[Success] i7 6800k Asus X99 Strix Gaming 32Gb DDR4 960 + Thunderbolt EX 2 + Blackmagic Ultrastudio4K

[mangoicetea]

First I want to say thank you tonymacx86.com for your awesome users and information to help me build this computer.
By no means this build is optimized. You could tweak it and make it more efficient. I just know it works so I will just leave it as is.


Spec
- OSX El Capitan 10.11.6
- i7 6800K
- ASUS x99 Strix Gaming
- 32Gb DDR 4 Corsair Vengeance
- Nvidia GeForce gtx 960 2gb
- Corsair PS 850W
- 500gb SSD Samsung
- Thunderbolt EX 2 Expansion Card
- Fenvi Wi-Fi and bluetooth (this bluetooth doesn't work)
- Bluetooth USB Micro Drive from iogear
- Corsair Carbide series 400Q
- Noctua CPU fan


What works
- Sound
- USB 2 and USB 3 and USB 3 expansion
- Thunderbolt 2 via ASUS TB EX 2 Expansion card works with Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K
- Bluetooth via USB Micro Drive (works oob, iogear for $12)
- Wi-Fi via Fenvi Expansion card (works oob)
- Ethernet from MB
- Sleep mode


What doesn't work
- Thunderbolt 3 (shows up in Win 10 though, I was not successful but it may work on Mac. I was unlucky)
- USB 3.1 (this may work but I just disabled it because I didn't need it)
- internal Bluetooth from MB (somehow I made it work in the beginning but during post-installation process it stopped working, I must have done something)
- internal Wi-Fi from MB (it never recognized it)
- NVME m.2 ssd (I tried and tried but never was successful. Yours might be different)


Building PC components
- be particularly careful where you put your TB expansion card on your PCI slot. You need to designate it on your MB BIOS where you installed your TB expansion card.
- I had to use Win 10 to install ASUS TB ex 2 expansion card driver to have the MB recognize the TB expansion card.


BIOS
- Follow the guide from Giacomoleopardos. (go to the link below)
- [UPDATED] I will be making an update regarding this section later about Thunderbolt section.

For Thunderbolt setting (Updated on 03/01/17)
- once in Bios press F7 to enter Advanced Setting
- in Advanced Setting select the Thunderbolt option (very bottom of the list)


- Intel Thunderbolt Technology [ON]
- Security Level [Legacy Mode]
- Wake From Thunderbolt Devices [ON]
- Thunderbolt Usb Support [Enabled]
- Thunderbolt Boot Support [Enabled]
- AIC Support [ON]
- AIC Location Group [CPU0 NB PCIE Slot]
- AIC Location [NB PCIE X16_2] *This is the physical location of your 'TB2 expansion card' on your Motherboard.
- GPI03 Force Pwr [ON]
- Wait time in ms after applying Force Pwr [200]
- Thunderbolt PCIe Cache-line Size [128]
- SMI/Notify Support [ON]
- SwSMI Support [ON]
- Notify Support [ON]
- Ignore Thunderbolt Option Rom [ON]
- Thunderbolt SwSMI Delay [10]
- Thunderbolt Device IO resource Support [ON]
- Reserved Mem per phy slot [1024]
- Reserved PMem per phy slot [1024]
- Reserved IO per phy slot [48]


Installation
- Please go to this link https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/giacomoleopardos-workstation-triplet.199643/
Giacomoleopardos is the man! Follow his guide all the way!! or most of the way!!

Below is my little guide for installing via bootable USB drive.

after you made a bootable USB following Giacomoleopardos guide...

Stick USB to your pc and start computer; press power on.

Press [del] to enter your computer bios when it first boots.

In Bios, change the boot sequence and give priority to your bootable USB drive as number one.

Save and Exit bios. reboot.


USB boot via clover.

1. Once in clover menu, you will see three icons. Select left icon which says..

[boot OS X install from install is X El Capitan]

- press space bar, uncheck the box that says use nvidia web driver (nvda_drv =1)

*- may also need to uncheck the this box too; Disable Powernap darkwake=0

- Return to exit

- enter to start the installation

- select disk utility and format the drive that you want to install on (i.e. Ssd, hhd)

- may need to change the date using terminal commands to install the OS X El Capitan

on Terminal commands type "date mmddhhmmyyyy" and enter ( i.e. 111711172015 -> November 17th 11:17AM year 2015)
and exit the terminal and resume installation.

