Raid and many other questions about my new build

[ci2own]

Hi all!

Finally i decided to build a new hackintosh for the next years. And i followed the advice of @djlild7hina with some of the parts (Many thanks!)

Case: Phanteks Enthoo Primo (Is very hard to find a Case for the EKWB x360 Cooler Kit)
Motherboard: Asus WS x299 Sage 10g
CPU: Intel i9-9980XE
GPU: Gigabyte Radeon VII
RAM: 8x16GB DDR4 Crucial Ballistix
PSU: Corsair AX1200i
Liquid Cooler: EKWB EK-Kit X360 + EKWB EK-Vector Radeon VII Copper + Acetal + Backplate
SSD: 2 x Samsung 970 Pro 512Gb NVME M.2
HDD: 2 x HGST Ultrastar 10TB
Monitor: 2 x Benq PD2700U
WLAN/Bluetooth: Broadco BCM94331CD

The plan is to do a RAID 0 with the 2 SSDs and another RAID 0 with other two HDDs. and i have a few questions with this build:

1.- Should i do the raids by hardware on the Motherboard bios? or is better to create a Fusion Drive from Mac for each Raid?
2.- I've heard i have to flash the 10gbit ethernet of the mobo from linux. Can it be done from a knoppix (Live Distro)? or do i have to install linux locally?
3.- Is there any recommended installation for the GPU and WLAN PCI Card? I don't need thunderbolt at the moment, so i don't plan to buy a Gigabyte GC-Titan Ridge card.
4.- I've seen the github folder of @kpg and i would like to know if i can use those SSDTs related to my mobo or i should change something before add them to my setup.

Sorry if i ask already answered questions but the kpg post is huge and i'm newbie with this kinds of setups.

Thanks in advance!

 

[jaymonkey]

@ci2own,

1. You cant use a motherboard's built-in hardware RAID ... it is not supported in MacOS as there are no drivers.
MacOS has built in APFS and HFS+ software raid which works very well and is only fractionally slower than HW RAID.
If you absolutely must have hardware raid you will have to buy a PCIe RAID controller that is supported by MacOS,
Be sure to do your research on this as MacOS has a habit of dropping support for HW RAID in each new version.

I've been running MacOS software RAID for years with no issues

Avoid using a fusion drive (HDD + SDD) ... it can be problematic on hackintosh systems.

2. I can't help you with your 10gbit ethernet question , i don't use it.

3. Radeon VII works well on MacOS, just install Lilu + WhatEverGreen and you should be fine, WiFi+BT PCIe card should also be no issue for you as long as you use a supported card (see buyers guide) and install the required kexts.

4. @KPG guide(s) on building a High End X299 based Hackintosh system are very detailed, be sure to read and understand the methods and apply them to your motherboard. Just be ready to invest a lot of time into a X299 build, whist it can result in a very powerful system they require much more work and debugging to get fully working than a system based on Desktop (non HE) motherboards and CPU's.

Cheers
Jay

 

[ci2own]

@ci2own,

1. You cant use a motherboard's built-in hardware RAID ... it is not supported in MacOS as there are no drivers.
MacOS has built in APFS and HFS+ software raid which works very well and is only fractionally slower than HW RAID.
If you absolutely must have hardware raid you will have to buy a PCIe RAID controller that is supported by MacOS,
Be sure to do your research on this as MacOS has a habit of dropping support for HW RAID in each new version.

I've been running MacOS software RAID for years with no issues

Avoid using a fusion drive (HDD + SDD) ... it can be problematic on hackintosh systems.

2. I can't help you with your 10gbit ethernet question , i don't use it.

3. Radeon VII works well on MacOS, just install Lilu + WhatEverGreen and you should be fine, WiFi+BT PCIe card should also be no issue for you as long as you use a supported card (see buyers guide) and install the required kexts.

4. @KPG guide(s) on building a High End X299 based Hackintosh system are very detailed, be sure to read and understand the methods and apply them to your motherboard. Just be ready to invest a lot of time into a X299 build, whist it can result in a very powerful system they require much more work and debugging to get fully working than a system based on Desktop (non HE) motherboards and CPU's.

Cheers
Jay

I’ll do two separated fusion drives: one with ssds and other with hdds.

And i’ll check all you said about the rest.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Shiitaki]

I’ll do two separated fusion drives: one with ssds and other with hdds.

And i’ll check all you said about the rest.

Thanks for your help! ☺

You can't use motherboard raid, it's software based. However, you can make RAID using Apple's software RAID, but I would not do this for the boot drive. Buy a fast NVMe drive to install the OS to, don't install a RAID. It's a special kind hell you don't want to deal with. APFS and Apple software RAID is bad news.

You can also install OpenZFS for macOS, which brings some pretty cool stuff if you need to store a lot of data, but you can't boot from it.

Install - OpenZFS on OS X

openzfsonosx.org

I also wouldn't recommend a fusion drive, large SSDs and NVMe drivers are just too cheap, 109 dollars on Amazon for a Sabrent NVMe. When I used Fusion I had to go through a lot of pain to update Clover or change other things. The performance was not consistent either.

 

[ci2own]

You can't use motherboard raid, it's software based. However, you can make RAID using Apple's software RAID, but I would not do this for the boot drive. Buy a fast NVMe drive to install the OS to, don't install a RAID. It's a special kind hell you don't want to deal with. APFS and Apple software RAID is bad news.

You can also install OpenZFS for macOS, which brings some pretty cool stuff if you need to store a lot of data, but you can't boot from it.

Install - OpenZFS on OS X

openzfsonosx.org

I also wouldn't recommend a fusion drive, large SSDs and NVMe drivers are just too cheap, 109 dollars on Amazon for a Sabrent NVMe. When I used Fusion I had to go through a lot of pain to update Clover or change other things. The performance was not consistent either.

