[SUCCESS] Gigabyte Designare Z390 (Thunderbolt 3) + i7-9700K + AMD RX 580

[CaseySJ]

I feel sorry to post this but it seems like my issue was related to BIOS. And I’m even more sorry about the fact that the warning about this exact problematic BIOS is actually the second highlighted line in first post of this thread.

So I downgraded my Z390 Aorus Pro from F12l to F12k.
Now both SSP1 and SSP2 ports of XHC3 are back and detecting by IORegistryExplorer and Hackintool in Catalina.

I’ll try install 11.4 again and will post an update soon here. Hopefully.

UPDATE:
I'm writing this from successfully installed macOS Big Sur 11.4
All USB ports are detected and working correctly. XHC3 and both SSP1/SSP2 are finally appeared in Hackintool and IORegistryExplorer. No more XHC related errors in Console. No system freezes at all!

Hello @AlexD,

Good to hear from you again! The problem you described first happened to me as well, but on 11.3. In my case the root cause was a flashed Thunderbolt controller on GC-Titan Ridge PCIe card. After flashing the card with a different firmware (which also happens to disable XHC controller), the system became stable. I can attach Thunderbolt devices to the card, but not USB 2/3 devices. I’m totally okay with that.

However, the flashed on-board Titan Ridge controller has no such problem. Both Thunderbolt and USB 2/3 devices work properly.

 

[CaseySJ]

…
Why do you have two USBInjectAll kexts ?

View attachment 519889…

This is actually my handiwork!

The first one is conditionally injected in Mojave only and supports product names up to iMac19,1.

The second one is conditionally injected in Catalina and Big Sur, and supports product names up to iMac20,2. It uses newer Xcode framework that does not work in Mojave, hence the dual versions.

 

[AlexD]

Hello @CaseySJ,

Well, it was 100% BIOS issue in my case. Even in Catalina, right after downgrading from F12l to F12k I immedaitely saw SSP1 and SSP2 ports under XHC3. The only difference for me between Catalina and Big Sur was that Big Sur freezed constantly while Catalina didn't. That's probably why I never noticed any problems before upgrading to Big Sur.

Turns out, latest Z390 BIOS from Gigabyte (F12l for Aorus Pro and F9j for Designare) definitely breaks USB support for add-in Thunderbolt cards. XHC3 was not populating at all. Downgrading BIOS solves this problem.

So, I'm really happy that Big Sur helped me figure out hardware configuration problems and I fixed it by downgrading BIOS. It's great to see how macOS wants us to have polished and correctly configured hardware so it can operate smoothly on it!

 

[brousseau6933]

Totally agree with all said above in regards of RX 580. Truly great card for macOS.
I’m really happy with this little beast (mine is Sapphire Pulse RX 580 8GB).

The only thing I would highly recommend to owners of RX 580 is to change the default AMDFramebuffer to Orinoco. It will reduce the idle power consumption greatly. In my case, accordingly to HWMonitorSMC2, it went down from 70 to 30 watts.

Using Dayman FB on my Z97, long story… Like the 580 and the 560 in my Designare hack.

 

[c0c0p0ps]

Hello @AlexD,

Good to hear from you again! The problem you described first happened to me as well, but on 11.3. In my case the root cause was a flashed Thunderbolt controller on GC-Titan Ridge PCIe card. After flashing the card with a different firmware (which also happens to disable XHC controller), the system became stable. I can attach Thunderbolt devices to the card, but not USB 2/3 devices. I’m totally okay with that.

However, the flashed on-board Titan Ridge controller has no such problem. Both Thunderbolt and USB 2/3 devices work properly.

Hey Casey hope you are keeping yourself well. Not posted in a while as my rig is still running great but saw this and just wondered has anyone who flashed the Designaire NVM33 patched firmware to their Titan Ridge PCIE given any feedback on how it functions in 11.3 or 11.4? I actually have that firmware on my card but have been holding off upgrading from 11.2 as I was hoping someone else who used the NVM33 would report back.

 

[gandem]

Hey Casey hope you are keeping yourself well. Not posted in a while as my rig is still running great but saw this and just wondered has anyone who flashed the Designaire NVM33 patched firmware to their Titan Ridge PCIE given any feedback on how it functions in 11.3 or 11.4? I actually have that firmware on my card but have been holding off upgrading from 11.2 as I was hoping someone else who used the NVM33 would report back.

I'm running NVM33 from the Aorus Extreme board in the repository (Z390-AORUS-XTREME-NVM33-Elias64Fr.bin) on my GC-TitanRidge V2. Absolutely no problems up to 11.4. I have had a better experience with this firmware versus the Designare file. I'm not sure if there is actually a difference between the two (code wise), it's possible when I first tried the Designare version I may have had other configuration issues. When using the Designare file I would experience intermittent TB3 port not working at all. I'm now running on OC 0.6.9 with no problems.

 

[CaseySJ]

I'm running NVM33 from the Aorus Extreme board in the repository (Z390-AORUS-XTREME-NVM33-Elias64Fr.bin) on my GC-TitanRidge V2. Absolutely no problems up to 11.4. I have had a better experience with this firmware versus the Designare file. I'm not sure if there is actually a difference between the two (code wise), it's possible when I first tried the Designare version I may have had other configuration issues. When using the Designare file I would experience intermittent TB3 port not working at all. I'm now running on OC 0.6.9 with no problems.

Interesting. Although you mentioned this earlier, I forgot to follow-up. Namely, are you able to attach USB 2/3 devices to the Thunderbolt ports?

I may flash the same firmware to my GC-Titan Ridge v1.

 

[brousseau6933]

Using Dayman FB on my Z97, long story… Like the 580 and the 560 in my Designare hack.

Well, I tried Orinoco instead of Dayman but no changes in idle power consumption. 67-70w with any of them. I have an MSI Radeon RX580 8g V1 and I use two old LCD’s connected via DVI to DP adapters. Maybe using only one screen or native DP it would make a difference. VBIOS was also modified as the MacOS driver wasn’t able to control correctly the fan speed at high temperature=crash!

Interesting fact but as Casey said, it could depend on the brand and the VBIOS.

 

[CaseySJ]

Well, I tried Orinoco instead of Dayman but no changes in idle power consumption. 67-70w with any of them. I have an MSI Radeon RX580 8g V1 and I use two old LCD’s connected via DVI to DP adapters. Maybe using only one screen or native DP it would make a difference. VBIOS was also modified as the MacOS driver wasn’t able to control correctly the fan speed at high temperature=crash!

Interesting fact but as Casey said, it could depend on the brand and the VBIOS.

When checking idle power, we should quit as many applications as possible, especially web browsers. An open web page can use GPU on a continuous basis, hence GPU will not be idle.

 

[gandem]

Interesting. Although you mentioned this earlier, I forgot to follow-up. Namely, are you able to attach USB 2/3 devices to the Thunderbolt ports?

I may flash the same firmware to my GC-Titan Ridge v1.

Yes, I'm able to connect external USB-C SSD Drives directly to both TB3 ports of the card. I get full drive speed and everything is hot-pluggable. I rarely connect directly to the card though as I loop through my UltraFine monitor to my CalDigit TS3+ dock and plug in everything from there. I even have a 3rd monitor running via adapter on the TB3 port of the dock.
My theory as to why it's working better is that the Aorus Extreme has 3 M.2 slots like the Aorus Master, so maybe it's a closer match on the PCI side? I'll leave that for smarter people to decide.