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SUCCESS: Core i7-3770K - GA-Z77X-UD5H - 16GB RAM - Intel HD4000

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Jul 25, 2013
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Motherboard
Hackenstein
CPU
i7-3770K
Graphics
HD 4000
Mac
  1. Mac Pro
Classic Mac
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Mobile Phone
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SUCCESS: Core i7-377K - GA-Z77X-UD-5H - 16GB RAM - Intel HD4000 ML 10.8.4

Components

Pretty much followed the stock Customac Pro build parts

GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD5H - I would have liked to get the thunderbolt version, however that is very difficult to find. I also discovered that i didn't really need it, because the motherboard and PCIE allowed for plenty of storage options.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007R21JK4/

Intel i7-3770K
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007SZ0EOW/

Noqua NH-D14 Air Cooler
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002VKVZ1A/

Corsair Low Profile Vengeance Ram 16GB (2 x 8) - The low profile ram is important if you plan on installing the Noqua NH-D14, as it hangs directly over the ram.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007TG8QRW/

Sandisk Extreme 250GB SSD
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006EKJ8UI/

Corsair TX650M Power Supply
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005E98I0G/

2 x WD Green 2TB Hard Drive - These two drives are Raid 0 on Sata 2 and house the user directories

2 x Samsung 840 Pro 256 Drive - These two drives are Raid 0 on Sata 3 (Intel) (Don't bother raiding on the Marvell Chipset)

Corsair R500 Case
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005E983JW/

WD USB 3 External Hard Drive - Using this for my offsite Time Machine Backup
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0042Z55RM/

Apple 27" LED Cinema Display - I actually used a DVI monitor during my build.

Smartech Mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort Adapter
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003N3DTKY/

Apple Keyboard (Full Size and Wired) - The full size keyboard has the Delete Key that you will need to get into the Gigabyte motherboard BIOS. Not sure if there is an alternative key combination that you can use with the small Apple keyboard, i could not find one that worked.

Sata 6GB cables from Monoprice - different colors for ease in connecting the drives to the motherboard. The motherboard comes with plenty of SATA cables, but they are all black.

Noctua NF-F12 Fan
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00632FL8A

Lexar Dual Card Reader USB 3
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007FEFQDA/

RocketRaid 640L - I have not installed this yet.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007P77WAW/

LG INTERNAL BLU RAY Drive Model No: BH16NS40 - Works perfectly out of the box, no issues.

MacGo BluRay Player - Works Great with blu ray disks i've tried, no issues.


Already Owned

WD Green 3TB Drive - Taken from my Firewire extrnal drive enclosure. Using this as my Time Machine Backup

Mouseworks Trackball - Really old but still works beautifully


Comments
The main reason for this build is to get out of needing to buy an iMac every time i wanted an upgrade. This is my first build and it was a very exciting process and my build has been running smoothly for the last few weeks. I'll try and incorporate all of the hiccups that i encountered along the way, so hopefully this will save you some time on your first build.

I pretty much went with the stock CustoMac Pro build in the July Buyer's guide with a few modifications.

Install - I followed the UniBeast and MultiBeast guides. I had two minor hiccup during the UniBeast install of OS X ML 10.8.4.
1. After the initial step of installing OS X and rebooting the machine, it automatically rebooted from the USB drive, so i did not have to interrupt the process to tell it to boot from the USB.
2. When the bootscreen appeared and i had a choice of selecting either the USB or the HD with the newly (partially) installed ML, i selected the latter and got the spinning wheel on the grey apple screen that never ended. The fix for this was to reboot, then make sure to select the new HD (not the USB) and only then type in PCIRootUID=0 [PRESS ENTER]... the grey screen came on, but after a few minutes continued to the remainder of the install.

MultiBeast - I included the FakeSMC packages so i could see the CPU core temps, voltages, etc. I included IOHCIBlockStorageInjector so that my drives would act as internal drives. I did not add the Atheros package because i did not need a second Lan connector.

MutibeastSettings.jpg

Display - After the initial build and testing, i decided to continue going down the rabbit hole and purchase the apple 27" LED Cinema Display. When i first plugged in the monitor, it displayed a bunch of gabby-gook on the screen. Of course this freaked me out for a few seconds. I then proceeded to unplug the mini display port cable from the adapter and then replugged it in. This worked and now the display was working. When i was performing this step, my nephew was thinking "There is no way that that is going to fix it!"... sure enough it did. However, every time the machine rebooted i had to do this step. I eventually found through searching in the forum that you had to add the following to the /Extra/org.chameleon.Boot.plist file:

<key>Graphics Mode</key>
<string>2560x1440</string> <---- use your monitor's resolution here

It is easy to edit the file, just find it and then open it in TextEdit and add the above. Once you do this, you will not have to unplug and replug the monitor.

