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

[macs_forever]

The Noctua NH-D15S with an i9-7980XE? ... Jesus....

You know I am Austrian and Noctua NH-D15S is designed in Austria, but definitely not for the i9-7980XE...

We are talking about 300W-400W to be dissipated..

I wound up with the Lian-Li PC-10NB case. It is designed for a 240mm radiator mounted on the side of the case on a hinged door. I plan on having push-pull Noctua NF-12PWM fans on a Corsair AIO H100i v2. fans will be driven off the motherboard. There really isn't room in this case for the NH-D15S. I would have to use a NH-C14S or BeQuiet Dark Rock TF for air cooling. Ya think the H100i v2 will get the job done? I REALLY need a leak free sealed system instead of a custom loop.

Buying the remaining parts to complete the build tonight.

 

[perfecto245]

I see there is a new BIOS update 1301 for Asus X299 Prime Deluxe dated 2018/03/20 with
"Updated Intel CPU microcode.
Improved system stability."

Anyone tried it yet?

Yes just tried it! Excellent! Improvement in the Geekbench scores!

Used the UEFI Patch method to unlock the MSR 0xE2 register, but now there is a new MSR Unlock Control option under
/Advanced/CPU Configuration/ which can now unlock MSR 3Ah, MSR 0E2h and CSR 80h.

going to try that out right now with a non patched Bios.

 

[izo1]

Alright people, so I decide to change the Internal Wifi/BT built-in on the MB

View attachment 320355

with that little Broadcom card,
BCM943602BAED, M.2


View attachment 320351

Now keep in mind that card physically little bigger than the original card,

View attachment 320352

It means you gotta break the metal piece bracket holding the card to mounting it to the board,
I am not sure if that would void the warranty or not but who cares, we all want a perfect iMacPro, lol

View attachment 320353

And reconnect the antennas, make sure Main go to Main, AUX go to AUX
The BT antenna on the other hand little smaller, it doesn't fit in, so I think the BT range little less,

Anyway, put the Wifi card back in the slot, turn ON the machine and make sure you enable the Wifi and BT on BIOS,

For Wifi: works OOB, no need anything, 2.4Ghz, 5.0Ghz pickup them all
For BT: Place those kexts files attached to "EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other"

Restart your machine, tada

Air-Drop working good, BT reporting as 4.1,

View attachment 320360

View attachment 320361

Have fun

Very cool. I thought about that module too, but it wouldn't "fit" in what I have. I know it's newer/faster than the one I got.

Hopefully your range is good. The Gigabyte antenna that came with my mobo is very small and the range isn't "great."

 

[JimmyS]

Yes just tried it! Excellent! Improvement in the Geekbench scores!

Used the UEFI Patch method to unlock the MSR 0xE2 register, but now there is a new MSR Unlock Control option under
/Advanced/CPU Configuration/ which can now unlock MSR 3Ah, MSR 0E2h and CSR 80h.

going to try that out right now with a non patched Bios.

That's awesome - I'm looking forward to hearing about your results!

 

[macandrea]

i do confirm. System works great Without bios patching.

 

[JimmyS]

Cool! I'll try the update tomorrow

 

[flymovies]

i do confirm. System works great Without bios patching.

Any memory patches? Which smbios are you on? iMacPro1,1 without memory patches does not boot to login screen.

 

[antagon]

On my Asus Prime x299 a, BIOS 1301 leaves me with an almost unresponsive System. Boot is Very slow and OSX is extremely slow.
I'm using an iMac Pro SMBIOS.

 

[macandrea]

- I'm using BIOS 1301 on Asus X299-A Prime, disabled lock on MSR 3Ah, MSR 0E2h and CSR 80h in BIOS
- I have VoodooTSCSync.kext in kext folder
- SMBIOS iMacPro1,1, no kernel patches, I'm on 10.13.4 Beta (17E190a)

 

[perfecto245]

That's awesome - I'm looking forward to hearing about your results!

NG! Fail!. Spat out a lot of errors during boot. never made it to the lock screen the first time, the second time after disabling some ACPI patches and kext got me to lock screen but logging in was impossible. it completely broke mac OS. maybe the other 2 registers shouldn't be unlocked? anyhow lots of work to be done. don't bother with the unpatched version. kgp will probably figure it out! In the meantime the Patched 1301 works great!

Update: going to try the VoodooTSCsync.kext method and benchmark to see if there it is better.