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

[pastrychef]

For the last 2-3 months, I had my i9-9900K and my Radeon VII in my Gigabyte Z390 M Gaming motherboard and it was my primary system. I tried to live with lack of NVRAM. I tried to like the better VRM. I tried to fix the weird RAM issues I was having (for over 3 weeks). I really, really tried to like this motherboard.

Las night, I threw in the towel and spent over 5 hours reverting back to my beloved Asus ROG Z370-G Gaming. It feels so good to have everything working again.

My experiences with the Gigabyte Z390:

• Overclocking the CPU was good. I got a stable 5GHz on 1.275v with LLC 6. On my Asus Z370, I need 1.320v on LLC 5.
• RAM on my Z390 was completely screwed up with BIOS F8 (currently newest). My RAM, which is on Gigabyte's QVL list, would not run at its XMP profile stably at all. I constantly had random freezes. I tried to adjust timings and lower the clocks and could not get the system stable until I lowered RAM speed to 3066MHz. That's 333MHz below the advertised speed of 3400MHz and brought my GeekBench scores from about 9700+ down to about 8800+!!
• The excessive freezes allowed me to fully test the booting consistency on this Z390 motherboard. On OpenCore with IGPU disabled, it boots 100% consistently. On Clover, with or without IGPU enabled, the best I could ever get it to do was boot about 80% of the time.
• There's no way to get the CNVi slot to work with any Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card other than an Intel CNVi card.
• Thunderbolt worked well for me. I didn't experience any problems with it.
• My Syba 10GBase-T PCI-e card never worked in the Z390.
• System stability was better with BIOS F7, but booting was more consistent with BIOS F8.
• One SATA port is disabled if the second NVMe slot is used. This was not noted on the specs page on Gigabyte's website.
• Having Wi-Fi/Bluetooth on a PCI-e card doesn't work quite as well as when having it on the motherboard M.2 slot. When it's on a PCI-e card, it takes multiple clicks of my Magic Mouse 2 before the system fully wakes and the mouse is actually active.

Getting the Z390 motherboard working semi-correctly with macOS involved so much more work than on my Z370. I really spent more time troubleshooting and fixing than using the system. I had to change the hidden CFG Lock setting in BIOS with each BIOS update. On the Asus, CFG Lock was disabled from the factory.

What did I lose by reverting from Z390 to Z370? Thunderbolt. But the only reason why I installed Thunderbolt was because my 10GBase-T card didn't work on the Z390 and I had to use a 10GBase-T to Thunderbolt adaptor instead. Other than that, I lost nothing and regained 100% stability and considerably better performance because my RAM can run at its XMP speeds.

So, I reaffirm my stance that, from a hackintosh perspective, Z370 is MUCH better than Z390. Any of you guys who are currently on Z370 and are considering Z390, just don't do it!


Btw, my Radeon VII suddenly decided to wake properly when installed on my Asus Z370-G! Why? I have no freakin' idea why...

 

[mm2margaret]

Nice article. What I can say, or rather add, is that the Asus Z370-A supports Thunderbolt, and a lot of the Z370 Gigabyte boards support Thunderbolt as well (if you need it). Sounds like you don't need it, but in case others might, I think its worth mentioning that many Z370 boards do support it.

 

[zipb]

To put this in perspective: I have had very good luck with my Z390 Designare rig. There may be no native NVRAM but it was/is quite easy to install/upgrade/tweak/use. Best Hack I've had. Even sleep works. Well, sometimes. Thunderbolt is usable (hot swap for my devices).
There are lots of other Designare users guided by the mighty CaseySJ... So lots of info.
IMO, a fine choice for a hack mobo.

 

[bluepr0]

For the last 2-3 months, I had my i9-9900K and my Radeon VII in my Gigabyte Z390 M Gaming motherboard and it was my primary system. I tried to live with lack of NVRAM. I tried to like the better VRM. I tried to fix the weird RAM issues I was having (for over 3 weeks). I really, really tried to like this motherboard.

Las night, I threw in the towel and spent over 5 hours reverting back to my beloved Asus ROG Z370-G Gaming. It feels so good to have everything working again.

My experiences with the Gigabyte Z390:

• Overclocking the CPU was good. I got a stable 5GHz on 1.275v with LLC 6. On my Asus Z370, I need 1.320v on LLC 5.
• RAM on my Z390 was completely screwed up with BIOS F8 (currently newest). My RAM, which is on Gigabyte's QVL list, would not run at its XMP profile stably at all. I constantly had random freezes. I tried to adjust timings and lower the clocks and could not get the system stable until I lowered RAM speed to 3066MHz. That's 333MHz below the advertised speed of 3400MHz and brought my GeekBench scores from about 9700+ down to about 8800+!!
• The excessive freezes allowed me to fully test the booting consistency on this Z390 motherboard. On OpenCore with IGPU disabled, it boots 100% consistently. On Clover, with or without IGPU enabled, the best I could ever get it to do was boot about 80% of the time.
• There's no way to get the CNVi slot to work with any Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card other than an Intel CNVi card.
• Thunderbolt worked well for me. I didn't experience any problems with it.
• My Syba 10GBase-T PCI-e card never worked in the Z390.
• System stability was better with BIOS F7, but booting was more consistent with BIOS F8.
• One SATA port is disabled if the second NVMe slot is used. This was not noted on the specs page on Gigabyte's website.
• Having Wi-Fi/Bluetooth on a PCI-e card doesn't work quite as well as when having it on the motherboard M.2 slot. When it's on a PCI-e card, it takes multiple clicks of my Magic Mouse 2 before the system fully wakes and the mouse is actually active.

