Official CustoMac Mini 2011 Guide and Notes (in progress)

[nickfielibert]

Has anyone used the Gigabyte GA-H61N-USB3 motherboard with this build? Any results? I am planning on buying this build, but the Gigabyte GA-H61N-USB3 board is cheaper than the other one, but I want to make sure it works correctly.

I have a hackintosh working with a similar board: GA H61M USB3 B3 v1.0., with i3 2100, 4 GB of RAM and GT220 Nvidia graphics.
I'm running 10.7.2, that I did a clean install for on a separate partition. Upgrading from 10.6.8 was a nightmare. Had KP's all over. Probably because of sleepenabler, but didn't have the patience to figure that out in detail. The clean install on an empty partition went quite well. I used the appropriate DSDT.aml from the Tonymac database. Only had to get the atheros ethernet kext, because the DSDT only supports realtek ethernet adapter.
I used the tonymac guide for Lion all the way.

The GT220 card has a noisy fan so want to get rid of that.

I've not figured out how to use the internal HD2000 graphics yet. I tried doing this by forcing the BioS to only look at the internal graphics, but that gave me an error while booting: something about missing Nvidia data and then had the white screen with the apple in the middle and the multicolor circle while something is loading thing that apple always has when it is busy.

I did some reading on HD2000 and it seems to be rather weak, so decided to get a new passive cooled Asus GT520 card. A bit lower grade then the 220, but should be much better than the HD2000 onboard at reasonable extra power levels.

[EDIT] have installed the GT520 with passive cooling. Works right out of box! Also have USB 3 working. Only issue left is the darned iCloud issue. Some of the easier fixes seem not to work. Hope Tonymac can produce a patch for this!

 

[Mikey Dread]

OK I haven't seen an artifact in over a day now (FOR THE MOMENT) using either of these settings:

1) GPU frequency to 1000 and GPU voltage to 'NORMAL' and enabled Graphics DVID with the value of '-0.030'……
or
2) Everything set to Auto.

I had the interface lock up once and I thought it was the first settings, then it happened again on everything set to auto. Same weird video related crash in the logs. Happeed both times in Safari on a web page with Adobe Flash.

So, I have uninstalled flash with the adobe uninstaller and and everything is running perfect again and it just feels right again. I know this sounds crazy, but I am gonna blame Adobe Flash for the artifacts and just live without it until proven otherwise.

Whats your GPU voltage from the normal column? also what voltage is your ram?

Will let you know as soon as I can, but I'll have to restart to go look at my various voltages and I don't want to do that yet because I want to see how long before artifacts show up. I've just gone another 19 hours without artifacts since I set everything to auto and uninstalled Adobe Flash. More than two days now without artifacts!

I believe it was Adobe Flash triggering whatever issue there is with Lion or the motherboard. I just use Chrome which has it's own built in flash if I need it. This is a fine Hack now without flash, almost as good as my Cartri Bios Hack!

 

[utsi]

@nickfielibert: I had the same problem with nvidia error message, I had to physically remove the nVidia card in order to fix it. It's worth a try!

I have problems with artifacts and freezes. I read that someone got rid of this by removing one of the RAM chips, reducing memory size to 4GB. Is 8GB the cause?

 

[dmreddy]

Yeah.. I would see artifacts with a fresh install of lion, nothing else installed except dsdt etc..

I think the variations in motherboard, combined with the cpu and memory speed effects whether someone has artifacts or not..

After testing my rig in every way, with different freq's and voltages for the GPU I have given up. i'm buying a video card.

I just need to decide between the 5570 and gt430..

 

[dmreddy]

@nickfielibert: I had the same problem with nvidia error message, I had to physically remove the nVidia card in order to fix it. It's worth a try!

I have problems with artifacts and freezes. I read that someone got rid of this by removing one of the RAM chips, reducing memory size to 4GB. Is 8GB the cause?

That was me. It did seem to help, but then I finally got artifacts on my system with 4gb a couple days ago..

 

[utsi]

@nickfielibert: I had the same problem with nvidia error message, I had to physically remove the nVidia card in order to fix it. It's worth a try!

I have problems with artifacts and freezes. I read that someone got rid of this by removing one of the RAM chips, reducing memory size to 4GB. Is 8GB the cause?

That was me. It did seem to help, but then I finally got artifacts on my system with 4gb a couple days ago..

What a disappointment!

I was using a FX 380, a crappy old card with a noisy little fan, so it's not fit for the living room. I've ordered pico psu and H70 (water cooling), so I'm really hoping for a workaround!

 

[nickkka]

Has anyone used the Gigabyte GA-H61N-USB3 motherboard with this build? Any results? I am planning on buying this build, but the Gigabyte GA-H61N-USB3 board is cheaper than the other one, but I want to make sure it works correctly.

I have a hackintosh working with a similar board: GA H61M USB3 B3 v1.0., with i3 2100, 4 GB of RAM and GT220 Nvidia graphics.
I'm running 10.7.2, that I did a clean install for on a separate partition. Upgrading from 10.6.8 was a nightmare. Had KP's all over. Probably because of sleepenabler, but didn't have the patience to figure that out in detail. The clean install on an empty partition went quite well. I used the appropriate DSDT.aml from the Tonymac database. Only had to get the atheros ethernet kext, because the DSDT only supports realtek ethernet adapter.
I used the tonymac guide for Lion all the way.

The GT220 card has a noisy fan so want to get rid of that.

I've not figured out how to use the internal HD2000 graphics yet. I tried doing this by forcing the BioS to only look at the internal graphics, but that gave me an error while booting: something about missing Nvidia data and then had the white screen with the apple in the middle and the multicolor circle while something is loading thing that apple always has when it is busy.

I did some reading on HD2000 and it seems to be rather weak, so decided to get a new passive cooled Asus GT520 card. A bit lower grade then the 220, but should be much better than the HD2000 onboard at reasonable extra power levels.

The board sounds like it'll work pretty well. I have Hd 3000 graphics, so the graphics won't be a problem. And I was planning on using Tony's Unibeast method because of how ridiculously easy it is, I used it on my Toshiba laptop and it worked very well. I'm still not sure which board to buy though for this build...haha

 

[Mate94]

Stork using a 2600K with these settings... :? Somebody don't want to try it?

Internal graphics clock
Auto 1330
Graphics Core
Auto 1.060

 

[dmreddy]

Stork using a 2600K with these settings... :? Somebody don't want to try it?

Internal graphics clock
Auto 1330
Graphics Core
Auto 1.060

Those will really only work on a I7.. Because its GPU clock speed is 1330. The I5 (Which I have) only has a max. clock speed of 1100.
I did try 1100 @ 1.060v's. Still had artifacts.. I was also trying up to 1.080.. My bios gave me an error due to overclocking My GPU's normal voltage is around .975, I found I had the best results & my system was most stable around .98 to 1.02v's.

The thing is if you use a different CPU or even ram speed/voltage your GPU's voltage is going to change..

Anyway. I bought a 5670. I read tonymac's blog before buying it, and it said lion supports it natively, and its in the wiki's recommended hardware section

 

[cb_mainz]

Is there a way to extent the 4 SATA data links (is this right way do call it in english?) to 6 SATA data links withe a PCIe card that works on OSX? I want so connect 6 SATA HDD's.