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[SUCCESS] Spballer's Build: GA-Z97X-GAMING-GT / i7-4790k / Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 SC

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Thanks for the kind words :thumbup:

I had the same feeling immediately upon completion lol, and it needed to be addressed, so... I upgraded the monitor to an LG 34UM95-P which is 3440x1440 in a 21:9 ultrawide ratio. It's spectacular! I'll update things tomorrow, just got back from a last minute job and off to bed now.
 
Great guide! Gave me a lot of things to think about while working on my own system. The key difference is that I currently have a GTX 780 instead of your GTX 970. Is the main reason you use the onboard graphics because the GTX 970 is not natively supported by the OS? I picked my GPU on the premise that I wouldn't have to load any additional drivers for it to work? Am I wrong in my assumption? After reading through your guide, I am thinking that if I don't have to load any extra drivers for the GTX 780 that I can just disable onboard graphics from the get go and not have to worry about any boot switches!

My particular problem right now is that following the tonymacx86 guide, everything goes according to plan except after running multibeast before the final re-boot. I picked the DSDT Free quick start option. What happens after rebooting is that my machine goes into endless loop of rebooting where I see the Apple logo, something flashing so fast that I can't read it, and back to the Chimera startup bar, ad nauseum. After reading through your guide I think the main culprits might be the default CPU states being checked, default NullCPUPowerManagement being checked and I have to see what the default System Definition is without changing that? Another thing that I am very glad you did was show the actual BIOS screens because I was in the default Quick Start BIOS screens and was not seeing the option to disable VT-d! I am kinda of a chicken when it comes to BIOS so I am hoping that my board is at rev. F5 so I don't have to mess with it anymore but I can't remember because I didn't make it a point to look. I was also pretty keen to get things going so everything is installed and hooked up component wise; 32GB Memory, 1TB Samsung SSD, 3TB Seagate HD so I am hoping my eagerness to get everything fitting in my case is not mucking things up! Any thoughts here as well?
 
Hi DayDaemon,

Thank you for the compliment :thumbup:

As per the onboard graphics, I only used to during the set up process because the 9 series cards are not natively supported. Once I installed the web drivers and switched over I disabled the on board graphics and the system uses the nvidia graphics card.

Your card (according to my very quick google search, I could be wrong and you may benefit from further research) looks like it will also need web drivers to work as well as possible. No need to be intimidated by any of this though!

As I mentioned in my first post just before the build part, I was intimidated by the whole process required to build a hackintosh, but I found as I read more about it, familiarized myself with terminology and procedures, read build guides, etc, it put a lot of my concerns to rest. My biggest piece of advice to share is to take your time, read read read, and if anything confuses you, ask about it. This website has a TREMENDOUS amount of information on it, answers the just about everything hackintosh related can be found, and if not, the people here are wonderful and will try their best to help you figure it out.

As per your DSDT free issues, before you get too far into setting your machine up I suggest you start from scratch again and make sure CPU states is unchecked, and nullcpumanagement is also unchecked. That should solve the issue.

The motherboard flashing scared me a bit too, but it really is pretty simple and a good thing to do. Boot into your BIOS and look at the version your MB is working with, as you said hopefully its up to date, but if its not you can do it! The little section I put in about motherboard flashing has a link with in-depth details of how to do it, and while it seems complicated, as you go through the process you'll see its fairly straight forward. You've made it this far, you can do it!

Having all your components hooked up is fine, no need to fret on any of that. This build was done with everything hooked up as well.

If you have any further questions or concerns please feel free to share them, and I'll get back to you as quickly as possible.
 
This is absolutely a beautiful system, but I wonder why you decided to be OK with a 1080p display on a system like this?
I bet its gonna be absolutely amazing on a better display than just 1080p

Here is a quick picture of the new monitor. I'll eventually get my new desk set up and have a more legit set up, for now its still very makeshift.