Getting the Z390 motherboard working semi-correctly with macOS involved so much more work than on my Z370. I really spent more time troubleshooting and fixing than using the system. I had to change the hidden CFG Lock setting in BIOS with each BIOS update. On the Asus, CFG Lock was disabled from the factory.

What did I lose by reverting from Z390 to Z370? Thunderbolt. But the only reason why I installed Thunderbolt was because my 10GBase-T card didn't work on the Z390 and I had to use a 10GBase-T to Thunderbolt adaptor instead. Other than that, I lost nothing and regained 100% stability and considerably better performance because my RAM can run at its XMP speeds.

So, I reaffirm my stance that, from a hackintosh perspective, Z370 is MUCH better than Z390. Any of you guys who are currently on Z370 and are considering Z390, just don't do it!

Exactly my thoughts. When I first bought the Gigabyte Aorus Z390 Pro Wifi, it worked but not reliable enough to use the machine for work related tasks. I ended up returning it. I'm super happy with my Asus Prime Z370-A II, and I went with that one because it has Thunderbolt 3 Header so you can hook up an Alpine/Titan Ridge there (in my case to make the LG 5K work at real 5K).

Thanks for all your work @pastrychef

 

[pastrychef]

To put this in perspective: I have had very good luck with my Z390 Designare rig. There may be no native NVRAM but it was/is quite easy to install/upgrade/tweak/use. Best Hack I've had. Even sleep works. Well, sometimes. Thunderbolt is usable (hot swap for my devices).
There are lots of other Designare users guided by the mighty CaseySJ... So lots of info.
IMO, a fine choice for a hack mobo.

Which Aptio fix are you using? I was never able to get any of the Aptio fixes to boot consistently with Clover except OsxAptioFix2-free2000.efi. But, as we all know, that Aptio fix should not be used.

Sleep worked fine for me. Thunderbolt worked even with hot plugging.

RAM was a big problem for me. After doing a bit of research, I found that I'm not the only one to have RAM issues on Gigabyte.

The Designare might be a fine motherboard, but there's better. Namely, those with NVRAM support.

 

[mkammes]

PastryChef: Have you dual-booted this system (adding a Windows 10 partition to the same m.2 as the Mac OS)? Any special considerations?

 

[pastrychef]

PastryChef: Have you dual-booted this system (adding a Windows 10 partition to the same m.2 as the Mac OS)? Any special considerations?

Yes, I dual boot, but I have Windows 10 on a separate drive and I highly recommend that you use a separate drive as well. Windows updates often messes with the EFI partition and that can be trouble for hackintosh users.

When installing Windows on a separate drive, just install as you would on any PC. Just install using UEFI method.

Make a backup of your EFI Folder in case the installer messes with it during the install!!! Put your EFI Folder on the EFI partition of a USB flash drive in case you need to boot from it.

 

[zipb]

Which Aptio fix are you using? I was never able to get any of the Aptio fixes to boot consistently with Clover except OsxAptioFix2-free2000.efi. But, as we all know, that Aptio fix should not be used.

I used OsxAptioFix2-free2000.efi first, without ill effect. I've switched to OcQuirks.efi & FWruntimeservices a couple of weeks ago, with a new version of Clover. Zero problems.

What is weird though, if I use overclocked RAM my external drives will not eject properly on sleep. Default speeds fix this? Don't get this at all.
My Geekbench score loses maybe 2%, so clocking RAM down is not much of a performance loss.

A hack is always a compromise of sorts, but I am happy with mine. No weird crashes or boot problems. Can be used when faced with clients and/or deadlines.

Also works well with Windows 10, BTW.

 

[pastrychef]

I used OsxAptioFix2-free2000.efi first, without ill effect. I've switched to OcQuirks.efi & FWruntimeservices a couple of weeks ago, with a new version of Clover. Zero problems.

What is weird though, if I use overclocked RAM my external drives will not eject properly on sleep. Default speeds fix this? Don't get this at all.
My Geekbench score loses maybe 2%, so clocking RAM down is not much of a performance loss.

A hack is always a compromise of sorts, but I am happy with mine. No weird crashes or boot problems. Can be used when faced with clients and/or deadlines.

Also works well with Windows 10, BTW.

Yeah, I tried OcQuirks + FWruntimeServices too. This is what gave me about 80% booting consistency on Clover.

Yeah, it appears that Gigabyte motherboards don't handle high RAM speeds well at all. I spent so much time trying to get my 3400MHz RAM to work even close to it's advertised speed and was not able to. The same RAM runs at 3466MHz without issues on my Asus Z370 motherboard. Extremely frustrating.

For me, Z370 is extremely stable and Z390 was not even close.

 

[mm2margaret]

Yeah, I tried OcQuirks + FWruntimeServices too. This is what gave me about 80% booting consistency on Clover.

Yeah, it appears that Gigabyte motherboards don't handle high RAM speeds well at all. I spent so much time trying to get my 3400MHz RAM to work even close to it's advertised speed and was not able to. The same RAM runs at 3466MHz without issues on my Asus Z370 motherboard. Extremely frustrating.

For me, Z370 is extremely stable and Z390 was not even close.

Well, not to be too contradictory, I have been using OCquirks and FwRuntimeServices on my X299 system and I used to have, with AptioMemoryFix, every once in a while, a boot failure. Annoying, but a quick reset and it booted the next go round. In the three or four weeks I've been using OC and FwRun, no boot failures at all...never....so go figure. Boots about 1-2 seconds faster, too.

Was that 80% issue booting on your Z390 or Z370 or both? Just curious.....I have to say I am so glad I never went down the Z390 road with my Z370 system....my Z370 system has been rock solid (much more so than the X299 systems I've worked on, although they've been okay), and so stable.....