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

[fjnorb]

You can use IORegistryExplorer to confirm that IGPU is enabled.

I downloaded it but I'm having trouble finding it. I found something called "IGPU@200000," is that it?

My MBP (on 10.13.6), in "About this Mac," says:

Graphics AMD Radeon R9 M370X 2048 MB
Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB
EDIT: I see now you said "on real iMacs," not "on real Macs."

 

[fjnorb]

After some research on my part, I realize what I'm asking is: What do I do to set the IGPU to headless mode?

I'm experiencing slowness in Compressor. I am testing with a project that usually takes about 10 minutes to render. It's going on an hour now and the Remaining Time is very inaccurate (it says 2 minutes remaining about 20 minutes ago). CPU usage is also twice as much as it used to be leading me to believe that it's trying to encode in software. This appears to be an indicator that Compressor can't get to the IGPU.

 

[pastrychef]

After some research on my part, I realize what I'm asking is: What do I do to set the IGPU to headless mode?

I'm experiencing slowness in Compressor. I am testing with a project that usually takes about 10 minutes to render. It's going on an hour now and the Remaining Time is very inaccurate (it says 2 minutes remaining about 20 minutes ago). CPU usage is also twice as much as it used to be leading me to believe that it's trying to encode in software. This appears to be an indicator that Compressor can't get to the IGPU.

You don't have to do anything. It's already done.

I have everything set to mimic real iMacs as closely as possible in the EFI folders on post #1 already.

 

[fjnorb]

I must be doing something wrong because this is what I'm seeing:

 

[pastrychef]

I must be doing something wrong because this is what I'm seeing:
View attachment 398758

Please post your EFI folder. Which version of macOS are you using?

 

[fjnorb]

Please post your EFI folder. Which version of macOS are you using?

Unless I screwed something up, I am trying to run your latest EFI, unmodified, on 10.14.4. Sorry for all the confusion.

 

[pastrychef]

Unless I screwed something up, I am trying to run your latest EFI, unmodified, on 10.14.4. Sorry for all the confusion.

Please try this config.plist.

 

[fjnorb]

Please try this config.plist.

That causes a cpu panic immediately upon starting Compressor.

I did some digging and I discovered I may have accidentally disabled "iGPU Multi-Monitor Mode" in the BIOS yesterday. That is probably why your original v5 wasn't working. I tried to put the v5 EFI config.plist back in but I get a circle-slash on boot. I'm going to have to play with it tomorrow. I will certainly let you know. Otherwise Mojave seems to be running well, TM backups to my NAS are working, and technically Compressor was working but it was taking forever. I'm pretty sure going back to your v5 EFI will do it.

 

[fjnorb]

Dumb me, it was circle-slashing because I forgot to change back to iMac18,3.

Now it is seeing the iGPU (I have iStat Menus installed and it shows it to me in one of the widgets alongside the 580). iGPU now shows in IORegistryExplorer, my screen now looks like yours. Renders appear to be faster but I'll have to test it more tomorrow, but it appears to be completely my stupidity with that BIOS setting.

Thanks again for all your help and sorry to be such a bother.

 

[elfcake]

I built an XPEnology NAS (it's like hackintosh for Synology). When I first experimented with it, I built it off of an Intel SS4200 NAS that I bought used from eBay for about $80. This was a four bay NAS and I just installed the XPEnology bootloaeder and used the Synology DSM 5.0. It worked beautifully.

After falling deeply in love with the Synology DSM, I built a custom eight bay NAS using a Silverstone DS380 case and ASRock C2550D4I motherboard. This gave me hot swap bays so I can swap out bad drives and/or upgrade drives to increase capacity without having to shut down. I also added 10GBase-T to give me high speed access to the data (approx 800MB/s reads). All of this is attached to an APC UPS so that it can shut down cleanly in the event of a power failure. This setup helped keep my data safe even through Hurricane Sandy.

In my opinion, the Synology DSM operating system is about as macOS-like as a NAS can possibly get in terms of user friendliness. Everything is done through a GUI that is accesses via a web browser. It's also extremely powerful and capacity can be easily expanded by swapping small drives with larger drives or adding more drives (extremely similar to how a Drobo works).

I even use the built-in SFTP server sometimes to share files with friends that are too large for email attachments or more conventional file sharing methods. One time, I had to help restore a MacBook Pro from a Carbon Copy Cloner image and my friend just sent the 150GB file over the internet to me rather than having to make an extra 1 hour trip to sneakernet the file to me. I also run Plex server on the NAS to serve media to my Apple TV.

It was my experience with the XPEnology bootloader that gave me the confidence to try and build a hackintosh. The theory behind both are quite similar. Use a bootloader (XPEnology or Clover) to trick operating systems (Synology DSM or macOS) in to thinking that off-the-shelf hardware is Synology or Apple hardware.

re: dead drive(s) and the odyssey of copying the data from the dying drive(s). Seven days later (during which) I attempted to use ATI to copy and Stellar Data Recovery (SDR) to pry the data loose (without success) I had to move folders (and some individual files) manually to, 2 - 8tb WD Red drives. After copying all the important data, the Seagate passed its final gasp and has disappeared. Seagate claims the drive is out of warrantee (I bought the drive on 12/3/2018 from Amazon). They will not replace or refund the cost. Will never buy another Seagate. SDR refunded the $149 for the program. I will be installing a DAS device capable of RAID 5 soon. Thanks for the advice. I also spent some time doing some much needed cable management, so there's that.