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

[Heinrich]

I'm impressed with the CPU temps and air cooling. Given the heat the 8700K creates, I assumed to overclock, a watercooler would be required. Seems not so. Volume and good airflow through the case must help.

Was watercooling ever a consideration?

I am thinking of a slightly smaller case but not full-blown SFF.

 

[pastrychef]

I'm impressed with the CPU temps and air cooling. Given the heat the 8700K creates, I assumed to overclock, a watercooler would be required. Seems not so. Volume and good airflow through the case must help.

Was watercooling ever a consideration?

I am thinking of a slightly smaller case but not full-blown SFF.

Personally, I try to stay away from water cooling. I remember how even many of the Apple made Power Mac G5s ended up leaking. If Apple couldn't do it right, what chance do I have? That's a worry I don't need in the back of my mind.

I considered for a long time which case to buy... I ended up choosing one that allowed for air flow to go straight from front to back and similar to how the air flows in the Mac Pro 1,1-5,1. I have been very happy with my decision.

 

[Petko166]

Great Job,

and Good result, I've similar more single, less multi core score

 

[Heinrich]

Right. Two fans pulling in the front and one exhaust in the top rear?

Edit: Ohhhhhh... inverted mobo and a single exhaust fan out the bottom rear with the top rear being a chamber for the psu. Nice.

Personally, I try to stay away from water cooling. I remember how even many of the Apple made Power Mac G5s ended up leaking. If Apple couldn't do it right, what chance do I have? That's a worry I don't need in the back of my mind.

I considered for a long time which case to buy... I ended up choosing one that allowed for air flow to go straight from front to back and similar to how the air flows in the Mac Pro 1,1-5,1. I have been very happy with my decision.

 

[Petko166]

pastrychef,

What yours aml file (from EFI zip) intend to handle sleep wake issue? I'am just testing but it looks something weird now.

P.

 

[pastrychef]

Right. Two fans pulling in the front and one exhaust in the top rear?

Edit: Ohhhhhh... inverted mobo and a single exhaust fan out the bottom rear with the top rear being a chamber for the psu. Nice.

Rear fan is on the bottom, behind the heatsink.

Here's a picture I found on the internet, but my setup with heatsink and fans is identical to his.


As with the Mac Pro 1,1-5,1s:

• Power supply is on top
• PCI-e slots are situated above CPU/Heatsink
• Two fans pulling air in
• Fan nestled in between heatsink
• Single rear fan pulling hot air out

 

[pastrychef]

pastrychef,

What yours aml file (from EFI zip) intend to handle sleep wake issue? I'am just testing but it looks something weird now.

P.

Oops. Those shouldn't be there. Let me delete them and replace the EFI.zip. Thanks for letting me know.

Edit: To be clear, the presence of those .aml files should not cause any problems to get up and running. They can be deleted after installing macOS.

 

[UtterDisbelief]

Personally, I try to stay away from water cooling. I remember how even many of the Apple made Power Mac G5s ended up leaking. If Apple couldn't do it right, what chance do I have? That's a worry I don't need in the back of my mind.

I considered for a long time which case to buy... I ended up choosing one that allowed for air flow to go straight from front to back and similar to how the air flows in the Mac Pro 1,1-5,1. I have been very happy with my decision.

I'm enjoying this thread and your build

My own new build is based on the i3-8350K and a Gigabyte board - so not really relevant here, however on the cooling front I'm totally with you. I've considered water-cooling in the past but always steered-clear, remembering my old engineering training telling me water and electricity don't mix! LOL!

For air-cooling a straight through flow, front to back gives best results, in my opinion. Good quality quiet fan(s) to pull air in from the front, similar size CPU cooler fan(s) and then enough vent area at the back to let the air out unimpeded That's usually fine for my i3 builds - we'll have to see how the new quad-core fares! Nowadays the majority of cases feature PSUs that don't mix their air-flow with the case, so it doesn't stir things up.

 

[pastrychef]

I'm enjoying this thread and your build

My own new build is based on the i3-8350K and a Gigabyte board - so not really relevant here, however on the cooling front I'm totally with you. I've considered water-cooling in the past but always steered-clear, remembering my old engineering training telling me water and electricity don't mix! LOL!

