[success!] scorza’s Hurt Hackerack: GA-Z87X-OC — i7-4770K — GTX 780 Ti

scorza · Jun 9, 2014

scorza’s Hurt Hackerack: GA-Z87X-OC — i7-4770K — GTX 780 Ti

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First things first: thanks!

Before this I'd only added HDD storage, RAM, and the NVIDIA 8800GT to my Mac Pro, so building my own computer was intimidating and exciting. Thanks to all the experts and posters who've helped me slowly navigate my way to a build I'm immensely happy with! Special thanks Going Bald's guide to dual booting and to the build / installation guides that lexone and wildwillow posted. I picked up the on-board graphics glitch from tailchaser's build. What follows is something of a hybrid of the those with a bit "well let's see if this works" mistakes and subsequent troubleshooting. Any odd choices or outright mistakes are assuredly mine.

Background and themes:

I'm a freelance animator / editor / video artist whose 2008 Mac Pro (3,1) was starting to show its age. I've also become something of a born again gamer in the last two years, but I tried to let work guide my component choices. I illustrate huge images in Photoshop, I render with Maya and Anime Studio, I edit with Final Cut and I'm learning Adobe Premiere, and I've never met a HDD I couldn't fill up with B-Roll footage...basically this would need to be an all-around strong build.

But don't worry about the name, the build and install were pretty painless! I'm just a Burt Bacharach fan, especially in the dulcet bass tones of this guy. The boot drives, bootloader theme, and icons are from Bee and Puppycat. Storage drives are named for The Many Names of Dave Ryder. For the curious, my image is Zallinger's Age of Reptiles from the Peabody Museum in New Haven, CT. Mama worked there before I was born, so I grew up with a print of this on my wall. But I digress.

Build & Components:
• Trials of the Noob: I tried to combine a GTX 770 and a Quadro K4000 in the same build, thinking that if each powered one monitor I could get the benefit of both, in particular the K4000's Maya optimization and its 10-bit support with the PA279Q. Yeah no, drivers don't work like that. They both seemed to run fine (in OS X and Windows 8.1) but I finally realized the GeForce drivers were being used by both. Since half the price of a Quadro is driver optimization, I've decided to sell the 770 and the K4000 and go with a 780 Ti, which should be more versatile across different applications. If I can't have the drivers I'll go buck wild on CUDA cores for now. Everyone raves about EVGA's support, which as a first-time builder is worth paying a bit extra for.
• The NZXT H630 is solid and silent, with plenty of space for storage expansion. And in this instance, plenty of space for a nervous first-time builder to figure things out. The white version have been easier to build in but it was out of stock at the time I started pulling the trigger on post-holiday component sales.
• The Noctua cooler is fantastic, but check that your RAM height is compatible. Corsair's Vengeance Pro and Vengeance LP RAM fit fine but their regular Vengeance line will not.
• The Noctua fans are wonderful, but be sure to have needle-nose pliers handy if you want to use the included low noise mounts.
• Together, the whole system seems to run barely above the level of ambient room noise, though I haven't run the any intensive benchmarks yet.
• Overclocking clearly guided my choices of processor and motherboard, but I haven't had a chance to explore it beyond testing some basic EasyTune tweaks.

Installation:
(as told in the imperative mood and subtracting my uninteresting screw-ups)

Make a Unibeast USB using Disk Utility existing OS X installation.
On the new build, disconnect all drives but the future Mavericks boot drive.
Press delete while system is booting to boot to BIOS. Press F2 if you want use the classic BIOS interface (navigable by arrow keys).
Press F7 to load load optimized defaults, then confirm.
Under M.I.T. tab, select Advanced Frequency settings and set XMP to Profile1.
Under the Power Management tab, disable integrated graphics to avoid the Maps glitch and probably a number of freezes I initially had. NOTE: you may need to enable integrated graphics just to download NVIDIA drivers post-Multibeast, in which case simply boot to BIOS and disable integrated graphics after your graphics card is working properly.
Under the Peripherals tab set initial display to PCIe 1 and disable
We will change boot order once all drives are connected, so press F10 to Save and Exit.
Press F12 during reboot to choose boot device and select USB-HDD. From the Chimera boot screen, select USB.
Select your language at the OS X Welcome screen, then use Disk Utility in OS X installer to format it as GUID and partition as single HFS+ volume.
Use Unibeast to install OS X.

Reboot on completion. Press F12 and choose USB-HDD, then choose Mavericks from the Chimera boot screen.
Run Multibeast to get post-install kexts added for your motherboard (see below for my final settings).
Turn off the new build.
From existing OS X installation, connect future Windows 8 boot drive and pre-format as MSDOS FAT. NOTE: this step is to avoid creating the System Reserved partition.
On the new build, disconnect all drives but the future Windows 8 boot drive. Here's the tricky thing as per Going Bald:

When you boot Win8 install DVD on a UEFI BIOS mainboard, Win8 wants to install UEFI. Unfortunately, if it does this Chimera/Chameleon can't "see" the boot files. There are at least 2 ways to prevent this. One way, when you boot with the install DVD in the tray, hit F8/F11/F12 or whatever the Function key is that allows you to select a boot device during the BIOS POST. You will find that your DVD shows up twice - once as SATA and once as UEFI. Choose the SATA. You do not want the UEFI [emphasis mine]. Another is to disable UEFI in the BIOS. Some BIOSes have an option for boot mode with the selections: Legacy, Legacy or UEFI, UEFI. Selecting the Legacy option forces non EFI installation.

