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neilhart's ASRock M8 BareBones with a Z87-M8 motherboard.

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A follow up on ASRock-M8 BIOS issue where Chimera goes into a reboot loop with UEFI BIOS versions 1.20 and 1.60.

I fired up my Window 8 Pro 64Bit virtual machine on VMWare Fusion and used my archive copy of PMPatch and patched the Z87M81.60 BIOS file.

Now the test of character is do I risk flashing it back on the system? Will it brick it? Hummm… I have done this trick several times in the past with MSI and ASUS motherboards so I am game to try.

I am running a 1 hour thermal torture test (Prime95) that needs to complete (pass or fail) before attempting this next BIOS flashing.

Well here is the torture test doc.

M8-Prime95.jpg


I am very pleased that the high temp was only 63C.

More to follow.

Good modding,
neil

Edit - added 05/15/15 - I patched in one of my work up HDDs that has both Mavericks and Yosemite installed with Unibeast and booting with Chimera. And I attempted to flash the PMPatch'ed BIOS. The system detected that the file had been altered and would not allow the file to be loaded. So that is that for now. I will continue running with Clover for the boot loader.

neil
 
Another update:

I have found damage and am very un-happy with the ASRock material selection/design.

In my usual mode, I have disassembled most of the machine to dress the cable harness (cut to length, re-terminate, and modify the cabling).

I have found on the bottom fan panel assembly and on the front panel assembly that the attachment points have failed. Short self-threading screws are used and the plastic has failed at the attachment points… Not just one, but all of these attachment point have failed. The assemblies are held in place by the surrounding parts so it is only when those parts are removed is the damage apparent.

M8-damage1.jpg


This is the hidden side of the front panel. On this I used JB Weld (epoxy) for the repair. On the bottom fan panel I reconstructed the mounting points by adding ABS pieces with ABS solvent glue/weld.

While this is an inconvenience for me, it is reason to reconsider my recommendation of this machine to others.

Good modding,
neil
 
Cable Management:

I removed the ASRock M8 cabling up the left side. Originally three cables ran up the left side (the red X side) and ran through the black plastic M8 logo center piece. These cables were to power the GPU and the HDDs found in the upper case area.

I did not like the way this was done so did away with one of the two HDD supply cables, made up a custom power harness for the 4 drive cluster with a short cable terminated in an standard male pinned ATX power connector. And in the feeder cable to the HDDs, I removed the un-used 12V and 3.3v wires leaving two black ground wires and a single red 5V wire.

M8-HDDs.jpg


I then rerouted the GPU cable, removed three or four inches and re-terminated it with the appropriate 8 pin new connector housing and 8 new female pins.

And I reduced the 12VDC CPU feeder cable to the 4 wires needed and replace the 8 pin connector with a four pin one. I cut back the un-used wires, insulated the ends and tied them out of the way. The CPU power cable now runs under the motherboard for a cleaner less air restrictive installation.

Modifications:

I added 8 red LEDs to the left side M8 logo piece along with a touch switch to control them. The touch switch is located on the top panel rear. I used the Adafruit Toggle Touch switch and inserted a hole for the LED to shine through.

The right side LEDs are part ASRock design and controlled by the multifunction switch on the front panel. I found that these LED are operating at 1.98VDC and that circuit would not pull up my 5V relay that I used to power and isolate the left side LEDs. That is why I inserted the touch switch for the left side.

I was not greatly pleased with the ASRock top and bottom fan housings. These housing each hold two thin 70mm PWM fans. While with the 45W CPU the system does pass my 100% load torture test, the system runs 10 to 15 degrees cooler with the right side cover off.

The bottom fan housing assembly had fine pitch mesh screens coverings that I removed. This works because I dressed and cable tied the harness so as to be free of the fans and out of the air path. This seems to have improved the CPU idle temps by 5 to 8 degrees.

I tested the impact to the CPU temps with a thin 140 mm fan but found worse performance then with the original Thermalright AXP-100 Red fan.

M8-fans.jpg


I was tempted to revise the top fan housing but resisted as it is much less restrictive then the lower fan housing and cabling in the upper area is fairly busy. The top fan housing also has the sliding lock plate (for side cover locking) which required the cables to be not contacting the sliding plate.

General:

The optical drive is a slot loader DVD Dual Layer RW assembly and work well. As a test I booted to an Windows 8 Pro DVD just to see if it would (test passed). I also watched a few DVD videos.

