- Joined
- Jun 19, 2015
- Messages
- 1
- Motherboard
- Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD5H
- CPU
- i7 4790K
- Graphics
- EVGA GeForce GTX 970
- Mac
- Classic Mac
- Mobile Phone
Success! hamibh's El Capitan Build: Core i7-4790K - Z97X-UD5H - 32GB RAM - GTX 970 - OSX 10.11.4
Components
Intel Core i7-4790K CPU
[Amazon-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00KPRWAX8/?tag=tonymacx86-21[/Amazon-uk]
Gigabyte Z97X-UD5H motherboard
[Amazon-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00K9R1KLW/?tag=tonymacx86-21[/Amazon-uk]
Corsair H80i Liquid CPU Cooler
[Amazon-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00SV7IIDU/?tag=tonymacx86-21[/Amazon-uk]
Corsair Vengeance 32GB RAM
[Amazon-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0068ZWZY0/?tag=tonymacx86-21[/Amazon-uk]
Samsung 850 EVO 1TB (For OSX) and 500GB (For Windows) SSDs
[Amazon-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00P73B1E4/?tag=tonymacx86-21[/Amazon-uk]
EVGA GTX 970 Superclocked GPU
[Amazon-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00NSXYEQW/?tag=tonymacx86-21[/Amazon-uk]
Corsair Carbide 200R case
[Amazon-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B009GXZ8MM/?tag=tonymacx86-21[/Amazon-uk]
Corsair RM650 650W PSU
[Amazon-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00FG9FWF8/?tag=tonymacx86-21[/Amazon-uk]
Samsung DVD drive
I managed to buy the one DVD drive on Amazon that doesn't burn discs. Oops.
[Amazon-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00R107K7S/?tag=tonymacx86-21[/Amazon-uk]
Corsair 140mm Low Noise Fan
[Amazon-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007RESGGC/?tag=tonymacx86-21[/Amazon-uk]
Corsair 120mm Low Noise Fan x4
[Amazon-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007RESFR2/?tag=tonymacx86-21[/Amazon-uk]
Logitech G602 Wireless Mouse
[Amazon-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00ETPAEDU/?tag=tonymacx86-21[/Amazon-uk]
Vortex Pok3r UK ISO Cherry MX-Brown keyboard
[Amazon-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00TIM6AW8/?tag=tonymacx86-21[/Amazon-uk]
Racksoy USB Bluetooth Adapter
[Amazon-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00KNPTHS8/?tag=tonymacx86-21[/Amazon-uk]
Already Owned
WD MyBook Duo 4TB and 6TB (for extra storage and backups)
[Amazon-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00L90DWUA/?tag=tonymacx86-21[/Amazon-uk]
Apple Magic Trackpad
[Amazon-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002NX0MXC/?tag=tonymacx86-21[/Amazon-uk]
Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 USB Audio Interface
[Amazon-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B009B15N0Q/?tag=tonymacx86-21[/Amazon-uk]
M-Audio BX5 Studio Monitors
[Amazon-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005F3H6Q8/?tag=tonymacx86-21[/Amazon-uk]
Samsung 21:9 Ultrawide Monitor
I can't find this specific one on Amazon
Comments
This build was a graduation gift to myself
I often produce music and edit video, so I based this build on the CustoMac Pro in the buyer's guide and went for the large SSDs and heaps of RAM. As a result it's wonderful to use; incredibly responsive with very few appearances of the dreaded beachball.
The 200R case is cheap and simple, with ample space to work, some cable routing holes and the option for tool-less installation of parts (although I prefer to use screws anyway).
The Magic Trackpad works perfectly with the USB Bluetooth adapter.
It can take 20 seconds or so from turning the PC on to reach the Clover boot options, and on shutdown El Capitan will either shut down immediately or take 20-30 seconds depending on its mood, but it gets there eventually.
I've had a few instances of monitors not being detected correctly on boot, where I've had to unplug and reconnect the DisplayPort cable.
Sleep works perfectly.
USB3 works at full speed after a little fix detailed below.
El Capitan lives on the 1TB SSD with Reason, Final Cut, Pixelmator etc. and Windows 10 lives on the 500GB SSD with all of my games. Tuxera NTFS lets me access the Windows SSD from OSX. I also tried installing an HFS driver for Windows. Don't do this! Windows decided to move its EFI partition over to the Yosemite SSD and overwrite Clover, making things quite broken. It was a sad time.
How I Got This Thing Working
I followed the TonyMac installation guide, and so should you! I'll only add details here that are specific to my build.
STEP 1
I downloaded El Capitan 10.11.4
STEP 2
I chose El Capitan and UEFI Boot Mode. No Graphics Configuration was needed.
I also downloaded nvidia's 10.11.4 driver installer to the USB to save time later
STEP 3
I used these BIOS settings:
STEP 4
I had to use a USB2 port at the top of the motherboard's IO to get the bootable USB to boot.
Once in Clover, I needed to add boot flag nv_disable=1 to boot to El Capitan installer.
STEP 5
First boot into El Capitan after installation was quite slow to the point where I thought it was frozen, but I left it a few minutes and all was well.
MultiBeast would not let me install everything at once, so I did a few passes.
1st pass with Multibeast:
- Quick Start > UEFI Boot Mode
- Drivers > FakeSMC v6.18-313-g671f31c.1707
- Drivers > FakeSMC Plugins v6.18-313-g671f31c.1707
- Drivers > Network > Intel > AppleIntelE1000e v3.3.3
- Install!
I then installed the nvidia driver from the USB, ejected the USB and restarted. This restart was again slow. Patience! Once booted, I clicked the nvidia icon in the menu bar, selected the nvidia web driver and restarted again.
USB3 wasn't working at full speed, so I ran Multibeast again.
2nd pass with Multibeast:
- Drivers > USB > 3rd Party USB 3.0
- Install!
USB3 still wasn't working properly at this point, so I'm not entirely sure that step was needed, but I did it so I'm leaving it in just in case.
This fixed USB3:
I downloaded KextBeast and RehabMan-FakePCIID-2016-0414.zip.
Within RehabMan-FakePCIID-2016-0414.zip was a folder called Release, and within that folder were some kexts.
I extracted only these two kexts to desktop along with KextBeast...
- FakePCIID.kext
- FakePCIID_XHCIMux.kext
Because of my SSDs, I opened Terminal and ran the command:
sudo trimforce enable
I used to use iStatMenus to monitor CPU temps and usage, however it seems to be a common problem among Hackintoshes that iStatMenus doesn't see CPU temps in El Capitan. Back to MultiBeast!
3rd pass with Multibeast:
- Drivers > Misc > FakeSMC HWMonitor Application v6.18-313-g671f31c.1707
- Install!
This PC used to be a Yosemite build that has refused to work with a direct upgrade to El Capitan, hence this clean install. My last step was to restore my account from Time Machine, and almost everything appears to be in place.
I hope somebody finds this write-up useful. This isn't necessarily the best or quickest order in which to take these steps, but it's what worked for me twice (one test installation on a spare HDD, and then one overwriting my Yosemite SSD). Let me know if you spot a mistake or want something clarified.
Last edited:
