[SUCCESS] blouse's "Hack Pro" :: i9-9900K + Z390 Aorus Pro + Vega 64 + TB3 + USB3 :: 100% working

[psedog]

I am building my first Hackintosh for someone else and am thinking of copying your build. Thunderbolt is an absolute must as is WiFi and Bluetooth. Will installing a Wifi and bluetooth Pcie card be simple? Also, I do not need a graphics card. Would this build and installation work the same using integrated graphics?

It's easy as long as you either get a Macbook wifi card with PCI-e adapter, or a Hackintosh Wifi Adapter. You can find them for $50+ usd on Amazon or eBay.

 

[blouse]

I am building my first Hackintosh for someone else and am thinking of copying your build. Thunderbolt is an absolute must as is WiFi and Bluetooth. Will installing a Wifi and bluetooth Pcie card be simple? Also, I do not need a graphics card. Would this build and installation work the same using integrated graphics?

Indeed, what @psedog said Also you might want to check out some of the builds that use the Aorus Z390 Designaire trim level motherboard- it has TB3 on board. Depending on how much TB3 connectivity is needed, it might be a better option for simplicity's sake. I am not 100% sure on this, but I don't think it requires a Windows installation for activation- however I think it is only one port available and I'm not sure how much power it can supply to its devices. More investigation would be in order.

As far as using the iGPU w/o dGPU, yes that would be no problem at all.

As far as the PCIe WiFi/BT card, I'm thinking about adding one of those because it looks very straightforward- and the little USB BT dongle I am currently using has terrible range! The FayTun dongle has very good range characteristics though.

 

[lygi]

Some strugglings here and there but it finally works! Thx!

 

[steelfox]

Why? " - only single internal Vega64 supported (not enough PCI lanes) "? On z390
Its because motherboard design? TB3 integrated?

 

[blouse]

Hey @steelfox

It's only one supported when the GC Titan Ridge card is installed. Then there are not enough PCI lanes. Otherwise, with no GC card, you can run two internally.

Not really that big of a deal though when you have the GC Titan Ridge card installed- you can easily run eGPU(s)

 

[steelfox]

Hey Blouse! tks for reply!
You will loose performance trough eGPU on High bandwidth tastks like video edition ,but may be good for compute tasks.
Metal on macOs Catalina is optimized to use infinity fabric link on Amd gpus (to transfer data between gpus) but we still dont have this on hackintosh hardware.

Adobe premiere and games using metal on Catalina can use multiple gpus/cpus (cpus up to 28 cores confirmed on Metal developer conference)

But on game /3d software side the developer need to make optimizations in code to use all gpus/cpus.

 

[Shiitaki]

Why? " - only single internal Vega64 supported (not enough PCI lanes) "? On z390
Its because motherboard design? TB3 integrated?

Actually, if the Z390 motherboard supports SLI then you can install 2 GPUs, then put the thunderbolt card in the electrically 4x slot(usually physically 16x at the bottom). The motherboard will usually have a x4 slot from the chipset that shares bandwidth and introduces latency. Apple connects the thunderbolt controller to the CPU for reduced latency, but I'd rather have the GPU directly connected to the CPU than having it connected to an external box to a thunderbolt card connected to the CPU. If the thunderbolt is for importing and exporting data it shouldn't be too bad on the chipset PCI-E lanes.

Also you could connect a graphics card in a 4x slot, should still work, but it could affect the bandwidth. Interestingly the bandwidth would still be better than an external GPU simply because you still have CPU<->GPU, not CPU<->thunderbolt controller<->thunderbolt controller in external box<->GPU.

There are some motherboards that will split the CPU lanes up in to 8x/4x/4x, but you will have to careful check the spec charts of motherboards with 4 PCI-E x16 slots. It is possible for a motherboard manufacturer to use expensive chips to make up more lanes, though I don't know of any other than the GA-Z77-UP5 for instance.

But then that is why the HEDT x299 platform exists, it has the PCI-E lanes you might need. Used enterprise hardware drops in price faster than desktop parts and if you need GPU based performance a used X99 for instance might be something to check out if you want to keep prices down and number of GPUs up.

 

[blouse]

@Shiitaki the motherboard outlined in this guide (Z390 Aorus Pro) PCIe specification is as follows:

1. 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16 (PCIEX16)
   * For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16 slot.
2. 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x8 (PCIEX8)
   * The PCIEX8 slot shares bandwidth with the PCIEX16 slot. When the PCIEX8 slot is populated, the PCIEX16 slot operates at up to x8 mode.
3. 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x4 (PCIEX4)
4. 3 x PCI Express x1 slots
   (All of the PCI Express slots conform to PCI Express 3.0 standard.)

So, it looks like that is why I was running into the 'not enough PCI lanes' issue trying to have a Vega64 in the x16 as well as the x8, with the GC Titan Ridge in x4.

Is it something they can make available through BIOS (to have it run in 8x4x4 rather than overload trying to do 8x8x4), or is it a hardware level thing that isn't possible to change? I would love to be able to use both Vega64's internally.

That said, most of my GPU use is compute based, as it is mostly for ProRender in Cinema 4D. I have been lead to believe that is an ideal use for eGPU. It also makes it easy to add some nvidia cards as eGPU's and have access to Redshift, Octane, etc on the Windows side.

@steelfox The information you were mentioning about Metal is very exciting, I hope that technology catches on. It has been too long that the Mac has been suffering from crappy performance. It really bums me out when I go work in studios now and everything is Windows due to the need for nvidia support. Hopefully Metal will help bring it back at least a little.

 

[engineer.sek]

Z390 Aorus Pro Wifi
WiFi not working?

 

[psedog]

Z390 Aorus Pro Wifi
WiFi not working?

The onboard Intel Wifi is not supported by OSX. You'll have to get either a PCIe adapter or USB adapter.

What I did for my build. I bought a BCM94360CS2 to PCIe adapter card as I already had a Macbook Pro Wifi card. If you don't already have one of those laying around, what I would do is purchase this
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JLK9ZNQ/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

I believe with this card, since it doesn't have Bluetooth on it, the bluetooth on the motherboard should still work. I had to disable it on mine, because my Macbook card had Bluetooth on it already (which is 4.0 not 5.0 like on the motherboard )