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

[pastrychef]

Hi, pastrychef,

I plan to upgrade my 2 years old Z87 built (ASUS Maximus VI Extreme, I7 4770K) towards a Z370 (ASUS Maximus X Hero ROG, I7-8700K) system.

Can I transfer the SSD with MacOS 10.13.3 (Samsung 850 pro) to the new system without reinstalling MacOS from scratch ?

That depends on how you installed your hackintosh files on your current system. If you have all of your hackintosh kexts in your EFI folder, it should work fine.

If you have hackintosh kexts in /L/E/ and/or /S/L/E/, you would need to clean up all that stuff prior to the transplant. Also, if you have done any patches to system files, you will probably want to restore them.

One way to help reduce the chance of any issues would be to run the 10.13.3 combo update on your system prior to the transplant.

Can I copy the contents of the EFI folder in your post #1 without any compatibility issues ?

Most things should work fine with my EFI folder on a Maximus X Hero. As is the case with any motherboard other than the Z370-G that I use, you will have to create your own SSDT-USB.aml.

Do you or other posters have such experiences ?

There's already been at least a few people who have used my EFI as a base for other Z370 systems without any major issues.

 

[RuleBreaker01]

Is your card connected via PCI-e or M.2?

Changing to my EFI folder should not have affected it... You can try resetting all your network interfaces by doing the following:

1. Go to /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/.
2. Delete NetworkInterfaces.plist and preferences.plist.
3. Reboot.

I'll give that a go and report back.

 

[LAtechniker]

Hold the Option key while clicking on the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar. This will allow you to see how your reception is.

From Monitor a Bluetooth Device’s Connection Strength in Mac OS X :
View attachment 308481


In regards to the temperature of the card itself, that's considerably hotter than mine but I'm not transferring any data through Wi-Fi at the moment. I'm seeing about 95F (approx 35C).
View attachment 308484

To follow up from the Hot WiFi / Bluetooth Card and therefore performance issues I present my solution:

Since installing the components into my case improved temperatures only slightly because of the airflow, I had to find a way to cool the card to continue using WiFi and Bluetooth without lags.

So I ordered some small passive RAM Heatsinks with selfadhesive thermalpads:

Installing was somewhat tricky with big fingers and the system assembled, but only took a minute or two.

The colour is not perfect but ok and I couldn’t be bothered to paint them. Also I’m not sure if paint would affect the thermal properties.

Temperatures are now in the mid to high thirties (95-102*F), even under Network load. There is no more lag when I use my Bluetooth devices.


Now I get to enjoy my system. (Hopefully!)

Some pictures of the setup so far:

 

[blassley]

@pastrychef does your power nap work? What darkwake= are you using? I can’t seem to get mine to work when it sleeps with power nap on the system reboots to the bios failure screen..

 

[pastrychef]

@pastrychef does your power nap work? What darkwake= are you using? I can’t seem to get mine to work when it sleeps with power nap on the system reboots to the bios failure screen..

As stated in post #1, sleep/wake, power nap, and wake-on-LAN all work for me.

I use "Darkwake". I don't know what will work for your motherboard.

 

[blassley]

As stated in post #1, sleep/wake, power nap, and wake-on-LAN all work for me.

I use "Darkwake". I don't know what will work for your motherboard.

Darkwake=0,8,10? I’ve tried 0 but power nap doesn’t work

 

[pastrychef]

Darkwake=0,8,10? I’ve tried 0 but power nap doesn’t work

No. "Darkwake". You can see my settings by downloading my EFI folder. It's on post #1.

 

[pastrychef]

Speaking of thermals, smaller case may not be really more effective: not only the space between elements producing heat is smaller, causing the air to heat up more and therefore heating up other, cooler elements, but also this means that the air pressure inside is higher and with the same power of fans in smaller case the airflow would in fact be worse, given in higher pressure less air would get in. Not to mention that when leaving the case under higher pressure, the air would make more noise than in case of lower pressure difference between inside and outside. Just a thought.

The following is an image I just found on the internet, not my own, but it's pretty much the same setup as mine minus one video card.

There is obviously positive air pressure here, but I think it's very minor. I think increasing interior volume would just necessitate more fans to achieve the same level of efficiency.

 

[RuleBreaker01]

I'm going to grab another WiFi card to make sure that isn’t the issue. Only thing I can think is the card is wonky.

 

[adamfont]

Hi All,
First time poster here. Thanks so much for all the valuable guides, info, troubleshooting. Super helpful. Finally got my first build going and had my first go at getting some OS's on there last night. Followed Pastrychef's guide from the beginning of this thread for initial setup. My BIOS had a few options missing from his BIOS walk through but other than that everything seemed fine. Went ahead with the setup and booted off my High Sierra USB. Got to the clover boot screen just fine all looked good, Apple logo with progress bar etc. When I advanced to the next screen, the macOS utilities screen, this is where I'm stuck. I can move my mouse around the screen and I can arrow key through the utility options but I can't click or hit enter on the keyboard. It's not letting me select anything. The options aren't grayed out or anything, I just can't click or enter on them. It's like the only keys that work are the arrow and tab keys and the mouse just allows movement, no clicking. So I have to restart the machine each time to get out of the macOS utilities area. Tried all different combinations of usb ports. Keyboard and mouse plugged in and each with only keyboard and only mouse plugged in. I'm stumped at where to take things from here. If anyone has any suggestions, I would love to hear them. Thanks for your time and hope to hear from you soon. Much appreciated.

Thanks in advance!