[SUCCESS] Asus Maximus Hero VII, i7-4970K, GeForce GTX 980ti

[JonnyC]

Guide for Yosemite 10.10.3 (June 16, 2015)

Working: Networking, Graphics. If you are having mad difficulties getting your nVidia web drivers (GTX 9XX series for example) to work then read on. I found a solution!
Not Working: On-board Audio, power management (did not attempt, don't need it)

Built this system with 3 things in mind: kick-ass gaming rig (windows) and kick ass graphics workstation (OS X). Third, I'm future-proofing this build to handle virtual reality. Oculus Rift... I'm looking at you...
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Hardware:
mobo: Asus Maximus Hero VII
CPU: i7-4970K @ 4.8Ghz (water-cooling with Corsair H100i)
MEMORY: 32GB G.Skill Ares 1866mhz
Graphics: x2 GeForce EVGA GTX 980ti (SLI)
SoundCard: Andrea PureAudio USB
Networking: TP-Link TL-WDN4800 (works OOB. FAST. LOVE IT)
Bluetooth: IOGear GBU521 R adapter
PSU: EVGA Supernova 1000W Platinum
Case: ThermalTake Chaser Full Tower, 2x extra 200mm CoolerMaster Fans
OSX OS: Samsung 850 Pro 512GB
Windows OS: Samsung 850 Pro 256GB
Other: x3 120GB Samsung EVO CACHE drives
Games drive: corsair 256GB ssd
Photo editing drive: mushkin 120gb ssd
Storage: WD Green 6TB
Optical Media: Samsung BD Writer SE-506, USB, 3D Blu-ray support (w/ Cyberlink PowerDVD for Windows)
Speakers: Creative GigaWorks T40 II 32W RMS 2.0 Speakers with Altec Lansing subwoofer
Headphones: Sony MDR-7506 studio headphones
UPS: APC XS-1300 Battery

Windows Display: Asus VG248QE 144mhz
Mac Primary Display: 32" Acer B6 4K IPS
Mac secondary display: Apple Cinema Display 27" w/ startech displayport2minidisplayport adapter

Mac Extras: Bluetooth keyboard, Bluetooth magic mouse, apple trackpad, LMP wireless numeric keypad
Windows Extras: nVidia Vision 2.0 Glasses, Logitech G710+ gaming keyboard, Logitech G430 7.1 Gaming Headset, Logitech Proteus Core Gaming Mouse, MS XBOX1 wired controller, Logitech G27 Racing Wheel, Thrustermaster Gaming T.Flight Hotas Stick
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Most people with this motherboard had a fairly straight forward time and mostly battled the whole Audio/Network problem. Audio just never worked for me. Plus I really didn't care because I like clean audio and I get better sounding audio through the Andrea Pure USB sound card. My issue was getting the nVidia web drivers to work. Took two days to find the proper flag to boot with working graphics drivers. Here's my guide.

- Disable Network/LAN setting in the BIOS.
- Remove any extra/unecessary HDD/SSD drives. Take out all memory sticks except for one. Take out nVidia graphics card, plug DVI cable into motherboard Intel Integrated Graphics.
- Boot USB/Chimera , no flags.
- Before running installation, create fresh partition, install.
- After install, reboot with USB, Flags: "PCIRootUID=1 GraphicsEnabler=Yes"
- Open MultiBeast (Yosemite 7.3.0 Edition), Load the following settings:

Drivers -> Disk -> 3rd Party SATA
Drivers -> Misc -> FakeSMC v6.14.1364
Bootloaders -> Chimera v3.0.1
Customize -> Boot Options -> Basic Boot Options
Customize -> System Definition -> Mac Pro -> MacPro 3.1
Customize -> Themes -> tonymacx86 Black​

-Restart (boot with safemode, -x, if yosemite doesn't start up)
-Install latest nVidia Web Drivers (presently 346.01.02f04)
-Restart. If Yosemite hangs at startup, try starting up in verbose mode (-v). If it hangs at IOBluetoothHCIController which it did for me, start up with the flags, "kext-dev-mode=1 UseKernelCache=Yes". If those flags helped then nsert it permanently in your etc/chameleon.boot.plist file. Also make sure that you have GraphicsEnabler=No and IGPEnabler=Yes.
-At the desktop, open MultiBeast, install your network driver. (drivers -> Network -> AppleIntelE1000e 3.0.4.1a)
-Reboot into BIOS, re-enable Network/LAN setting.
-DONE.

