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

[pastrychef]

I'm having a look at your config.plist and had a quick question about ACPI patching:
Are the DSDT patches you have all that is needed for the platform? On the x299 platform I spent half a week implementing USB power management and thread naming patches for a 18-core CPU and was wondering if these are all that Coffee Lake/ 9900k needs. Especially, I was thinking things like OSI -> XOSI, H_EC -> EC__, IDER->MEID etc. Do these need researching/ enabling for optimal stability etc. or are they simply unneeded on this platform?
Also, do you feel that except the USB SSDT implementation, are there any specific device-specific SSDTs that need implementing? I was thinking about the GPU in particular, where I had quite good experiences with an SSDT-based implementation instead of the .kext. If you feel that the kext is just as good however, that saves huge amounts of time.

Thanks a lot!

Sami

I believe that I've implemented all the ACPI renames necessary for Z370. A quick look in IORegistryExplorer showed no matches for the items you listed. I have no idea about X299. I've never really looked in to that platform in any detail because I never intended to do an X299 build.

The only things I feel that really NEED SSDT are (1) USB to address port limit and (2) to address USB charging. In my EFI folders, I've already included the SSDT for USB charging. SSDT for USB is attached to post #1 and users only have to decide which ports to disable and add it to their config.plist.

The two GPUs that I've tested (Vega 56 and RX 560) do not require any sort of SSDT and work fine. Both cards have acceleration in High Sierra and Mojave. Both cards are recognized by macOS without any sort of injections needed. The only reason to create SSDT would be to populate the System Information > PCI section. But, as has been stated many times, that's strictly cosmetic and does nothing for functionality. Even real iMacs don't have that section of System Information populated.

My Vega 56 works almost perfectly without any kext. The only thing that didn't work without any kext was AirPlay video which is fixed after WhateverGreen is installed.

 

[ddsmith11111993]

I believe that I've implemented all the ACPI renames necessary for Z370. A quick look in IORegistryExplorer showed no matches for the items you listed. I have no idea about X299. I've never really looked in to that platform in any detail because I never intended to do an X299 build.

The only things I feel that really NEED SSDT are (1) USB to address port limit and (2) to address USB charging. In my EFI folders, I've already included the SSDT for USB charging. SSDT for USB is attached to post #1 and users only have to decide which ports to disable and add it to their config.plist.

The two GPUs that I've tested (Vega 56 and RX 560) do not require any sort of SSDT and work fine. Both cards have acceleration in High Sierra and Mojave. Both cards are recognized by macOS without any sort of injections needed. The only reason to create SSDT would be to populate the System Information > PCI section. But, as has been stated many times, that's strictly cosmetic and does nothing for functionality. Even real iMacs don't have that section of System Information populated.

My Vega 56 works almost perfectly without any kext. The only thing that didn't work without any kext was AirPlay video which is fixed after WhateverGreen is installed.

Thank you for the reply!
On Skylake X there are some issues with power management (mainly HWP), thread desynchronization after wake from sleep and USB power management leading to wake from sleep. Do you have any issues in that regard? As much as I like high performance, I don't want the 9900k to be stuck at 5 GHz all the time... Does communication with IstatMenus work for you?

Thank you again

 

[pastrychef]

Thank you for the reply!
On Skylake X there are some issues with power management (mainly HWP), thread desynchronization after wake from sleep and USB power management leading to wake from sleep. Do you have any issues in that regard? As much as I like high performance, I don't want the 9900k to be stuck at 5 GHz all the time... Does communication with IstatMenus work for you?

Thank you again

I've been waiting for my i9-9900K to be shipped for several weeks now...

I don't have any problems with power management or SpeedStep. I would not have ordered the i9-9900K if I anticipated any problems with either.

My current i7-8700K frequency ramps up and down between 800MHz and 5GHz all day long. I usually leave my system running 24/7 and have had uptimes of over 40 days and power management, SpeedStep, sleep/wake all continue to work as expected.

The only thing that's not working in iStat Menus for me are the GPU readings. I don't get any readings from GPU; temps, frequency, power consumption, nothing. I have gotten readings by switching from RehabMan's branch of FakeSMC to the HWSensors branch, but I lost the motherboard fan readings using HWSeonsors branch so I switched back to RehabMan's branch and use terminal to monitor GPU fans and temps.

 

[corint1]

I've been waiting for my i9-9900K to be shipped for several weeks now...

in my opinion you did not have to invest in 9900k ... there is not a big difference between 9900 and 8700 ... the two extra cores do not make the difference of money

 

[mm2margaret]

in my opinion you did not have to invest in 9900k ... there is not a big difference between 9900 and 8700 ... the two extra cores do not make the difference of money

So, @pastrychef:

I just got my 9900K, and benchmarked it. I don't see a lot of difference between it and the 8700K on the single core scores except for the temperatures (!). Temps, at the same clock speed, are much lower (what a difference the solder has made!). The lower temps suggest that you could possibly tweak it higher, but that's not what I want out of it.