There is an onboard card reader. I found that I had to keep a formatted card in the reader or have the reader disabled in the BIOS, otherwise I get the annoying EBIOS error messages on boot up. And the card reader is in a small flip open cover found in the lower front. The card socket is too shallow and a standard SD card sticks out so far that the cover will not close with a standard card inserted.

Windows:

I installed a 250GB 2.5 inch Hitachi 7200 RPM drive in the single slot position under the PSU and installed Window 8 Pro 64Bit version. I did this as a proof of compatabiity and to go through the ASRock install DVD to load up all of the drivers. And in Windows I set the correct time and this is read by the front control knob and now correctly displays the time in both Windows and OS X.

I will probably pull this drive out next time I am into the system as Windows is totally useless (for me).

M8-S1.jpg


M8-S2.jpg


M8-S3.jpg


M8-S4.jpg


M8-S5.jpg


So that is about it. The system has the one issue with the system level sound where the volume slider and the mute function do not affect the sound in apps such as iTunes (the in app controls work fine).

Good modding,
neil
 
I want to start by thanking you, neilhart, for taking the time to post this log in such detail. i found your posts essential in my buying decision of the Asrock m8 z87, which i got for 199.99 shipped, an excellent deal. Your detail was more helpful to me and my intentions for this product than all the other reviews out there.

To give you an idea, im a novice, building a simple college workstation to run adobe CS6 & such with pentium g3258, SP 240gb ssd, 16gb corsair vengeance. I'll get a video card, update the processor, and add drives as needed...

After reading your posts several times, I have a few questions I hope you can expound on for me. I intend to install the latest supported version of osx, Yosemite and windows, 8.1. OSx first, and more importantly, though.


Do you suppose I will run into any issues specific to this z87 m8 following the standard procedure outlined on this site? I saw you needed voodoo driver for audio to work, but is there anything else i need to know before getting into this z87 board?

very excited to start building, modding, and getting involved in the community.
 
I want to start by thanking you, neilhart, for taking the time to post this log in such detail. i found your posts essential in my buying decision of the Asrock m8 z87, which i got for 199.99 shipped, an excellent deal. Your detail was more helpful to me and my intentions for this product than all the other reviews out there.

To give you an idea, im a novice, building a simple college workstation to run adobe CS6 & such with pentium g3258, SP 240gb ssd, 16gb corsair vengeance. I'll get a video card, update the processor, and add drives as needed...

After reading your posts several times, I have a few questions I hope you can expound on for me. I intend to install the latest supported version of osx, Yosemite and windows, 8.1. OSx first, and more importantly, though.


Do you suppose I will run into any issues specific to this z87 m8 following the standard procedure outlined on this site? I saw you needed voodoo driver for audio to work, but is there anything else i need to know before getting into this z87 board?

very excited to start building, modding, and getting involved in the community.

Well first I would not advise updating to the latest BIOS as when I did that I could no longer get Chimera to boot... this drove me to use Clover (maybe not a bad thing but much more complicated).

So when you start, I would recommend that you use the UniBeast/MultiBeast process to install Yosemite.

I have reverted to Mavericks (only because I like it better then Yosemite) and I have Window 8 Pro 64 Bit installed on one hard drive. OS X is on a RAID 0 SSD drive set.

The g3258 is a 53 watt CPU where the i7-4770T that I used is a 45 watt unit. I have noticed that the system run about 10 to 15 degrees warmer with the right side cover installed. What temps you will experience will be greatly dependent upon the CPU cooler that you select. And note this is a section below that lists many low profile CPU coolers.

Take your time and go step by step and you should have a good experience... and you can always ask my opinion (as I am known to have many).

Good modding
neil
 
I've been setting up my M8 over the past few days. Today I decided to change the bottom fans to both be intake, as well as put a different heat sink on!

But I can't for the life of me figure out how to get access to the bottom fans! I've got the motherboard and psu out of the way, and unscrewed the four screws down there that I could see, But that metal panel down there is just not coming off!

Can you explain to me how to get access to those fans? My poor M8 is out of commission until I can get this problem solved! Thanks!
 
I've been setting up my M8 over the past few days. Today I decided to change the bottom fans to both be intake, as well as put a different heat sink on!