HDCP - I am not able to get HDCP content through iTunes to work. At first i thought it was the adapter, so i replaced it with a graphics card that had a mini displayport, however no luck. Eventually realized that the drivers for OS X in the hackintosh were not allowing the connection between the motherboard and the mini displayport to play HDCP content. For me it is not a big deal, because i never watch HD movies on my computer. I searched the forum and other folks have had some success, but not sure if they have the same setup. I was able to get HDCP to work when i installed Windows on it's own hard drive with the same motherboard/monitor combination, so if i really needed to i could boot up in windows and watch the Itunes HD content. This however, will not work through VMWare, as you will not have access to the hardware underneath and rely on OSX to handle that... so same problem as trying it from OSX.

Marvell SATA Connections - These work okay for single drives, but if you want to run a Raid 0 two SSDs, then don't bother. The Marvell SATA connectors do not work as well as the Intel SATA connectors.

SLEEP/WAKE - I had various sleep and wake issues. They were solved by disabling the CPU PLL OVERVOLTAGE in the BIOS and setting "darkwake" in the /Extra/org.chameleon.Boot.plist file to 8. There are various discussions on the value being 10, 8, No, etc.... i eventually stuck with 8 and that has worked very well. The only Sleep/Wake issue i have is when i plug in my USB 3 external drive and let the machine go to sleep... it actually turns the entire machine off. I haven't investigated further, as i normally don't have a USB 3 drive plugged in.

Edit: 8/25/2013 - Following Stork's suggestion, I removed darkwake from my chameleon.Boot.plist and auto sleep is working perfectly. I'm also using one of my Marvell sata connectors on the motherboard, so no issues using Marvell and sleep on my motherboard.

RAID - From what i have read, you can't setup raid directly on the motherboard, you need to handle it through OS X Disk Utility. Note, however, that with RocketRaid 640L, you can create a raid directly through the Rocketraid BIOS.

Edit: 8/25/2013 - I've installed my RocketRaid 640L and it works out of the box. I have two Samsung 840's in a Raid 0 format. Not getting intel chipset speeds, however, it is pretty close and much faster than raid through the Marvell chipset on the motherboard. I tried setting up my boot drive on the RocketRaid 640L, it booted, however upon WAKE the mouse would respond right away, however, i then experienced a delay with the spinning beach ball for 10 seconds or so. It eventually caught up to itself, however, i didn't enjoy the delay and went back to booting from the motherboard marvell sata connection.

RAM - By default the motherboard runs the ram at 1333Mhz. In order to get it to match the specs of my RAM (1600Mhz), I changed the BIOS setting Extreme Memory Profile from Disabled to XMP Profile 1 and then set the System Memory Multiplier value from Auto to 16. After doing this i found that i actually needed to shutdown and start my machine for the settings to take effect. A simple restart would not change the settings. I also had some wake/sleep issues because of this, however once i disabled the CPU PLL OVERVOLTAGE in the BIOS these issues were resolved.

Overclocking - I overclocked the CPU to 4.3 by simply going into the 3D BIOS and increasing the CPU ratio from 35 to 43. When I tried 44, my voltage had a substantial jump and so did the heat on the cpu. So i dropped it back down to 43. I could have messed with it further, however, i'm not an overclocking expert. I did experience some wake/sleep issues because of overclocking, however, once i disabled the CPU PLL OVERVOLTAGE in the BIOS these issues were resolved.

Cooling - I originally purchased the H60 Water cooler, however i did not like the variable fan. Every time my cpu jumped from 1.6Ghz to 3.5Ghz (which happened every time i clicked on a new image in lightroom) i could here the fan speed increase. I could have figured out how to adjust it so that it was constant, but i didn't bother. I ended up returning it and replacing it with the Noctua D14 which runs super quiet and does not have a variable fan. I also hooked up the provided adapters to lower the fan speed down to a constant 900 and it's perfect for my needs. It does a great job of keeping the CPU cool.


TRIM - Haven't found a good solution for this. My boot drive handles it's own garbage collection (Sandisk - sandforce), however the remainder of my SSD drives are Samsung 840s and they need the trim command. It would be great if I could pick and choose to enable TRIM on select drives. I have TrimEnabler, however I have not turned it on because I'm concerned the Sandisk with garbage collection will be compromised in regards to speed. I have the option of clearing out the drives through windows and using Samsung's Magic Software, which i've done in the past... kind of a pain, but it works.

Love the Hackenstein. Thank you all for your posts!

Edit 8/23/2013: Minor edits and Added section for RAM, Cooling and Overclocking.

Edit 8/25/2013: Updated Multibeast, Sleep/Wake and Raid sections and added TRIM section.
 
SUCCESS: Core i7-377K - GA-Z77X-UD-5H - 16GB RAM - Intel HD4000

Try removing the "darkwake" from your kernel flag list in /Extra/org.chameleon.Boot.plist. We're finding that, on some configurations running Mountain Lion 10.8.4, the sleep/wake-up functions work.
 
Okay... The auto sleep issue is "only mostly dead". After testing with a two minute auto sleep, I moved it back to ten minutes, then worked on some photos for an hour and tested the auto sleep... After 20+ minutes I gave up and did a manual sleep. Sleep and wake from sleep are working great. The display is working with auto sleep, so that is better than nothing.
 
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