pastrychef's Asus ROG Strix Z370-G Gaming (WI-FI AC) build w/ i9-9900K + AMD 6600 XT

[Huitzilopochtli]

If it works in real Macs, I see no reason why it wouldn't work on your hack.

OK thank, now I am wondering if I can even fit it inside my Hackintosh. I would need a PCI Express slot for it... Is the one under the Radeon VII suitable? Or would I have to take out the bluetooth/WLAN card?

 

[pastrychef]

OK thank, now I am wondering if I can even fit it inside my Hackintosh. I would need a PCI Express slot for it... Is the one under the Radeon VII suitable? Or would I have to take out the bluetooth/WLAN card?

If the card you are looking to use is single width, it will fit fine.

If the card you are looking to use is double wide, you will have to pull your Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card.

The Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card can work in the M.2 slot where the stock Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card so you wouldn't lose any functionality.

 

[mm2margaret]

Well @pastrychef I have finally retired (permanently), my Z370-A. It was a good motherboard, but I have a Mac Studio coming, so I really don't need it as I have a Z490 for Beta work. Once the Mac Studio gets here, I may retire the Z490 as well. Time to move on.

I really don't post here much anymore, mainly because of some of the moderators and the fact that the era of the Hackintosh is ending.

I did really enjoy working with you on the 10Gb thread, and have really appreciated your help over the years. Obviously, I won't be posting in this thread anymore, but I just wanted to say Thank you one more time.

 

[pastrychef]

Well @pastrychef I have finally retired (permanently), my Z370-A. It was a good motherboard, but I have a Mac Studio coming, so I really don't need it as I have a Z490 for Beta work. Once the Mac Studio gets here, I may retire the Z490 as well. Time to move on.

I really don't post here much anymore, mainly because of some of the moderators and the fact that the era of the Hackintosh is ending.

I did really enjoy working with you on the 10Gb thread, and have really appreciated your help over the years. Obviously, I won't be posting in this thread anymore, but I just wanted to say Thank you one more time.

Yes. I agree it's time to move on. I've pretty much retired my hackintosh desktops too. Only my hackintosh laptop still gets used regularly.

The Mac Studio was a real game changer for me. There was a bit of an adjustment having to move my 3.5" drives to a NAS for mass storage but, otherwise, it has been everything I've wanted in a Mac.

Good luck with your new Studio! Stop by just to say hi once in a while. Lol

 

[dclive]

So how's the gaming? If we exclude emulation/MAME type stuff, and we focus on running Intel games in the past few years (MacOS versions) and any new M1/M2 stuff, how does the Studio run for you?

What do you use it for?

As you're aware, I had one, and I still struggle with the speed. Per-core it's about as fast as the 12th gen i5. It's got more cores doing work, so it's faster with large parallel operations, but if you don't have lots of those, it's not faster.

BestBuy & Costco have the M1 Pro entry level (!) 14" for $1599 and I'm considering that as well (with Costco Visa, one gets 3 years of warranty; it's interesting), but I still have that basic struggle...

 

[pastrychef]

So how's the gaming? If we exclude emulation/MAME type stuff, and we focus on running Intel games in the past few years (MacOS versions) and any new M1/M2 stuff, how does the Studio run for you?

What do you use it for?

As you're aware, I had one, and I still struggle with the speed. Per-core it's about as fast as the 12th gen i5. It's got more cores doing work, so it's faster with large parallel operations, but if you don't have lots of those, it's not faster.

BestBuy & Costco have the M1 Pro entry level (!) 14" for $1599 and I'm considering that as well (with Costco Visa, one gets 3 years of warranty; it's interesting), but I still have that basic struggle...

I haven't played anything other than emulation stuff and it does a much better job at it than the HP ProDesk 400 that I built for that exact purpose. The HP has an i9-9900 and an AMD RX 560.

I've been using for all my general purpose stuff, converted a few videos with Handbrake, used it for my usenet needs. I think the Handbrake conversions are a bit slower than my hackintosh but it goes about its business completely silently and even with all the cores completely maxed out, the fans never go beyond the default 1330-1340rpm and power consumption maxes out at ~50W. The system remains very responsive while this is happening and I have no problems surfing and watching YouTube while video conversions are happening. Hopefully, Handbrake gets updated to take advantage of the hardware better.

