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

[Huitzilopochtli]

The EFI will not take up space on your primary partition. It could be snapshots that are taking up space or hibernation file.

See here on how to delete snapshots:
https://www.macworld.com/article/3260635/macs/how-to-delete-time-machine-snapshots-on-your-mac.html

To disable Hibernate:
Resource: [Guide] Native Power Management for Laptops | tonymacx86.com

*Direct quote from above guide:
"Be aware that hibernation (suspend to disk or S4 sleep) is not supported on hackintosh.

You should disable it:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0
sudo rm /var/vm/sleepimage
sudo mkdir /var/vm/sleepimage

Always check your hibernatemode after updates and disable it. System updates tend to re-enable it, although the trick above (making sleepimage a directory) tends to help.

And it may be a good idea to disable the other hibernation related options:"

sudo pmset -a standby 0
sudo pmset -a autopoweroff 0

If these don't clear up your disk space then it has to be some app/setting that you are using.

Don't know why you can't erase an SSD.

Do you have some purgeable space? Here I have 10GB ready to be purged

To do so, go in the Terminal and type this:

sudo tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 99000000000 4

Dothis until the purgeable space is close to 0.

It helped me recover almost 50GB last time I did that... Let me know if it fixes

Thank you very much for your reply. I managed to format and I have all the space available now. But I'll have an eye in it and let you know if the problem still persists.

Thanks again!

 

[jschaef250]

After waiting almost a month, my i9-9900K finally arrived!!

View attachment 366703 View attachment 366704

Based on all the reviews, I already made up my mind that I would be delidding this thing. I knew that if I didn't, it would always be in the back of mind and I would eventually end up doing it anyway. I contemplated sending it off to professionals to do it, but after waiting so long for this CPU to be shipped, I really didn't want to ship it off and wait for delivery again. Plus, I trust my own workmanship more than handing it off to someone else. So, I did it myself...

Kids, don't try this at home!! It took me about 3.5 hours and lots of liquid metal. Liquid metal is used to break down the solder and soften it up. After applying the liquid metal, we have to let it sit for approx 15 minutes before we wipe it off and try to work off as much of the solder as we can. We repeat this process until all the solder is gone. I lost count of how many times I had to reapply liquid metal, but I'm guessing about 8 times.

I think I did a pretty darn good job. You can see the reflection of my iPhone camera in the last picture.

View attachment 366705 View attachment 366706 View attachment 366707

I ordered a copper IHS which is due to arrive on Wednesday. I want to do everything possible to keep this thing as cool as possible.

As tempted as I am to install this thing, I don't want to have to redo it all again in 2 days, so no testing yet. I'll be updating this post with more details when the copper IHS arrives.


*Disclaimer: I don't recommend anyone do this!! In fact, I highly advise against doing this yourself. I take no responsibility if you try and ruin your CPU!!


Update Nov 21:

My Rockit Cool Copper IHS arrived. Here's the copper IHS and some very preliminary benchmark results:
View attachment 367124 View attachment 367125 View attachment 367126 View attachment 367127 View attachment 367128 View attachment 367018 View attachment 367019


Temperatures are very even across all cores at idle and full load:
View attachment 368755 View attachment 368756

Was the installation of the new cpu plug and play? besides for your delidding of course.
Did you have to update bios settings for the motherboard or change anything in clover?

 

[pastrychef]

Was the installation of the new cpu plug and play? besides for your delidding of course.
Did you have to update bios settings for the motherboard or change anything in clover?

You should update to the latest BIOS if you want to update to a 9th gen CPU. It contains the microcode for 9th gen support.

The config.plist needs one change to spoof 8th gen IGPU ig-platform-id.

That's all that needs to be done.

 

[jschaef250]

You should update to the latest BIOS if you want to update to a 9th gen CPU. It contains the microcode for 9th gen support.

The config.plist needs one change to spoof 8th gen IGPU ig-platform-id.

That's all that needs to be done.

Thank you for that information! I’m probably going to get a 9th gen soon.

 

[Azimuth1]

Hi @pastrychef ,

I have a configuration very similar to yours! ... the only thing is that my GA-VEGA 64 Gaming OC 8GB doesn't go out of the sleep correctly. One monitor is displaying something but it's barely seeable because it wakes up in a very dark dimmed mode and the main screen stays black... I have made the VegaTab_64.kext ... don't know where might be the culprit!

PS: I've already bought an i9-9900K, as I saw you spoof the ID of i7-8700K's UHD630 to have it loaded correctly, could you be so kind to post just the snippet of your config.plist related to this? I don't want to make any mistake copying from your jpeg... Thanks!

 

[pastrychef]

Hi @pastrychef ,

I have a configuration very similar to yours! ... the only thing is that my GA-VEGA 64 Gaming OC 8GB doesn't go out of the sleep correctly. One monitor is displaying something but it's barely seeable because it wakes up in a very dark dimmed mode and the main screen stays black... I have made the VegaTab_64.kext ... don't know where might be the culprit!

PS: I've already bought an i9-9900K, as I saw you spoof the ID of i7-8700K's UHD630 to have it loaded correctly, could you be so kind to post just the snippet of your config.plist related to this? I don't want to make any mistake copying from your jpeg... Thanks!

I'm not sure why your monitor is dimmed. Do you have WhateverGreen installed?

