SUCCESS > i7-4790K w/ Gigabyte GA-Z97MX-Gaming5

[Mike_S]

The big secret for me was to disable Turbo mode in BIOS. No Turbo 4400GHz, but the CPU does speed step, which is more important. Turbo issue will probably be fixed sooner than later. I have not taken time to research for a solution, yet. The problem is the Haswell Refresh chips are unknown CPU type in Mavericks.

UEFI Bios v4.00

I use Corsair XMS 9-9-9-24 -1600 1.5v ram. These four 4gb sticks are now four years old. Have not missed a beat.

Follow Unibeast instructions, plus disable Turbo mode. (located on a sub-screen, first column.)

One trick not clear in Unibeast is to use F12, THEN select USB. On reboot, use F12 again!!! and select new install drive to do Multibeast.

Video card is an ancient 5770. I did not disable Lan nor Audio. Install runs slow because of a blue tooth not found issue. It eventually times out, so it can also be pretty much ignored during install. On the reboot (or subsequent reboots during setup) I used -v -x -f on the reboots. (anytime you suspect something has gone wrong during install and setup use -v -x -f flags on next boot)

If trying to install Mavericks with onboard 4600 graphics I read there are "special procedures" to be used, but the Radeon HD 5770 card worked fine. I think any Radeon card would work for that matter. (HD 5770 is not a good choice for Yosemite, not powerful enough.)

I used a much pared down Multibeast (6.5) setup.

Quick Start > DSDT Free (note change below to Customize choices)
Drivers > Audio > Realtec ALCxxx > ALC1150
Drivers > Audio > Realtec ALCxxx > Intel 9 Series Motherboard Support
Drivers > Disk -> Intel Generic AHCI SATA (instead of 3rd Party SATA)
Drivers > Misc -> FakeSMC v6.9.1315
Drivers > Network > Atheros Killer ALXEthernet v1.0.2
Drivers > System > AppleRTC Patch for CMOS Reset
Bootloaders > Chimera v3.0.1
Customize > Boot Options > Basic Boot Options
Customize > Boot Options > Generate CPU States
Customize > Hibernate Mode - Desktop
Customize > Boot Options -> Use KernelCache
Customize > System Definition -> Mac Pro -> iMac 14,2 (USB 3.0 works in native mode)
Customize > Themes -> tonymacx86 Black

Everything works except Turbo mode on CPU. Sleep and USB3 are good. Sound is coming out of the wrong port on the ALC1150, but it is clear sound for now. One can use System Preferences to make 5.1 setup and/or change head phone port.
Information here: http://www.tonymacx86.com/audio/133780-surround-sound-realtek-alc-applehda-guide.html

Going to Z97, the first reason to use the Gaming5 board over the GA-Z97M-D3H is the M.2 feature. The bottle neck with desktops is I/O. I would use m.2 SATA type SSD boot disk in the m.2 slot. Here is why: SSD SATA not that much slower than m.2 two channel PCIE. Plextor does have two channel PCIE SDD, but not much faster than SATA SSD for the money.

Samsung SSD are four channel PCIE and work best with straight PCIE adaptor card in slot 4 of MB. Go to PCIE slot 4 - four channel Samsung (w/heat sink) if you plan on speed improvement. The MB m.2 slot is convenient and saves space, but limited speed potential.

 

[Mike_S]

Update on this build: The hardest use of this machine is processing photography. A couple days ago it was batch processing and the 80c horn started up. I quickly put up Intel Power Gadget to see the i7-4790k drawing over 100 watts spikes at 4,4Ghz. It had apparently lost its power regulation ability.

Although the chip is rated at 4,4 peak speed, it will not sustain that speed (or higher) unless it has a very big cooler on it. Even then, at 4,2Ghz with all four cores working, the voltage regulation has very little head room. This is expressed in excessive heat on long runs of 4 core active work like photo editing.

When I first did the build, last week, the machine ran at ~4.2Ghz all cores and temps were in the 55-65c range for at least two minutes of steady 100% output. Suddenly, something had happened to the interplay between the setup and the OS X Maverics that made the CPU draw well over 100 watts of power. It was then overheating.

I also noted the cores report 44,43,42,41 at this time. Before they all said 40. Be that as it may, I did not have enough cooler (Zalman Quiet) for what was going on. A stock cooler would have been in worse trouble. Recall that the Z97 will not run Maverics with Turbo mode. It must be set to Disable.

I looked through the setup. In Auto Frequency Control, there is a choice Auto CPU Core Settings that opens another window. In here everything was set to Auto. At the bottom is CPU Thermal Protection and CPU EIST Function. These were likely suspects, so I set them to Enable. This means the CPU will self-regulate its power consumption and speeds. This fixed things. Speed Step reports 8, 40,41,42. This is fine with me as it keeps the temps in hand.

The problem immediately was resolved. The machine was going to briefly to 4.4 and 4.3 and spend much of the 20-40 seconds run at 4.2Ghz and temps were in the 55-65c range. Most notable was power consumption was never over 90Watt peak, with average of about 70-75Watts. This is its designed environment.

The computer runs very well with Temp Power Limiter and the EIST set to Enable. But if they are left on Auto, eventually the CPU goes into a run away condition of excessive temperatures. It should be noted that the 32-bit Geek bench tops out at about 16400 at 4.4GHx, high wattage condition, while setup properly at 4.2Ghz all cores running it is 15500. Not a huge difference, but the difference temperature (with small, quiet cooler) is huge.

These setup changes make the computer a nice, powerful and quiet partner, instead of a straining, noisy and possibly short lived mess.