pastrychef's build - Asus Maximus VIII Gene - i7-7700K - GTX 1080

[pastrychef]

I applied an Apple security update last week and since then I had some problems with unresponsiveness (spinning beach balls).
I cleaned up some user permission issues, but yesterday and today the system wouldn't wake from sleep, the display staying dark with lots of disk activity. The Q-Code both times was 30, which indicates entering or waking from the S3 sleep state, I understand.

I think it would be worthwhile to try doing power management with ssdtPRGen.sh. The log showed no errors, though there was a warning about the 'cpu-type may be set improperly (0x0605 instead of 0x0905)'. Can I assume that it used the correct value? I'd like to try the ssdt if it's OK. I've attached a copy of the terminal log for the compilation. I'd be grateful for your advice.

The log looks fine. I just didn't recognize iMac18,3 which doesn't really matter.

 

[WedgeTail]

The log looks fine. I just didn't recognize iMac18,3 which doesn't really matter.

Thanks, Pastrychef. Used Recovery disk to reinstall 10.12.6, waking fixed, still beach balling but not in Guest user, so a process of elimination showed Microsoft OneDrive was a cause. I shut that down and everything's fine so far, touch wood. Very quick boots and app loads.
Merry Christmas and a great New Year!

 

[pastrychef]

I upgraded to an i7-8700K and Strix Z370-G motherboard. Fortunately, I found a nice home for my old i7-7700K and Z170 Gene.

A fashion/accessories/jewelry designer friend had been having all sorts of troubles with the 2017 MacBook Pro and ended up exchanging 3 of them due to graphics issues before giving up and taking my HP Elite 8300 on loan to get her work done. After living with the Elite 8300 for about a month, she was convinced that a hackintosh could fit her needs. As fate would have it, I had been having dreams of the i7-8700K. Fast forward about two months later and this is what I've put together for her...



Essentially, it's a more compact version of what I had been running for about the last 1.5 years. Here are the components used to put it all together:

Cerberus Case
Cerberus — Kimera Industries

Corsair SF600 600W 80 Plus Gold SFX Power Supply
CORSAIR SF Series SF600 600W 80 PLUS GOLD Active PFC Haswell Ready SFX SFX12V Micro ATX Full Modular Power Supply - Newegg.com

32GB G. Skill Ripjaws RAM
G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 2666 (PC4 21300) Intel Z170 Platform Desktop Memory Model F4-2666C15D-32GVR - Newegg.com

Samsung 960 EVO 500GB M.2 NVMe SSD
SAMSUNG 960 EVO M.2 500GB NVMe PCI-Express 3.0 x4 Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-V6E500BW - Newegg.com

Noctua NH-D9L Cooler
Noctua NH-D9L 92mm SSO2 Low-profile Premium CPU Cooler, NF-A9 PWM Fans - Newegg.com

Noctua NF-F12 Fan
Noctua NF-F12 PWM 120mm Case Fan - Newegg.com

Noctua NF-A9X14 Fan
Noctua A-Series NF-A9x14 92mm Blades with AAO Frame, SSO2 Bearing Premium PWM Low-profile Fan - Newegg.com

Dell OEM GT 640

The Build and Design Choices
The very tight confines and lack of any documentation or labels for which screws were meant to be use where made the Cerberus case a pain to work with. It was impossible to do any sort of cable management especially with the ribbon type power cables. I did as best as I could to situate the cables in the front portion of the case to leave the motherboard as unobstructed as possible.

Just about all her work is done in Illustrator and Photoshop. Both of which are not very GPU dependent. So, I asked her to try running with a GT 640 for now to see if it satisfies her needs. If/when she decides she needs more GPU horsepower, I will install a Radeon RX 580 for her. The reason why I've decided to go with these two choices is due to native driver support in macOS. I want to put together a system that's as fool proof as possible in regards to future software updates.

We decided on 32GB of RAM because she found that she was experiencing to much memory paging with just 16GB on her MacBook Pro.

I decided on using a Samsung 960 EVO NVMe SSD since it's one of the best performing consumer SSDs currently available. A second Crucial 960GB SSD was installed to be used as a scratch disk for work in progress files.

I decided to go with all Noctua fans and heatsink based on the fantastic experiences I've had in my personal build. I am utterly convinced that they are the absolute best.

We went with a Corsair 600W SFX power supply for its size and the Corsair reputation. I would have gone with a Seasonic but did not see a suitable SFX power supply from them. The Corsair is semi-passive meaning that the fan does not go on until the system is under load. This coupled with the Noctua pieces has yielded a system that is inaudible to either of us in normal use.

