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

Do you know the height of the card after it has been replaced with the BCM94360CS? I feel like I may also need to cut some plastic off of my fan.



pastrychef said:
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:
View attachment 299927

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

View attachment 299928
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:
View attachment 299931
Here's a picture of it installed. (Thanks @Lestliness for the picture!):
View attachment 309254


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:
View attachment 307021
4X IPEX /MHF4 to RP-SMA Antenna Pigtail for NGFF/M.2 WIFI/WLAN/3G/4G Modules-US | eBay
Click to expand...
 
adenbeckitt said:
Do you know the height of the card after it has been replaced with the BCM94360CS? I feel like I may also need to cut some plastic off of my fan.
Click to expand...

Not counting the connector pins, it's 35mm tall.
s-l1000.jpg
 
@pastrychef
For hardware video decoding/encoding, is Intel iGPU used or the Radeon/Nvidia card? I feel it is iGPU 630 doing the work, but is there a way to use my Nvidia card since it's much more powerful?
 
dsrtegle said:
@pastrychef
For hardware video decoding/encoding, is Intel iGPU used or the Radeon/Nvidia card? I feel it is iGPU 630 doing the work, but is there a way to use my Nvidia card since it's much more powerful?
Click to expand...

I think this is dependent upon the software you are using. If you want to force it to use your Nvidia card, you can just disable the IGPU in BIOS.
 
macOS 10.13.4 (17E202) Security Update works fine on our builds. Just update from App Store. It takes about 10 minutes and reboots on it's own twice.

Get updated apfs.efi and put it in to /EFI/CLOVER/drivers64UEFI/.
 
I have f gaming mobo

Can i take your EFI folder?
I can't get working all this...
Sleep
USB In front
And some how I get only 28.000-29.500 in geegbench.
With 32gb 5ghz i7 8700k

I need lilltle help))
 
Dj123 said:
I have f gaming mobo

Can i take your EFI folder?
I can't get working all this...
Sleep
USB In front
And some how I get only 28.000-29.500 in geegbench.
With 32gb 5ghz i7 8700k

I need lilltle help))
Click to expand...

You can use my EFI folder but you will have to create your own SSDT file for USB. The SSDT files are motherboard specific.

Without SSDT for USB, sleep may or may not work.

The type/speed of your RAM can have a pretty big impact on Geekbench scores. Your score seems about right for typical RAM speeds.
 
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