- select the drive you want to install it on

- towards the end of the installation, "wait a second" on menu may take about 20 minutes. Just relax and wait!​

*If suddenly reboots during this process of installation, please repeat the steps as above.

Will restart itself when complete with this stage of installation.



2. On 2nd boot after normal installation, on your clover menu choose the middle icon or [Boot macOS from "name of your drive"].

- press space bar, uncheck the box that says use nvidia web driver (nvda_drv =1)

- and uncheck this box; Disable Powernap darkwake=0

- here start the set up or transfer from time machine.

- after time machine transfer Restart​

3. On clover menu select middle option [Boot macOS from "your drive"] and again disable nvda_drv=1. Mac will show "thank you" and "start using your mac" once properly installed


4. Post installation

- Need to download kext wizard and xcode (need internet connection for this)

- don't forget to install Clover on your fresh installed El Capitan drive and modify the kexts, config.list, and others on your EFI drive. Your hackintosh will not boot without this step. You will then always need to plug in your bootable USB drive to boot El Capitan.

- update to OS X 10.11.6

- Install voodoohda for audio if audio isn't working. If installed you need to find your kext on S/L/E and placed it desktop -> open it with xcode -> need to adjust gain to 'zero' -> save it -> reinstall it on S/L/E via kextwizard software.

- download latest nvidia driver and run AGDPfix app for your geForce 900series graphics card.
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/to...river-updates-for-el-capitan-update-01202017/​

I hope this helps someone. Thanks guys for allowing me to build this computer!

 

[mangoicetea]

Dear Mod, Please move this thread to different section. I think I posted it on wrong section. Thank you.

 

[mangoicetea]

It was running fine but having this hackintosh system on for 24/7 (no power off) connected to BlackMagic UltraStudio 4K seemed to cause it malfunction at some point (The display would not show up or transfer onto UltraStudio 4K) and I had to reboot the system to correct this issue. Thus, I have decided to do some modifying in the bios as follows...


[OLD VERSION]
go to Thunderbolt option menu in bios as mentioned above in the original post.


- Thunderbolt Usb Support [Disabled]
- Thunderbolt Boot Support [Disabled]

- Thunderbolt SwSMI Delay [0]
- Thunderbolt Device IO resource Support [ON]
- Reserved Mem per phy slot [32]
- Reserved PMem per phy slot [32]
- Reserved IO per phy slot [4]


[NEW VERSION]

- Thunderbolt Usb Support [Enabled]
- Thunderbolt Boot Support [Enabled]

- Thunderbolt SwSMI Delay [10]
- Thunderbolt Device IO resource Support [ON]
- Reserved Mem per phy slot [1024]
- Reserved PMem per phy slot [1024]
- Reserved IO per phy slot [48]


I will be following up again with the results sometime next week. Crossing my fingers that this may do the trick!

 

[mangoicetea]

so far so good I think!

After the adjustments I made last week, my hackintosh is holding up really well. Very happy! Also in addition to that, I put my hdd to "never go to sleep" mode instead putting it to sleep after 3 hours of idle. There is a saying that if I put my hdd on sleep mode, this will bound to cause something to malfunction in the future.

So other than that I am pretty much very happy with this machine and I will post something in the future if I decide to do any adjustments or do minor fixes.

 

[skondachka]

Greetings to you, friend! tell me please 1. How stable is the system? 2. How many balls in the Geekbench test 4 x64 3. Is it possible to update the system from the store in the version 11.12 * Thank you

 

[Acden]

How do you decide to buy X99 motherboard in 2017? Why not newer Z170 / Z270 chipset?

 

[mangoicetea]

Hi Skondachka!

1. It's very stable I would want to say. Except I ran acroos freeze up problem (I think this is more of a software issue from OSX or GPU issue rather than being a Hackintosh) once a week for last 3-4 weeks. So what I decided to do was to change from NVIDIA Web Driver to OS X default graphic driver (this is against what the people from online recommended but I haven't had any issue so far, I will keep you updated on this)

2. I am not sure about this. I think it scored about 19,000 when I tested.

3. I don't know if I understand the question but this Hackintosh build is only for El Capitan (NOT Sierra!). And it could be updated to the latest and final version of El Capitan.

 

[mangoicetea]

Hi Acden!

Initially I wanted to explore using the 6cores/12threads offered by i7 6800K (and possibly upgrading to 6900K when I win a lottery lol). And also Asus x99 motherboard handled the Asus Thunderbolt 2 adapter flawlessly, which Z170 didn't. And when I built this hackintosh, the Z270 wasn't out yet.