With a 144mhz display, OS X has never looked better. The 980ti makes everything silky smooth. Love it far better than my previous GTX 970. Windows has a lot going for it in the gaming department. It's been pulling me away from OS X more and more these days. Still love the Apple ecosystem though so this build will serve me well professionally for the next 5 years at least!

Once again, I could not get audio to work. That's fine by me as I use the Andrea PureAudio USB adapter which actually has superior sound quality compared to onboard audio solutions. (something that is easy to detect with a pair of headphones). Others have reported getting audio working so I would suggest using the following guide for that: http://www.tonymacx86.com/yosemite-...-vii-hero-i5-4690k-asus-nvidia-gtx-660-a.html

 

[london2012]

Guide for Yosemite 10.10.3 (June 16, 2015)
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I followed your guide in quote , and i only got half Graphics memory of GTX980ti which is "Unknown 2989 MB" but GeForce EVGA GTX 980ti has 6G memory, could you please tell me how to do it right?

Thanks !

 

[JonnyC]

I had he same graphics memory issue at one point. I'm no expert on these matters but it may refer to your graphicsenabler or gpienabler setting. What are they set at? If correct it will report the whole six thousand mb of memory but still refers to the card model as unknown. (Perhaps because the card is so new and the drivers need updating?)

I am not at my computer right now but if my memory serves me correctly i had graphicsenabler set to no and igpenabler set to yes

 

[london2012]

thanks for your reply , let me try them and tell you the new result.

by the way my audio fully working by VersioMultiBeast 7.3 , maybe it is helpful for yours!
.

 

[london2012]

Cool !

your advice is wanderful it is fully working now !

 

[JonnyC]

I'm glad that my guide could be of help. It's the least I could do considering how others on here have helped make my dream system become a reality.

 

[london2012]

It should be said that we have a common dream, once again thank you!

 

[JonnyC]

This is just an update on the build.

I had little problems and good system stability for several weeks after putting together this guide. Until very recently I was experiencing imminent system freeze-ups. I would boot up the system and anywhere between 2 to 5 minutes the system would just freeze/crash. I spent days trying to isolate the source of the crash. Restoring the system from an older backup did nothing. Unplugging USB peripherals did nothing.

It wasn't until I pulled the 980ti out and replaced it with a GTX 970 did my system regain full stability.

I upgraded to Yosemite 10.10.4 and the latest nVidia drivers prior and that did nothing as well.

So as of now the 980ti is a giant paperweight. I'll test it in Windows and check for stability there and may even pop it into another Hackintosh system and see what happens there as well. Could be that the card is bad. Testing will tell.

Updating to 10.10.4 was fairly painless. The main thing was after the installation to boot with "nv_disable=1" which was the only way to get back to the desktop. After that I followed the basic Multibeast/networking steps already outlined above. I DID NOT install with the option "basic boot options" which would have over-written my critical flags "kext-dev-mode" and "UseKernalCache" and "GraphicsEnabler"

My hackintosh consists of 8 solid state drives but I did not hesitate to purchase a 9th for system backup purposes. It has been invaluable having a carbon copy of my system drive. It has saved me so much pain and aggravation in the past and I now know why it so regularly advised to do so. Just a little tip to those that may still not follow this practice.

 

[JonnyC]

For the record, the 980ti card I have is just fine. Ran 8 hours of Haven Demo and 4 hours of iTunes visualizer in OSX. Such a relief!

After at least 20 hours of trouble shooting I'm closer and closer to being able to definitively say that the reason OSX is freezing up so bloody consistently is to do with the windows drive that I sometimes use to boot into. Unplugged it and have been crash free for about 3 hours now. Crossing my fingers that I'm right. I suppose an easy fix is to put the widows drive into a newly purchased (oh joy....) eSata drive bay which I can switch on or off depending when I need to boot into windows. (convenience over opening up the case and replugging each time)

I used to have issues with windows drives unmounting randomly over time, but never system freezing/crashing. I even have a startup script to prevent the drive from mounting in the first place. If anyone has any ideas feel free to drop 'em here

 

[JonnyC]

I initially had difficulties with the installation and removed the graphics kit, memory and drives as a means only to avoid complications. When I installed the 10.10.4 combo update I left all of my nVidia cards, memory and SSD drives in the system (all except for the windows drives). As it turns out this hardware configuration was exceptionally easy to have working WITH the proper boot flags in place at the right times.

Removing the nVidia cards isn't necessary at all as it turns out. Booting with the nv_disable=1 flag saves from having to do that. Once the nVidia drivers are installed then you can stop using that flag.