 

[WedgeTail]

Something weird this evening! I'd used the system a few hours ago, and I haven't had any problems recently. When I came back, it was showing the BIOS setup page. Checking the settings, no boot volumes were enabled in the boot priority list. I definitely hadn't done anything with the BIOS. I re-enabled my boot priority list and it's running as if nothing had happened.

Is this likely to indicate a mobo or BIOS problem?

 

[pastrychef]

Something weird this evening! I'd used the system a few hours ago, and I haven't had any problems recently. When I came back, it was showing the BIOS setup page. Checking the settings, no boot volumes were enabled in the boot priority list. I definitely hadn't done anything with the BIOS. I re-enabled my boot priority list and it's running as if nothing had happened.

Is this likely to indicate a mobo or BIOS problem?

I don't know. I've never had that happen before. I guess you should monitor temperatures to make sure the system is not overheating.

 

[WedgeTail]

I read an article on Tom's Hardware
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/motherboard-vendors-release-bios-updates-spectre,36316.html

about motherboard vendors releasing BIOS updates for Spectre. It said Asus was the first to address the issue. At this link:
https://www.asus.com/News/V5urzYAT6myCC1o2
they have a table of BIOS updates by chipset and motherboard. For the Maximus VIII Gene it gives the BIOS version as 3703.

However at
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/MAXIMUS-VIII-GENE/HelpDesk_BIOS/
the latest entry, after version 3504, only shows:

Version - 2017/11/22 3.71 MBytes
MEUpdateTool
Intel has identified security issue that could potentially place impacted platform at risk. Use ME Update tool to update your ME.

*We suggest you update ME Driver to the latest Version 11.7.0.1040 simultaneously.

So, no version 3703 yet and I find the text about the ME update tool confusing. The last line suggest updating the ME Driver simultaneously -- where is that tool? In the folder that downloads there is an MEUpdateTool.exe, and also a folder labeled 'driver'. I guess it's in there. Pity they don't supply an instruction file.

Anyway, my question is, should we run the update tool (in Windows)? And I guess the BIOS 3703 isn't ready yet.

BTW, in the Asus table, all the ROG motherboards use BIOS 3703. But none of them seem to have 3703 available yet.

 

[pastrychef]

I think that MEUpdateTool thing was to address some other issue. I think I saw that way before this Meltdown and Specter stuff. I never bothered with that unless Windows auto update installed it...

Nothing we can do about the BIOS release dates. Just have to wait for them to drop.

 

[WedgeTail]

I think that MEUpdateTool thing was to address some other issue. I think I saw that way before this Meltdown and Specter stuff. I never bothered with that unless Windows auto update installed it...

Nothing we can do about the BIOS release dates. Just have to wait for them to drop.

OK, I had left my browser open on the Asus BIOS page and version 3703 became available. The description says:
****

Version 3703 2018/01/12. 9.29 MBytes
MAXIMUS VIII EXTREME BIOS 3703. (this was copied subsequently -- the version I downloaded was for Gene)
Fixed SAMSUNG M.2 device issue.
Fixed SanDisk M.2 device issue.
Fixed AMD RADEON SSD device issue.
Improved DRAM compatibility.
Fixed SteelSeries keyboard issue.

Updated Intel CPU microcode.
Update ME version to 11.8.50.3399
*
please back your Bitlocker recovery key and suspend Bitlocker encryption in the operating system befor updathe your BIOS or ME Firmware

If upgrading directly from BIOS ver. 3504 or lower, this will also update the ME code. Power loss during the ME Code update will cause the board to be unbootable.​

****
I've installed it and all is well so far.

 

[Olivier75009]

I've installed it and all is well so far.

I also update to BIOS 3703, and all is fine. BTW, I thought BIOS update would not update ME firmware as it is locked and have to be unlocked from within Windows with MEUpdate tool.
Could you confirm your ME firmware has been updated ? And how do you check from within bios the ME version ? (I only can read ME (...) version : 0.0.0.0

 

[WedgeTail]

I also update to biBIOos 3703, and all is fine. BTW, I thought BIOS update would not update ME firmware as it is locked and have to be unlocked from within Windows with MEUpdate tool.
Could you confirm your ME firmware has been updated ? And how do you check from within bios the ME version ? (I only can read ME (...) version : 0.0.0.0

Hi - my BIOS says the same as yours. I don't know much about the ME update process, and I think I'll wait until some of the experts post some advice somewhere on Tonymac..