New monitort.jpg
 
BOOM! Success!! I now have a stable setup thanks to your guide and some of my hunches paying off, except for one little thing that I am about to search the forums for but maybe you can help me. Apparently, my sound device is reportedly not detected according to some logs I happen to be looking through, especially my World or Warcraft logs (as I am an avid fan this was one of the first things I tested). I noticed it because after launching WoW all I got was a black screen to my dismay! Anyways, accoding to the GA-Z97X-GAMING-GT manual, the audio codec for this board IS the ALC1150, so I was glad to check that box in Multibeast, but the second difference between your rig and mine is that I prepared my Unibeast boot USB a while back in prep for doing this and it is Mavericks instead of Yosemite. First off, shouldn't there be native support in Mavericks for this board/audio? Should I just go ahead and upgrade to Yosemite anyway now that my rig is telling me that I have an update (Yosemite) pending? What I was going to try to do is re-run Multibeast and uncheck the sound option and see if I get any love. Oh and by the way, when I look at "About this Mac", it shows the name of my video card and I never downloaded/installed any Web drivers. Should I still look for these drivers because they may be better than the stock drivers that come with the OS? Sorry for all the questions, but I am totally geeked about this whole thing actually working out! :headbang:
 
Congratulations on your progress :thumbup:

I would certainly upgrade to yosemite, but I would also suggest using the latest version of multibeast, it has some worth while changes.

I am not sure if Mavericks has native ALC1150 drivers, but I know that multibeast 7.1.1 works like a champ.

Also, have you checked your sound output options in the "Sound" tab of "System Preferences"? You may find success fiddling with that, I have my speakers plugged into the motherboard and am using the "Internal Speakers" selection for output, none of the other options produce sound for me. Here is a quick picture of what I mean.

sound.png

As for the video card.. You may want to ask about native support vs web drivers in the Graphics section of the Post Installation forum. I would imagine that even with native support, there will be a newer web driver for your card that would help you see even greater performance, but since I have no experience with that card I want to make clear that is only my assumption.

I was getting black screen in WoW for a while myself and tried numerous fixes. The only thing that solved the issue for me was a complete removal of everything Battle.net/WoW and a redownload of everything one at a time with no other programs running. After that process was complete WoW and the other blizzard games I re-downloaded (again, one at a time) worked like a charm. I experience none of the other mac related problems you find on the mac tech support forums.

Best of luck and let me know how your next steps go!
 
Thanks again for the suggestions and the support! I think after I look at the right things this will be a much easier problem to solve. Oh, and yes, my BIOS was rev. F2 and no, I haven't re-flashed just yet! I want to savor a working Mac just a little longer before I head down that road! :lol:

One other thing, I can use the latest MultiBeast after installing with an older version UniBeast? Why even keep all the old versions around then, and on top of that, designate them to a particular version of OS??
 
Anytime DayDaemon,

Yes, you can use a newer multibeast off a previous unibeast install. Unibeast is a tool to create a bootable USB. Multibeast is post installation, its' what actually loads drivers and necessary kexts for the build.

I'm not sure, but I believe previous versions are around because not everyone wants to run the latest OS version, or has the hardware to do so, and previous multibeast versions are specific to an OS version based on what kexts are necessary within that OS. Like I said, I'm not sure, but that is what makes sense to me without looking into it.
 
Nice post, and nice build, love your case, how do you like the motherboard? I was follow your guide line and almost made it until I am trying to install the GTX driver and found out I have Yosemite 10.10.1 :(. Anyone know where I can obtain a copy of Yosemite 10.10.0 or downgrade it?
 
Hi nhat179,

I love my motherboard, it was really easy to build on, things feel secure on it, plenty of space, it looks GREAT, absolutely no complaints.

It shouldn't matter that you are working with 10.10.1. After you download and installed that particular driver you would be asked to update it to the most current version.

Here is the most current version, which is for 10.10.1.

Enjoy!
 
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