But I can't for the life of me figure out how to get access to the bottom fans! I've got the motherboard and psu out of the way, and unscrewed the four screws down there that I could see, But that metal panel down there is just not coming off!

Can you explain to me how to get access to those fans? My poor M8 is out of commission until I can get this problem solved! Thanks!

Please read the rules and complete the profile information so that your primary system appears in the left side bar below your user ID.

Yes the case if far too complicated. You need to remove the all four corner pieces and then there are screws that can be removed to release the boundary frames, which will allow the bottom fan housing to come out of the case.

While I had my bottom fan assembly out, I very carefully removed the fine hole pitch mesh grill but left the fan direction alone. Then during assembly I carefully dressed and tied the cables to be free of the bottom fans. My fan tray mounting points were broken so I re-built them using pieces of ABS plastic and Black ABS solvent adhesive (same as used in ABS pipe for household plumbing).

Also, I removed as much of the excess cables and carefully routed and tied the cables. I cut and solder spliced (covered with heat shrink tubing) and re-terminated the cables to accomplish this.

And just this last week, I changed out the internal WiFi antennas and cables and added in 12" antenna leads with bulk-head connector so that I could have external antennas. The signal strength is much better with this mod.

Edit: My system runs about 10 degrees hotter with the right side panel inplace (which I don't really like), but does run the Prime95 Torture Test for a hour with all covers in place standing up right and the temps only get into the mid 70's, so I am leaving the cooling alone.




Have fun...

Good modding,
neil
 
Thank you so much! I was able to get access to the fans with your help! I went ahead and reversed the exhaust fan to an intake, though I changed to many variables to be able to see if that actually did anything, and I took out the fan grills inside like you suggested. My temps now max out in the low 70s!

Can you post some pictures of the Wifi antenna mod you did? I'm not to pleased with the stock wifi performance either, so anything I can do to change that would be great! Those antennas would also improve the bluetooth connectivity right, since it's all controlled from the same chip?
 
Thank you so much! I was able to get access to the fans with your help! I went ahead and reversed the exhaust fan to an intake, though I changed to many variables to be able to see if that actually did anything, and I took out the fan grills inside like you suggested. My temps now max out in the low 70s!

Can you post some pictures of the Wifi antenna mod you did? I'm not to pleased with the stock wifi performance either, so anything I can do to change that would be great! Those antennas would also improve the bluetooth connectivity right, since it's all controlled from the same chip?

I made up a small aluminum plate out of 0.045 thick material seen here. And drilled staggered 0.25” holes for the antenna mounts.

WiFi-cables.jpg


I selected the upper rear case area which is not far from where the original internal cable are located.

I pulled out the original cable/antennas and put them in my salvage bin.

I ordered these cables from Amazon… http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LKGX3D4?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00

I added this mod with the top panel out and the right side cover off. I used a dermal to cut the two matching holes in the plastic after masking the area the area to catch the plastic bits from the hole cutting. The antenna cable bulkhead connectors clamp the aluminum plate in place when the nuts are tightened.

It is a little tricky to fish the antenna cable leads to the WiFi radio and even more tricky to attach them.
I finally removed the radio and attached the cables and replaced the radio with cables attached.

And of interest, I do not spend time trying to get Bluetooth to work as I have no need for it, so can not respond to that.

I do use the FakePCIID method for WiFi.

Good modding,
neil
 
After reading your post,,, extensive research and various trials on several computers I have my m8 started up."with great Joy" I mean I can hardly sleep with anticipation for continue working on my build. 1) I also disassembled the case and modified the fans to blow upward through case for better cooling.
ASRock M8 BareBones $275 ouch to much!
Toshiba 2.5 500 G HHd Yosemite 10.10.3 installed with Unibeast 5.2.0 / 512 ssd 7 Ultimate R2x64
CPU Type: i7/4790k
Vengeance DDR3 so dim 1600 (16GB kit)
Ice R9 270 2GiG DDr5
Corsair m4 512

1.70 flashed bios w/ R9 and 16 gigs of ram installed finally worked came up as macbook pro ? without ethernet,,, sound,,, or wifi multi-beast reset to Imac and continue to configure exactly what i did,,, so far still no ethernet,,, sound,,, or wifi

Isn't weird that this stuff makes us all so happy,, were all winners that love winning! Thanks everyone this build is going to the Mission ography school in Honduras as soon as its ready Ill take any help or suggestions
 
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