Thanks for your response!

I bought 2 fast NVME Samsung 970 512GB each to make a 1TB Raid 0. I used to have a fusion drive as a boot disk so i think i know what you're talking about with the problems with clover. Anyway, 512GB is enough for me for the system and the apps. If my 1TB Raid 0 gives me problems, i just use one of those.

for the Home i will do a raid with the two HDDs and will keep it separated from the macOS Installation disk. It's easy to update or reinstall if something bad happens.

I also take a look at OpenZFS. Many thanks!

 

[jaymonkey]

I bought 2 fast NVME Samsung 970 512GB each to make a 1TB Raid 0. I used to have a fusion drive as a boot disk so i think i know what you're talking about with the problems with clover. Anyway, 512GB is enough for me for the system and the apps. If my 1TB Raid 0 gives me problems, i just use one of those.

@ci2own,

I think you are confusing a Fusion Drive with a Software Raid on MacOS.

A MacOS Fusion Drive is made up of a SSD + HDD ... IE: It is a fusion of two drives.
The SSD is used as a cache drive for the HDD.

MacOS Fusion Drives work well on genuine Macs but can be troublesome on Hackintosh systems.

A MacOS Software Raid is made up of two or more SSD's or HDD's
Common modes for a Software Raid are mode 0 (Stripe) and mode 1 (Mirror)

MacOS Software Raid works well on Hackintosh systems.

While it is possible to boot from a MacOS Software RAID, it does come with a few caveats with regards to the EFI partitions. It's is easer to boot Clover from a non RAID member drive such as the EFI partition of a HDD data drive.

Cheers
Jay

 

[ci2own]

@ci2own,

I think you are confusing a Fusion Drive with a Software Raid on MacOS.

A MacOS Fusion Drive is made up of a SSD + HDD ... IE: It is a fusion of two drives.
The SSD is used as a cache drive for the HDD.

MacOS Fusion Drives work well on genuine Macs but can be troublesome on Hackintosh systems.

A MacOS Software Raid is made up of two or more SSD's or HDD's
Common modes for a Software Raid are mode 0 (Stripe) and mode 1 (Mirror)

MacOS Software Raid works well on Hackintosh systems.

While it is possible to boot from a MacOS Software RAID, it does come with a few caveats with regards to the EFI partitions. It's is easer to boot Clover from a non RAID member drive such as the EFI partition of a HDD data drive.

Cheers
Jay

OK! I understand it!

I was confused and mixing both terms (Fusion Drive and Raid).

So, is there any benefit of doing a Fusion Drive of two SSDs (2x512GB NVME) and other Fusion Drive of two HDDs (2x10TB Sata) a part of see just 2 drives instead of 4 in terms of speed?

 

[jaymonkey]

I was confused and mixing both terms (Fusion Drive and Raid).

So, is there any benefit of doing a Fusion Drive of two SSDs (2x512GB NVME) and other Fusion Drive of two HDDs (2x10TB Sata) a part of see just 2 drives instead of 4 in terms of speed?

@ci2own,

A Fusion drive combines the speed of a SSD with the large storage capacity of a HDD. It uses an advanced algorithm to pre-fetch data from the HDD to the SSD where it can be accessed quicker than directly accessing the HDD.

Fusion Drivers became popular around five years ago when SSD where only available in small sizes and where expensive.

There really is no need for a Fusion Drives these days, it should now be considered a stop gap technology.
It had it's time when it was useful but times have moved on.

These days NVMe and SATA SSD's are available in multi-terabyte sizes, at a cost that almost matches spinning rust and are many more times faster than a Fusion Drive.

Cheers
Jay

 

[ci2own]

@ci2own,

A Fusion drive combines the speed of a SSD with the large storage capacity of a HDD. It uses an advanced algorithm to pre-fetch data from the HDD to the SSD where it can be accessed quicker than directly accessing the HDD.

Fusion Drivers became popular around five years ago when SSD where only available in small sizes and where expensive.

There really is no need for a Fusion Drives these days, it should now be considered a stop gap technology.
It had it's time when it was useful but times have moved on.

These days NVMe and SATA SSD's are available in multi-terabyte sizes, at a cost that almost matches spinning rust and are many more times faster than a Fusion Drive.

Cheers
Jay

Thanks for the clarification @jaymonkey!

I will finally change my two 512GB for 1TB NVME Drive for the system installation and programs. But for my Mac Home i still need the use os HDDs due to my huge iTunes and Photos Library (About 4TB together).

 

[jaymonkey]

I will finally change my two 512GB for 1TB NVME Drive for the system installation and programs. But for my Mac Home i still need the use os HDDs due to my huge iTunes and Photos Library (About 4TB together).

@ci2own,

Thats pretty much how most people (including myself) setup their systems.
A decent sized NVMe for the system drive and one or more large HDD(s) for data/user files.

I have the following in my main dev system (MonkeyMac Pro in sig) ....

1 x Samsung 512GB NVMe for MacOS
1 x Samsung 256GB NVMe for Windows 10 (not used that much TBH)
1 x 1TB HDD, NTFS formatted and used as a shared DATA drive between MacOS (with Tuxera) and Windows
1 x 2TB HDD, NTFS for Windows 10 data/User Files
1 x 4TB HDD HFS+ formatted for MacOS Data/User Files
1 x 1TB HDD HFS+ formatted for MacOS Backups and Archives

I have a second Hackintosh system running on my LAN which is used as a Data & Media server (MonkeyMedia MAC in sig), that system uses a 64GB SSD as the System drive and two 6TB HDD's running in RAID 1 (mirror) using MacOS Software RAID. I've been running MacOS RAID 1 on that system for over six years (with gradual increases in storage capacity) and it has never failed on me

Cheers
Jay