- Joined
- Dec 22, 2016
- Messages
- 62
- Motherboard
- Gigabyte GA-Z370N-Wifi
- CPU
- i3-8100
- Graphics
- UHD 630
- Classic Mac
- Mobile Phone
mille1j's Coffee Lake mITX:
GA-Z370n-Wifi - i7-8700K - iGPU
Components:GA-Z370n-Wifi - i7-8700K - iGPU
Gigabyte GAZ370N-Wifi mini ITX board
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076VD4XV4/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
Intel BX80684I78700K 8th Gen Core i7-8700K
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07598VZR8/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
Corsair Carbide Series Air 240 High Airflow MicroATX and Mini-ITX PC Case - Black
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LA6WXEO/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB DDR4 DRAM 3000MHz
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014JESKRW/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
EVGA SuperNOVA 550 G3, 80 Plus Gold 550W, Fully Modular[/SIZE]
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LWTS2UL/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
Corsair Hydro Series, H100i v2, 240mm Radiator[/SIZE]
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B019EXSSBG/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
Noctua Fan with Focused Flow and SSO2 Bearing, Retail Cooling NF-F12 iPPC 3000 PWM[/SIZE]
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KFCRATC/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
Already Owned
Dell UltraSharp U3415W 34-Inch Curved LED-Lit Monitor
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00PXYRMPE/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
Samsung PM951 256GB M.2 NGFF PCIe Gen3 x4, NVME Solid state drive SSD
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01DTXUT0K/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
Comments
I read somewhere that Coffee Lake processors with iGPU were capable of sleeping and wanted to test this. So far, no sleep. But the build is working.
I wanted fast. Really fast! Even though I don't do much other than work online. I want to do that fast, though. So, I went ahead and got an i7-8700K. Totally extravagant.
I don't do much with graphics or games. So, I don't have plans to add a GPU, but I need lots of room for browser windows. I can't recommend the U3415 enough. Its awesome. I think there is a newer version of it out there. Just buy it OK, just buy it. I used to use Mac Cinema displays. The Dell is better.
QUIET! STFU! I can't stand noise. My last build was in a SilverStone RVZ02B case. I hated it. Too noisy. So, this time I decided to go for a bigger case and go way overkill on the cooling for the sake of quietness. I probably went crazy stupid overboard here. I mounted the radiator on the bottom of the case. Sort of a weird position, I know, but the fans are blowing out and I barely ever hear anything with the fans oriented down. I seldom hear them and the CPU cores usually sit at 30 degrees with the heat sink at 40. On the top of the case, I mounted an industrial Noctua fan. This thing is kind of a monster. It almost never needs to run, the radiator fans seem to pull enough air through the case to keep things cool, BUT, if things ever do heat up, this Noctua fan barely cracks 700 rpm and you can see frost forming inside the case. Finally, I'm trying one of these EVGA power supplies because they are supposed to be quiet.
I am loving this case, except that it does not have a 5.25 bay. If it did, I would mount a hot-swap cage in it for 2.5 inch drives. As it is, this case has easily accessed 2.5 and 3.5 inch bays that you can quickly swap drives in and out of. It also has great cable organization with these rubber grommets between the compartments that the motherboard and PCI card goes into and the other chamber of the case that houses the power supply and the drives. This makes it super easy to keep it tidy and I'm sure facilitates better airflow.
Installation Notes
I will update this, but basically I took the EFI folder from a Kabylake build on a GA-H270N and used that. . I literally took the Samsung NVMe drive out of that Kabylake build, put it into this motherboard and it actually booted! Like really started up. That blew my mind.
I had to build a new SSDT to patch the USB ports, but that is really about it. This board has 6 USB3 ports on the back panel. The case has 2 USB3 ports on the front. So, 8 USB3 ports! Beyond the 15 port limit of macOS, so in my SSDT for USB, I enabled the 4 on the back and the 2 that are on the case along with one for Bluetooth. My keyboard and mouse are hooked up the Dell anyway. So, I have lots of ports left.
I took out the stock WiFi card and put in a Broadcom (I need to list that part up above, but I get them from ebay and couldn't find a link to it).
Working
-Messages
-Bluetooth, WiFi, airdrop
-PowerManagement P and C states using Clover ACPI plugin=Yes (Go Rehabman).
-HDMI Audio (Go toleda!)
-HWSensors
-Filevault2 on HFS formatted NVMe drive
Not Working
-Sleep. I'm probably delusional thinking that I'm going to get sleep to work without a GPU. I'm honestly sort of interested in what the cheapest, crappiest GPU there is that I could put into a build like this that would enable sleep. I'd really like to get sleep working.
The Plan
I will see how this rig runs for the next week or so and see if any bugs emerge. If I'm happy with it, I need to build 14 more of these for my business. Those will be a bit different, smaller case, Coffee Lake i3's, smaller SSD. I'm already using 6 Kaby Lake builds at work and they have been AWESOME!
I will update this post over the next weeks.