jjsenecal's Haswell Thunderbolt Frankintosh: GA-Z87X-UD5 TH - i7-4770K - GTX770

[jjsenecal]

[SUCCESS] Haswell Thunderbolt Frankintosh: GA-Z87X-UD5 TH - i7-4770K - GTX770

jjsenecal's Haswell Frankintosh:
GA-Z87X-UD5 TH - i7-4770K - GTX770


​

Components

Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD5 TH
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GEUX9SU

Intel Core i7-4770K Haswell Quad-Core 3.5 GHZ
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CO8TBQ0

Corsair Hydro Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler H100i
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009ZN2NH6

G.Skill Trident X Series 16GB DDR3 2400MHz
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0080FFZ8E

ASUS GTX770-DC2OC-2GD5 GeForce GTX770 2GB
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D3F7CFK

PRIMARY DRIVE: Samsung Electronics 840 Pro Series 2.5-Inch 256 GB
http://www.amazon.com/dp/product/B009NB8WRU

SECONDARY DRIVES: (2) Western Digital Black 2 TB Hard Drive
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FJRS628

Optiarc SATA DVD RW Burner
http://www.amazon.com/dp/product/B0086ZU8XK

OGEAR Bluetooth 4.0 USB Micro Adapter
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007GFX0PY

Corsair HX Professional Series 850-Watt
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0029F21LA


Already Owned

Seagate Backup Plus 3TB Thunderbolt Desktop Hard Drive for Mac
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009HPGBNY

Corsair Obsidian Series 800D Full Tower Case
http://www.corsair.com/en-us/obsidian-series-800d

30" Dell UltraSharp U3014
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=225-4429

24” Dell UltraSharp U2412M
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=320-2676

Apple Bluetooth Wireless Keyboard
http://www.amazon.com/dp/product/B005DLDO4U

Apple Magic Mouse
http://www.amazon.com/dp/product/B002TLTGM6

TP-Link PCI Express Wifi Adapter
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007GMPZ0A

Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006JH8T3S


Comments
Although this was my first hackintosh, I have been building computers for over 18 years. While I would have liked to buy the new Mac Pro (AKA trashcan), it’s hard to justify the $4K price tag. This rig will be used as my main desktop for running development virtual machines, some photo/video editing, and general everyday tasks.

Installation

Assembling the hardware was straightforward, but here is how I did it.

• PSU into chassis
• Motherboard into the chassis
• Removed built-in Wi-Fi/Bluetooth from motherboard
• CPU into the motherboard
• Memory into motherboard
• CPU water cooler into chassis
• CPU water cooler onto processor
• Video card into motherboard
• Wi-Fi into motherboard
• SSD & hard drives into chassis
• Cable and wire components

Once everything was assembled, I updated the BIOS to F3 from USB and loaded the default settings. I then booted from a Linux Mint 16 Live to verify all the hardware and to run Prime95 24 hours to burn in the processor and memory. I haven't noticed many of the posts mention a burn-in, but I still feel it is an essential part of the build process.


UEFI Settings

1. To access UEFI Setup, press and hold Delete on a USB Keyboard while the system is booting up
2. Hit F2 to get to the classic menu.
3. Set to Optimized Defaults.
4. Set X.M.P. Memory Profile to Profile1
5. Save & Exit

After reboot enter the BIOS again (Delete key) and select the following options:



OS X (Mavericks) Install
Boot from your UniBeast USB, use the Disk Utility to partition your boot volume and continue with the Mavericks install. Once Mavericks boots, immediately update to 10.9.2 (both wired and wireless NICs will be working), and reboot.

MultiBeast 6.2.1 Settings
Post installation is easy, as this board doesn't require a DSDT. Use the following settings, with the Mac Pro 6,1 being optional, and reboot following a successful installation.


Once you have rebooted, be sure to open Disk Utility and run a Repair Permissions on your OS X volume.

Getting iMessage to Work
Download FileNVRAM 1.1.2 from here, unzip the file, and place FileNVRAM.dylib into the /Extra/Modules folder located at the root of your OS X volume. I then used Chameleon Wizard 4.3.2 to make sure the module was being loaded. (I'm sure there is a way to do this with MultiBeast, but I went the easy route after reading a ton of other posts.)