The multicore score shows exactly what I wanted: huge improvements over my older 8700K (which is now gone - sold on e-Bay). About 38000 on multicore, and that's a huge improvement.

So, I guess it depends on what you want out of the CPU.

Some people would probably like to know that Silicon Lottery is offering a liquid metal service on the 9900K, which involves a one year warranty and they will shave/sand some of the solder down and replace it with liquid metal. But they will only shave/sand the solder down partially - to make sure they don't damage the CPU. That's interesting, but I'm going to pass, as what I wanted, the multicore score, is much improved.

Love to know how well your 9900K turns out.....

 

[pastrychef]

So, @pastrychef:

I just got my 9900K, and benchmarked it. I don't see a lot of difference between it and the 8700K on the single core scores except for the temperatures (!). Temps, at the same clock speed, are much lower (what a difference the solder has made!). The lower temps suggest that you could possibly tweak it higher, but that's not what I want out of it.

The multicore score shows exactly what I wanted: huge improvements over my older 8700K (which is now gone - sold on e-Bay). About 38000 on multicore, and that's a huge improvement.

So, I guess it depends on what you want out of the CPU.

Some people would probably like to know that Silicon Lottery is offering a liquid metal service on the 9900K, which involves a one year warranty and they will shave/sand some of the solder down and replace it with liquid metal. But they will only shave/sand the solder down partially - to make sure they don't damage the CPU. That's interesting, but I'm going to pass, as what I wanted, the multicore score, is much improved.

Love to know how well your 9900K turns out.....

It's encouraging to hear about your temps. I delidded my i7-8700K the second I received it and never ran it with the stock TIM. Unfortunately, the silicon gods sent me a so-so example of the 8700K and it required a bit more voltage than I would have liked to reach an all core 5GHz overclock. Even still, with my delid job and liquid metal, the CPU hardly ever reaches 80C. If I can get anywhere near the same temperatures with the 9900K, I will be happy.

In all honesty, I don't truly need a 9900K. Having come from an old MacPro5,1, I lived with 8 and 12 cores for good stretches and I do like the flexibility that the extra cores provides. After switching to a quad core 6700K and even now with hexacore, I don't run my virtual machines as often. Nowadays, the only times when my CPU is really pushed hard is during Handbrake video conversions and I don't do it often enough to justify the cost of the 9900K. However, I managed to secure the 9900K at $515 and have someone committed to buying my 8700K, so it won't be as large of an investment for me compared to someone starting fresh. I do look forward to returning to having 8 cores again. For my personal usage, I think 8 cores is sweet spot.

I'm still on the fence about whether I want to attempt to delid and lap my 9900K. I think I will have to see how it performs at stock first.

Are you using your 9900K with a Z370 motherboard?

 

[greenleaf123]

Have you upgraded BIOS?

Did you install another OS recently?

Have you tried coping the EFI folder back to the EFI partition of your main system drive again?

thanks! i updated my BIOS right after the CMOS reset. The EFI covler folder are still there in my partition. i tried replacing two boot files in the root to see it is changed anything. Maybe i will replace with the same files by not sure if that will help since they seems all there already

 

[greenleaf123]

It's encouraging to hear about your temps. I delidded my i7-8700K the second I received it and never ran it with the stock TIM. Unfortunately, the silicon gods sent me a so-so example of the 8700K and it required a bit more voltage than I would have liked to reach an all core 5GHz overclock. Even still, with my delid job and liquid metal, the CPU hardly ever reaches 80C. If I can get anywhere near the same temperatures with the 9900K, I will be happy.

In all honesty, I don't truly need a 9900K. Having come from an old MacPro5,1, I lived with 8 and 12 cores for good stretches and I do like the flexibility that the extra cores provides. After switching to a quad core 6700K and even now with hexacore, I don't run my virtual machines as often. Nowadays, the only times when my CPU is really pushed hard is during Handbrake video conversions and I don't do it often enough to justify the cost of the 9900K. However, I managed to secure the 9900K at $515 and have someone committed to buying my 8700K, so it won't be as large of an investment for me compared to someone starting fresh. I do look forward to returning to having 8 cores again. For my personal usage, I think 8 cores is sweet spot.

I'm still on the fence about whether I want to attempt to delid and lap my 9900K. I think I will have to see how it performs at stock first.

Are you using your 9900K with a Z370 motherboard?

that's awesome! Waiting for my 9900K any day now too! ; ) apparently the temps and OC are much better vs the 8700K (have it now) from reviews . also a reason i ordered it. hope it will be in real life too!

 

[greenleaf123]

in my opinion you did not have to invest in 9900k ... there is not a big difference between 9900 and 8700 ... the two extra cores do not make the difference of money

yes for gamins it doesnt. but for exporting photos and video editing it helps for pros ; )

worth the 250$ difference, for me

 

[pastrychef]

thanks! i updated my BIOS right after the CMOS reset. The EFI covler folder are still there in my partition. i tried replacing two boot files in the root to see it is changed anything. Maybe i will replace with the same files by not sure if that will help since they seems all there already

If you installed another OS after macOS, there's a possibility that something gets overwritten in the EFI.