Click to expand...
At the Select Partition screen, delete any existing partitions, and select all unallocated space. Follow the installer to format the drive as NTFS and complete Windows 8 installation.

Turn off the new build and connect the Mavericks boot drive. Boot to BIOS by pressing F12 and set the boot order to prioritize the Mavericks drive (p0 in my build), then Windows 8 (p1 in my build). Disable any option to boot with UEFI.
Be sure to disable other boot options and tab to advanced settings to set the NZXT H630's card reader to FDD or CDROM type instead of "Generic Storage Device." This should leave the card reader functional but eliminate the annoying Error 0x31 boot delay.
Boot to your dual boot and enjoy!
My storage drives (a 500GB SSD and 2 3TB HDDs) are formatted as EXFAT so that I can share media between Mac OS X (Bee) and Windows 8 (Puppycat). I did have to split the two 3TB drives into 4 1.5TB partitions, as the 3TB drives kept having issues:

Multibeast specifics
Under 10.9.2 I followed lexone's build closely, but on upgrading to 10.9.3 I cobbled together a DSDT-Free build that is working great. For unclear reasons Multibeast 6.3.0 repeatedly failed to build, so this was actually done in 6.2.1:

What works:
Under 10.9.2: FaceTime, iTunes Store, App Store all worked perfectly but iMessage stubbornly refused to work. Worse, I kept getting hard freezes I couldn't diagnose or recreate! Some people seem to think there are weird kinds in the Gigabyte Z87 boards, particularly with all 4 RAM slots filled. But none of my crashes appeared on the Windows side, so I figured it couldn't be purely a hardware issue. I reinstalled, I upgraded from a 770 to a 780 Ti, but the freezes continued randomly. Sometimes more than I could work with, sometimes not. Best I could figure is sticking with OS X Web Drivers would mostly stop the freezes.

Under 10.9.3: Holy buckets, everything as far as I can tell! I'll start benchmarking soon and updating this post accordingly. iMessage and NVIDIA drivers are working perfectly under 10.9.3. Maps would glitch or freeze the system but since disabling onboard graphics in BIOS Maps works fine and I haven’t had a freeze yet.

What doesn't work:
• HDCP iTunes content only shows a black screen.
• HDMI status is unclear, since I don't use it for anything right now.
• I initially had some difficulties with line output in OS X, so I'm using optical TOSLINK cable for sound.
• Connecting to Bluetooth speakers works, but I can't seem to send files to or from my phone via Bluetooth.
• I'd worry about these things a lot more if my animated Rothko gif wasn't blissing me out:

Benchmarks (pre-OC)

The not-too-distant future...
• Any number of typos and errors in this build guide will be corrected.
• More substantive updates will follow once I overclock the 4770K.
• I'm toying with a shared hardware RAID 10 for my LargeHuge storage drives...

Update 6/12/2014
Mysterious hard freeze came back. Upped DRAM from 1.5V to 1.6V in the BIOS and no freezes for a week!

Suggested links
Lexone's Haswell Build
wildwillow's Haswell Build
Mod About This Mac! guide by king13p
How to customize "About This Mac" guide by BitterMelon
Dual Booting Mountain Lion and Windows 8 guide by Going Bald
(applies equally to Windows 7 and Mavericks)
Ultimate Video Editing Workstation build guide by LinusTechTips

Extended Component List

Peripherals

ASUS PA279Q 27-Inch WQHD Monitor
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DX64DBU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236343

ASUS PB278Q 27-Inch WQHD Monitor
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009C3M7H0/
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236294

Wacom Intuos4 Large Pen Tablet (already owned)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001TUYTZW

Logitech G710+ Mechanical Gaming Keyboard
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009C98NPY
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823126299

Logitech G602 Wireless Gaming Mouse
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E4MQODC
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826104914[/URL]

Logitech C920 1080p Webcam
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006JH8T3S

Gratuitous Aesthetics & Noisemakers

NZXT Hue 5.25 RGB LED Color Changing Controller (2)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008RWT2IY
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811992011

NZXT 2-Meter Sleeved LED (Blue)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0046Y5Z5G
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812170032

NZXT Window Panel for 630 and H630 Cases
(sanded with 100g–300g sandpaper blocks to make translucent)
http://wwww.nzxt.com/product/detail/135-phantom-h-630-window-accessory.html

Logitech G930 Wireless 7.1 Headset
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003VANOFY
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826104399

YUMI Speakers With Bluetooth
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AMAJG94

Audioengine S8 Powered Subwoofer
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0013J1DI0

angelomango · Aug 17, 2014

Hello,

I had the same Maps glitch issue with my ASUS GTX 780 so I disabled the onboard graphics and it did fix it. However, it also disabled my audio (ALC898). I confirmed by renabling onboard graphics and sound came back.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
angelomango

scorza · Aug 18, 2014

Hmm so you weren't able to reconfigure ALC898 in Multibeast after disabling onboard graphics in BIOS?

Sorry, nothing's jumping out at me. Anybody? Thoughts?

sibbsabb · Jan 19, 2015

Building a similar build: using the exact same mobo.
Must one plug in both the 8pin AND 4pin power cords to PSU, or does just one 8pin suffice?

scorza · Jan 19, 2015

I want to say the 4-pin is only needed for extreme overclocking, like subzero cooled overclocking? But I'll check my mobo once I'm home to be sure.

I should note that I never sorted out my freeze problems, but plenty of other people have had good luck with this mobo and other parts. I think I just got a weird something somewhere, as vague as that is.

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[success!] scorza’s Hurt Hackerack: GA-Z87X-OC — i7-4770K — GTX 780 Ti

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