Getting Thunderbolt to Work in Mavericks

1. Disconnect all of your OS X hard drives
2. Install a hard drive for Windows 7 (Win7 is an easier install as Win8 requires you to change you UEFI settings)
3. Install Win7, the Gigabyte drivers, and then ALL the Windows Updates
4. With Windows running, plug in you Thunderbolt device and then WAIT PATIENTLY!! Windows will take some time to download and install all the required drivers.
5. Verify your device is working in Windows, and shut 'er down.
6. Reconnect your OS x hard drives, and boot up with your Thunderbolt device still connected.
7. OS X will take significantly longer to boot, but it will eventually get there.
8. Now your Thunderbolt device(s) should be working in Mavericks

IMPORTANT NOTE: As mentioned in other posts, Thunderbolt devices are not hot-plugable! They must be connected before you boot into OS X and if you disconnect them while OS X is running the OS will likely freeze.


Benchmarks


Some other system images:






Wrap Up

What Works:
Almost everything including my Seagate drive connected to the Thunderbolt port.

What Doesn't Work:
Facetime and Thunderbolt hot-plug.

This was a really fun project. Truth be told, it took me about 3 days to completely build, burn-in, install, test, reinstall, retest, and then do my final install of OS X. I plan to move the OS to a pair of Samsung EVO 840 SSD's in a RAID 1 set in the near future. I'll be sure to post some updated benchmarks once I do.


UPDATE: 9 March 2014

I decided not to wait and pulled two 250GB EVO SSD's from another computer. I installed them into the rig and created a RAID 0 (Striped) then used CarbonCopyCloner to move Mavericks over to the new "drive". Holy cow this thing is fast!!



I'm ordering another 16GB of RAM to see just how good I can get the benchmarks without overclocking. I'm really impressed at this point.

 

[mjeter1]

How are you? I was checking out your build. I have the same mother board, but problems. I am very new. I have the i7 4770k. I do not have a gpu. Could you help me with the bios setting?

 

[srodd14]

jjsenecal,

Thanks so much for this informative post! I have pretty much every hardware you have except the processor. I was wondering if you had the bluetooth working OOB or had to get anything for it to work? Another thing is your RAID set up you said you have it as RAID 1.. how do you get such a performance boost with the read/write? Wouldn't that be with RAID 0 and which guide did you follow? Please respond when you get the chance, I would realllly appreciate it! Thanks!

Steve

 

[rustyjay]

hi, im new to building a hackintosh.


i have the exact same build minus the graphics card.

my question is which port did you first use to display the bios settings after hooking everything up for the first time?
i did as you did,

hook up the psu, memory, cpu and the hdd.

my problem is that im not getting any output from the hdmi output. i have yet to try the dvi output though. i am supposed to see just the bios load up right?

i read somewhere that i might need to update the bios of the mobo because im using the 4790k? is that correct?

any help is completely appreciated. i have the ud5-th rev 1.1 if that helps.

EDIT: never mind. i found out through an independent test that my motherboard was indeed broken. will check it out with some other build.

 

[alineliodor]

Hi there. Thank you for the post. I am just curios how did you manage to get that speed in raid configuration. I successfully set up the RAID using 2 samsung 840 evo 250GB but I am only getting about 250mb/s write and 400mb/s read. I have the same motherboard as you , my processor is a i7 4790k. And as soon I go to BIOS to try to set anything different the raid is not gonna work. Can you explain what youdid ? Thanks

 

[jjsenecal]

Sorry for being so slow on the reply to all the questions. First, my hackintosh was running a RAID 0. My original post had a typo.

Second, you cannot create the RAID set via the motherboard as OS X will most likely not recognize it. The process is to use Disk Utility to create the RAID set from the OS level. Here is how I got it done:

1. Start from another Mac and connect your SSD's to it via Thunderbolt, Firewire, USB, or SATA. (I used a thunderbolt connection to an OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/METB7DK0GB/)
2. Open Disk Utility and select the first drive from the left pane and then click RAID in the right pane.
3. Give your RAID set a name.
4. Choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for the Format.
5. Choose RAID 0 for stripped (speed) or RAID 1 for mirrored (redundancy).
6. Click the + button in the RAID window to add both drives.
7. Click the the options button to have the RAID set rebuild itself and adjust the block size if you want.
8. Click create and let OS X build the raid set.
9. Disconnect the external, remove the SSD's, and put them in you hackintosh.
10. Install OS X and choose the RAID set to install on.

The other option is to install OS X to a third hard drive, add your SSD's and create the RAID set, and then clone your OS X install to the RAID set.

Enjoy and good luck.

 

[alineliodor]

Thank you for your response !!! It is your RAID stable ? Regards

 

[sicilianbambino]

Hello, can you please tell me if you are able to get 3 or 4 monitors working with this setup?

Thank you.

 

[jjsenecal]

Yes, the RAID is extremely fast and stable. I have had no issues with it at all.

 

[jjsenecal]

I have only had two monitors connected it at any given time. One is a 30" Dell and the other is a 24" Dell, both connected via DVI cables. I have never tried to use the Thunderbolt for video.