[success] ga-x79s-ud5 e5-2690

[hdace]

Just wanted to report that I got my new Frankenstein working. The mobo & cpu are top end, but I don't need fancy graphics so it's just got a GT 640. 32GB Kingston HyperX 4x8 kit and installed Mavericks with only 2 onboard. Also Corsair H60 (planning on over clocking eventually), 60GB SSD, 1TB SATA, etc.

I found this http://www.tonymacx86.com/mavericks...igabyte-x79-up4-3930k-gtx-690-ocz-vertex.html to be the most useful guide as the 2 mobos are almost the same.

At first the big problem was verifying compatibility. I called several Gygabyte support folks most of whom said the 2690 would not work in there. Then someone in Taiwan (my wife speaks Chinese!) said that it would work if we updated the bios. But how to do that while running a cpu that's incompatible with the current bios? Well, there's Q-Flash. The best thing to do (although there is some flexibility) is to connect an ssd in a different computer and copy the downloaded update onto there. But that's not as easy as it sounds. Q-Flash only works with Fat32/16/8 volumes. Vista on up will only format in exFat. I imagine there's utilities on the net that will do it for you, but I happen to have "NTFS for Mac OS X" on one of my other CustoMacs and it will format a drive in FAT32 via Disk Utility. Then I stuck it back in the new guy, flashed it, and wallah!

Installing Mavericks went fairly smoothly. Next I want to get it over clocked. I'll report on that later.

However, I have had a problem with the bios conking out intermittently. Haven't completely overcome that but Gigabyte support has sorted this out for me and hopefully this will iron itself out over time. If not I might have to swap it out, which would be bloody annoying!

 

[hdace]

By the way, I should also mention the reason I needed to use a sata compatible device instead of a usb drive is because usb stops the computer working altogether when the bios isn't compatible with the cpu. If any usb device is attached when mobo is F1 and cpu is 2690 then it goes into a perpetual loop of turning on and off. So you can't flash with usb.

 

[hdace]

Okay, I'm now finished setting it up and very happy with it.

Two slightly bothersome issues. I can't access and change bios settings unless I disconnect all but one drive. I know. Weird, huh? This would have driven me mad with my last Gygabyte customac 'cause I used the bios cmos save & load feature to control whether I booted into mac or pc. That isn't the case now that Windows is compatible with ACHI. In fact I no longer bother having different bios settings for the two platforms at all anymore. And I've got the bios set up exactly as I like it so I don't really need to go into it very often anyway. So I guess I'm willing to put up with that. I also had to raise the voltage on the memory from 1.5 (standard for this HyperX type) to 1.55 to ensure that it always boots into the OS's with 4 memory cards and three drives at the same time. Again, no biggy. The second bothersome thing is that it totally won't overclock. Should have known that before I bought it 'cause there's info all over the net saying Xeons don't overclock. Just never occured to me to check. But my animation rendering is more than three times faster than my overclocked i7 920 (at 4 GHz) so who cares?!!

Absolutely no problems from a Mac point of view. The WIFI pci-e card works with my bluetooth magic mouse, so that cheered me up. Oh, just noticed, all this time I've been talking about the GA-X79S-UD5-WIFI (just to be clear). Audio, networking, graphics all fine. Oh and after bios finishes loading it boots into mac in about ten seconds. Wow.

This is about the eighth PC that I've built and the fifth customac. This was the easiest in every way. I'm more indebted to tonymacx86 than ever before. Very grateful for the great software and support. Made a donation. Everyone using this site should!