue of what happened I will be glad to hear it, rather than spending another 5+ hours reinstalling everything.
thanks a lot in advance.

OZ

What about placing my EFI-Folder in the EFI-Partition of the disk you intent to boot?

 

[kgp]

Hey KGP, great guide. I'm building a new monster rig soon, and was wondering if you might be up for a bit of help as I get it built and running. I'd be happy to provide some modest compensation for your time. There is a lot of new ground in this build for me, including but not limited to using liquid cooling systems on the hardware side, and bit more patching than I've done in my previous two hack builds on the software side. I'm planning on using the i9-7980XE, ASUS Rampage VI Extreme, and the AORUS GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Waterforce WB Xtreme. I'd love to have your knowledge on hand as I'm sure I'll run into to plenty of head scratching moments. Are you on twitter or somewhere that I might reach out?

In principle I do not provide any private support outside this forum. If really necessary you can contact me at first place by e-mail. Then we will see how to proceed. I guess it is not very difficult to find my e-mail on google

Cheers,

KGP

 

[RuleBreaker01]

Thank you for info!
I wanted to make a little test, to verify if I will have the same situation like you... so I connected 7 fans to all MB connectors
and after HWMonitor Lunch - all works very well, yes -only 5 are recognised but they works all with the same speeds like before.

View attachment 295621 View attachment 295622

// edit: ehhh on the same time you wrote update ... sorry didn't saw it...
PS: don't be shocked it's a temporary config

That HWSensors-Release folder working with my Kabylake and Coffeelake as well, lol

 

[jonkubis]

Quick check-in. Guide is wonderful!!! Thank you!!!!

Asus X299 Prime Deluxe with i9-7940x - EVGA GeForce 1060 - Samsung 850 Pro 2TB SSD

To anyone that might stumble on this--

I was getting an error midway through installation -- Installation Failed, press 'D' for diagnostics. Pulled my hair out for days. Turns out re-downloading High Sierra, wiping the USB and SSD and starting from scratch fixed that. Someone else on this thread was having the same problem but never posted the solution!

Also, if you're getting crashes and are unable to get to the installer, don't hesitate to Load Optimized Defaults in the BIOS and then tweak after the fact. Plenty of times I'd follow the BIOS configuration to the 'T' and still end up with crashes.

VoodooTSCSync.kext is no joke!!! With an i9-7940x it ABSOLUTELY needs to be set to 27 or you'll NEVER get to the installer screen. It's easy to gloss over in the instructions, but it is ABSOLUTELY a show-stopper if you don't get the number of cores correct!

The instructions for AppleHDA 1.2.1 did not work for me (I've used it on multiple other hackintoshes fine, something weird's going on here), but VoodooHDA was easy and solid.

 

[PedroJSkywalker]

I'm going to try the last Kexts that I put kgp on page 184, the question is where I put the last mark in blue.

 

[ccozmo]

All I did was match the existing Nuvoton sensor to this chip, which is a bit more recent, but yes, could do things differently than the older chip. On my system, I observed no strange behaviour, but I am not using all the headers.

So unless someone gets a documentation of this chip, or reverse engineer it's values by trial-and-error, there is no way to improve on this.

I managed to get the datasheet for the chip. Attached