[Success]crystalinecorruption's Scarlet Eclipse Gigabyte GA-Z77-DS3H - i7-3770 - 16gb - HD 4000 - Z

[crystalinecorruption]

crystalinecorruption's Scarlet Eclipse
Gigabyte GA-Z77-DS3H - i7-3770 - HD 4000



Components​

Apple OS X Mountain Lion
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/os-x-...n/id537386512?

Zalman Z11 HF Plus
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811235034

Gigabyte GA-Z77-DS3H Motherboard
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007R21JWC
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128550

Intel i7-3770 Ivy Bridge CPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116502

Xigmatek Gaia SD 1283
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835233082

Patriot G Series Sector 5 4x4gb 1333MHz DDR3 Memory
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220484

Western Digital 2TB HDD Storage Drive
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004VFJ9MK
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136891

Sony Optiarc 7280S Optical Drive
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0057FRTPW
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827118067


Comments​

This is my first attempt at a hackintosh and it was quite a wild ride. The purpose of this machine is to run protools 9 mp and basis email and web browsing. As a student I will be using this to do homework research etc. I will be doing some light gaming mostly in windows.

I absolutely love the Zalman Z11 HF Plus. The red LED fans make it look like the Terminator's computer. Cable management is amazing lots of room behind the Motherboard plate. It even has a place on the back of the motherboard plate to mount 2.5" SDD or laptop HDD which is great for me because I a nice little 250gb laptop hdd.

The Xigmatek Gaia is a great cooler. I'm lucky the clear window on the side of the case is convex allowing the cooler to fit in the case. The fans on the Xigmatek and the case are nice and quiet.

The DS3H is pretty nice. Not a lot of features, but it works. It is smaller than a regular atx motherboard. I have my i7-3770 oc'd to 4.1GHz max frequency, but it still shows up in About This Mac as 3.4GHz. But HWMonitor does show the max frequency at 4.1Ghz. The audio quality is relatively sub-par, but since I'm using this setup for Pro Tools, I have a nice external audio device if I want some great quality audio. The front audio and mic ports work like a charm as do the rear ports. The only complaint I have for the DS3H is the few SATA cables included. I'm the kinda guy who saves all the HDDs that he can find. So I've got lot's of laptop HDDs and a few 3.5 HDDs. I have a few old SATA cables from previous builds, but I still need more.

I went with the Patriot Sector 5 memory because I found it on sale at fry's for $20 a pop. It works pretty well. I'd rather have 1600MHz, but what I've got works and the heat sinks look epic.

After the hardware installation, I changed some bios settings. First I set defaults. Then I changed Sata Mode Selection to ACHI and disabled Vt-d.

After installing Mountain Lion, I booted and installed the Ethernet driver using the the guide I posted here: http://www.tonymacx86.com/general-h...z77-ds3h-rev-1-1-ethernet-fix.html#post490882

And I also used MultiBeast to install the drivers I needed and set system definitions to Mac 3,1.

Steps 1-3 - Purchase OS X, Create UniBeast Drive, Install OS X Mountain Lion
Follow steps 1-3 at the following link. For steps 1 & 2 you will need access to a working computer running OS X:
http://www.tonymacx86.com/61-unibeas...-based-pc.html

Step 4 - Multibeast post-installation utility
Follow step 4 at the following link to perform post-installation setup using MultiBeast.
http://www.tonymacx86.com/61-unibeas...-based-pc.html

 

[jorams]

Did you do anything special for the installation? When I try it in the standard way the installation script stops at

ALXEthernet: Ethernet address 90:2b:34:3e:6c:4c

and i cannot just install ML. Any ideas or tips what you did?

system:
i7 3770
ga-z77-DS3H
HD4000 graphics

 

[crystalinecorruption]

Jorams,
I would try disabling the ethernet in the bios, then installing ML and the ethernet driver. Turn off the system and on the next boot enable ethernet and see if that works.
Keep me posted and I'll try to guide you though any problems you might have!

Thanks,
cc

 

[jorams]

Thank you very much for your offer. I finally managed to get my system set up. The main problem was, that I created the Unibeast stick under Snow Leopard. Somehow this created a whole lot of problems that I didn't get when I later updated my snow leopard mac to mouontain lion and started from scratch. Without insertion or flag I could install ML and then got a problem with AppleTyMCEDriver but this problem was solved by deleting the corresponding kext via terminal from the S/L/E. Now the system is up and running with a GTX650 and so far, not a single issue was registered. Sound, Video, performance, everything works fine.
I will later this afternoon or tomorrow set up a thread for my successful build.

 

[techlionosx]

can i possibly replace this cpu with a 3770k