I have never even touched a system with anything beyond Coffee Lake. I had no interest in any of it since Apple announced their transition to Apple Silicon. I just know that my M1 Max feels considerably faster than my Coffee Lake systems. I don't care if Intel or AMD releases CPUs several magnitudes faster than Apple Silicon, if I can't run macOS, it means nothing to me. The super fast boot times are also nice.

Even before getting my Mac Studio, I hadn't boot in to Windows for quite some time. Since getting the Mac Studio, I only booted in to Windows during the installation of Windows 11 on Arm in a UTM virtual machine. After the installation, I sat staring at the screen with nothing to do in Windows...

I have been resisting the urge to make my personal transition complete and getting a MacBook to replace my current hackBook. The recent weakness in the stock market has made this more difficult. Lol. But, it's just a matter of time before I do it.

 

[Montesumolo]

I think the Handbrake conversions are a bit slower than my hackintosh but it goes about its business completely silently and even with all the cores completely maxed out, the fans never go beyond the default 1330-1340rpm and power consumption maxes out at ~50W.

I have a MacBook Pro with the M1 Max and 32 GB from my employer. Since we are a museum and I produce and convert a lot of videos for our Raspberry Pi's in the exhibitions or webpage etc., I have to say that handbrake is not the fastest on this machine... sometimes I put them into a premiere / media encoder or Davinci timeline and convert with them. It renders pretty fast... approx. 25 min of footage in about 3 to 5 min, depending on resolution and source material.

I am also allowed to use it privately. However, since I have still some FireWire stuff and all my samples and instruments spread on several SSDs in the hack, I still see a lot of benefit in this hackintosh in my Music Studio. And mixing my "private" stuff with work stuff is an issue too...

Since this is my first hackintosh I spent so much time, money and effort in it, that I don't wanna give it up.
And thanks to you @pastrychef , it was really easy to do for a noob like me.

Thank you for still answering questions!

 

[pastrychef]

I have a MacBook Pro with the M1 Max and 32 GB from my employer. Since we are a museum and I produce and convert a lot of videos for our Raspberry Pi's in the exhibitions or webpage etc., I have to say that handbrake is not the fastest on this machine... sometimes I put them into a premiere / media encoder or Davinci timeline and convert with them. It renders pretty fast... approx. 25 min of footage in about 3 to 5 min, depending on resolution and source material.

I am also allowed to use it privately. However, since I have still some FireWire stuff and all my samples and instruments spread on several SSDs in the hack, I still see a lot of benefit in this hackintosh in my Music Studio. And mixing my "private" stuff with work stuff is an issue too...

Since this is my first hackintosh I spent so much time, money and effort in it, that I don't wanna give it up.
And thanks to you @pastrychef , it was really easy to do for a noob like me.

Thank you for still answering questions!

Yeah. I don't think Handbrake is optimized for Apple Silicon yet. I'll try some alternatives. Thanks.

Have you tried a Thunderbolt Firewire adaptor?

Yeah. This motherboard was great for hackintoshing. We got everything working with little to no compromises. I'm confident that the last Intel based version of macOS will work fine on this.

 

[dclive]

Yeah. I don't think Handbrake is optimized for Apple Silicon yet. I'll try some alternatives. Thanks.

I wonder how tdarr would handle the M1's h264 encoders; I'd hope they're calling via VTB as well.

Have you tried that? Add a docker image to your rpi server with the tdarr server node, and then run the client on the studio, and see how that works? Or just set up a self-standing note on the studio?

 

[Montesumolo]

I'll try some alternatives.

I did some videos with Shutterencoder for the last exhibition, but I don't know how it compares to Handbrake with Intel to Silicon. You may give it a shot!

Have you tried a Thunderbolt Firewire adaptor?

I did the FW->TB2 thing with my 2015 iMac but didn't try the FW->TB2-->TB3/4 thing... too maany adapters somehow and the drivers for the interface I have are supported until Big Sur only.
So I think I will still rely on my hack for some years, and, when it's time to move on change to a USB 3 or TB interface.
But that's the reason why I wanted to test Big Sur and Monterey with the drivers on my hack, and, until now, it didn't work well as stated in the posts some days ago.
I will give it another shot but I think I have to stay on Mojave/ Catalina, where I prefer Mojave as it seems more stable to me.