Here's the section of config.plist > Device > Properties to spoof 8th gen IGPU:

        <dict>
            <key>PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x2,0x0)</key>
            <dict>
                <key>AAPL,ig-platform-id</key>
                <data>
                AwCRPg==
                </data>
                <key>device-id</key>
                <data>
                kT4AAA==
                </data>
            </dict>
        </dict>

 

[Azimuth1]

I'm not sure why your monitor is dimmed. Do you have WhateverGreen installed?

thanks for the code!

Yes, WEG is installed, last version available. Do you have any darkwake value ON?

 

[pastrychef]

thanks for the code!

Yes, WEG is installed, last version available. Do you have any darkwake value ON?

No. I have darkwake just set at "darkwake".

 

[Lollopus]

I've just completed assembly of a variant of @pastrychef golden build. Mine differs in that I'm using the Z370-G Gaming non wifi version, a Sapphire RX570 pulse ITX and a Fenvi FV T919 wifi+bt PCIe card.

Given the hardware differences from his build I installed Mojave 10.14.2 following the official tonymacx86 procedure. As a first attempt in MultiBeast, I took a cautious approach and enabled a bare minimum of options (Cover UEFI Boot Mode, FakeSMC and plugins, iMac14,2). Installation was surprisingly smooth. The system seems stable and everything, including WiFi, appears to be working except:
. USB 3.x ports
. Bluetooth (may depend on fixing usb)
. Messages and Facetime
(Audio not tested)

The hard part for me starts now with fixing those remaining services, which is why I'm posting here.

While reading his instructions on how to fix USB, as well as related posts on other threads, I became very confused and have some extremely basic questions. I apologize in advance for asking questions at this level but any help would be greatly appreciated, at least to begin moving in the right direction...

1. Do I have an /EFI folder installed by MultiBeast, and, if so, where is it? Exactly what software should I install to tweak the USB ports? @pastrychef seems to be using Clover, but there's plenty of versions around and those linked on this site (/Downloads/Clover Builds) seem to be older versions than what he is using, and perhaps even unrelated. Unfortunately, the introductory guides for newbies like me just add more information without providing a birds eye view of how all these software packages interact with each other... so I'm not even sure if my question makes sense.

2. Looking at @snoopy69 's post #3002 showing the layout of USB ports on this motherboard it is stated that there are 21 USB ports and 6 must be excluded. However, I just can't find 21 in the drawing (I count only 14) and the official ASUS specs webpage mentions 6+6+2! I must be missing something very basic here...?

 

[pastrychef]

I've just completed assembly of a variant of @pastrychef golden build. Mine differs in that I'm using the Z370-G Gaming non wifi version, a Sapphire RX570 pulse ITX and a Fenvi FV T919 wifi+bt PCIe card.

Given the hardware differences from his build I installed Mojave 10.14.2 following the official TonyMacX procedure. As a first attempt in Multibeast I took a cautious approach and enabled a bare minimum of options (Cover UEFI Boot Mode, FakeSMC and plugins, iMac14,2). Installation was surprisingly smooth. The system seems stable and everything, including wifi, appears to be working except:
. USB 3.x ports
. Bluetooth (may depend on fixing usb)
. Messages and Facetime
(Audio not tested)

The hard part for me starts now with fixing those remaining services, which is why I'm posting here.

While reading his instructions on how to fix usb, as well as related posts on other threads, I became very confused and have some extremely basic questions. I apologize in advance for asking questions at this level but any help would be greatly appreciated, at least to begin moving in the right direction...

1. Do I have an /EFI folder installed by MultiBeast, and if so, where is it? Exactly what software should I install to tweak the usb ports? @pastrychef seems to be using Clover, but there's plenty of versions around and those linked on this site (/Downloads/Clover Builds) seem to be older versions than what he is using, and perhaps even unrelated. Unfortunately the introductory guides for newbies like me just add more information without providing a birds eye view of how all these software packages interact with each other... so I'm not even sure if my question makes sense.
2. Looking at @snoopy69 's post #3002 showing the layout of USB ports in this motherboard it is stated that there are 21 USB ports and 6 must be excluded. However, I just can't find 21 in the drawing (I count only 14) and the official ASUS specs webpage mentions 6+6+2! I must be missing something very basic here...?

Yes. MultiBeast just puts everything together and helps you install all the required stuff from one package. It still installs Clover. You still have an EFI folder. The end result is the same.
(*Note: MultiBeast installs hackintosh kexts to /Library/Extensions/. I keep mine in /EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other/.)

• The Z370 chipset provide 26 USB ports.
• Most motherboards do not use all 26, but macOS will see all 26 with the use of USBInjectAll and 15 port limit patches.
• However, macOS only utilizes and expects 15 ports.
• Therefore, we have to bring the total port count from 26 down to 15 and tell macOS which 15 of the 26 are active.
• There are multiple methods to achieve this. The method I use is to first define all the ports, then use a "flag" in config.plist to exclude 11 ports to bring the total down to 15.
• A USB 3 port counts as two ports because it has (1) a USB 3 port and (2) a USB 2 port.
• The USB 3.1 gen 2 ports are not counted towards the 15 ports on Z370 because they are not from the Z370 chipset.

Even though you have the non-Wi-Fi version of this motherboard, you still could have used my EFI folder. You can also use my USB SSDT file.