For air-cooling a straight through flow, front to back gives best results, in my opinion. Good quality quiet fan(s) to pull air in from the front, similar size CPU cooler fan(s) and then enough vent area at the back to let the air out unimpeded That's usually fine for my i3 builds - we'll have to see how the new quad-core fares! Nowadays the majority of cases feature PSUs that don't mix their air-flow with the case, so it doesn't stir things up.

Thanks.

Yeah, I really spent a lot of time considering which case to buy. Although this case is nowhere near the quality of Apple's cases, it's design is very good. I also went with all Noctua fans despite the questionable color scheme. Lol

I will be taking the Z170 motherboard and i7-7700K that I pulled and putting together a new build for a friend. She chose the Cerberus case which is considerably smaller than what I'm using but seems to be extremely high quality. I will document the build a little and give some impressions on whether cooling is affected with such cramped quarters.

 

[pastrychef]

As I noted in the first post, I had been using a Dell DW1830 M.2 Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card. It had been working well but I wanted to use a Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card from a real Mac. So, I ordered a BCM94360CS2 that is found in 2013-2017 MacBook Airs and an appropriate M.2 adaptor for it.

The BCM94360CS2 and M.2 adaptor is too tall to close the bracket casing that's included with the motherboard, but that's fine. Securing both to the bracket works fine. Because it's taller, one of the pigtail antennas will not be able to reach. I swapped it with one of the pigtails from the PCI-e adaptor I used for my previous build.

In my particular case, the height of the BCM94360CS2 and adaptor forced me to shave off a little bit of the rear case fan in the corner.

Reasons:

• The BCM94360CS2 only requires 2 antennas vs the 3 required for the DW1830. This works out better with this motherboard because the bracket and backplate on this motherboard were designed for 2 antennas.
• Guaranteed 100% compatibility.
• No need for additional kexts or patches.

Advantages/Disadvantages:

• The DW1830 was too wide to fit in to the bracket that came with the motherboard, so I just had it plugged in to the M.2 connector with nothing securing it.
• There has been some reports that the DW1830 would be slow after sleep in macOS. I didn't test this.
• The DW1830 is capable of 1300Mbps. The BCM94360CS2 is only capable of 867Mbps.
• The BCM94360CS2 is true plug-n-play with macOS. The DW1830 required two kexts for Bluetooth to work.

Here are the items I purchased:


MacBook Air 13 A1465 A1466 2013 2014 WiFi Bluetooth Air Port Card BCM94360CS2 AP | eBay
Amazon.com: New WiFi Bluetooth Card BCM94360CS2 For MacBook Air 13'' A1465 A1466 Mid 2013: Computers & Accessories


BCM94360CS2 Card To NGFF(M.2) Key A/E Adapter For Mac OS and Hackintosh | eBay
Amazon.com: Hobbypower BCM94360CS2/BCM943224PCIEBT2 Card To NGFF(M.2) Key A/E Adapter For Mac OS: Computers & Accessories


Here it is with everything assembled:

Here's a picture of it installed. (Thanks @Lestliness for the picture!):

Here's another angle.



Edit (January 19, 2018):
As I noted above, one of the stock pigtail antennas will be too short to reach the BCM94360CS2. You can replace the pigtail with something like this:

4X IPEX /MHF4 to RP-SMA Antenna Pigtail for NGFF/M.2 WIFI/WLAN/3G/4G Modules-US | eBay



Real world speed tests:
Specs of routers used for tests:

Source: https://www.verizon.com/home/accessories/fios-quantum-gateway/

Broadband connection is rated 880Mbps up and down.

BCM94360CS2 with M.2 adaptor @ 867Mbps Tx Rate on 802.11ac 5GHz:




BCM94360CSAX with PCI-e adaptor @ 1170Mbps Tx Rate on 802.11ac 5GHz:



Motherboard gigabit ethernet:



Syba SD-PEX24055 10GbE:



I was extremely surprised to see such a small difference between the BCM94360CS2 and BCM94360CSAX. I'm not sure if it's due to the Verizon router that I used but it's the only 802.11ac router that I have to do testing on.