The Perfect Customac-Pro: X99-A II, i7-6950X, 128GB G.Skill TridentZ, Aorus GTX 1080 TI Xtreme

[dogmaphobic]

Busy night ahead...

 

[kgp]

View attachment 248399

Busy night ahead...

Wooowww!! I see a 2TB NVMe 960 PRO and drives with 24 TB in total!!! Awesome !!!

Good luck!!! Let us know if you succeed!

 

[dogmaphobic]

First note on the X99 Deluxe II. The address of the (Internal) M.2 NVME device is different. In my case, instead of "_SB.PCI0.BR1B.H000" it is "_SB.PCI0.BR2D.H000". Here is the source and compiled aml (It worked perfectly with the 960 Pro 2T):

DefinitionBlock ("", "SSDT", 2, "hack", "NVMe-Pcc", 0x00000000)
{
    External (_SB.PCI0.BR2D.H000, DeviceObj)    // (from opcode)
    Method (_SB.PCI0.BR2D.H000._DSM, 4, NotSerialized)  // _DSM: Device-Specific Method
    {
        If (LNot (Arg2))
        {
            Return (Buffer (One)
            {
                 0x03
            })
        }

        Return (Package (0x04)
        {
            "class-code",
            Buffer (0x04)
            {
                 0xFF, 0x08, 0x01, 0x00
            },

            "built-in",
            Buffer (One)
            {
                 0x00
            }
        })
    }
}

 

[dogmaphobic]

Overall the build went quite straight forward following this recipe to the letter. Besides having to fix the NVMe address, the only issue I had was once going through the “An Idiot’s Guide To iMessage” and generating a valid serial number, UUID, etc. it messed up the code signature for a few applications, including Safari (Webkit). What I did was to get the generated config.plist (and all the other changes up to that point), install it on the USB Install disk (replacing whatever was there) and start over the process of installing macOS. From there, I used the same the configuration in the USB EFI, including config.plist, which already contained all the settings for the board and installed it on the boot disk. As the OS was installed using the right, properly configured serial number, UUID, etc. it all went fine from there and it all worked.

I ended up with 3 boot disks for redundancy. The main boot disk is the Samsung NVMe (this alone was the main reason to give up on my old 5,1). I added a 2TB WD with a CarbonCopy task scheduled to mount it, clone the boot disk and umount it. That happens once a day. And finally, a small 120G SSD which has a full 10.12.4 install and I called it “CloverBoot”. That’s my emergency, recovery disk, also set to start not mounted. As I had another extra 2TB WD disk, I set the second one as the Time Machine disk.

I have yet to configure the RAID 5. I will do that tomorrow.

The build:

1 x Intel Core i7-6950X
1 x SAMSUNG 960 PRO M.2 2TB NVMe PCI-Express 3.0 x4
4 x HGST Deskstar NAS 3.5" 6TB
1 x G.SKILL TridentZ Series 64GB (8 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3300 (PC4 26400)
1 x Corsair Hydro Series H100i V2 Extreme Performance Water / Liquid CPU Cooler

The rest I used stuff I already had, including a GeForce GTX 980TI

P.S. What's up with this motherboard? It looks like a mariachi band with all those silly, flashing LEDs.

 

[dogmaphobic]

@kgp Your work was a HUGE time saver. It took "only" six hours from unboxing the stuff to a fully installed and functional system. Thank you!

 

[kgp]

Overall the build went quite straight forward following this recipe to the letter. Besides having to fix the NVMe address, the only issue I had was once going through the “An Idiot’s Guide To iMessage” and generating a valid serial number, UUID, etc. it messed up the code signature for a few applications, including Safari (Webkit). What I did was to get the generated config.plist (and all the other changes up to that point), install it on the USB Install disk (replacing whatever was there) and start over the process of installing macOS. From there, I used the same the configuration in the USB EFI, including config.plist, which already contained all the settings for the board and installed it on the boot disk. As the OS was installed using the right, properly configured serial number, UUID, etc. it all went fine from there and it all worked.

I ended up with 3 boot disks for redundancy. The main boot disk is the Samsung NVMe (this alone was the main reason to give up on my old 5,1). I added a 2TB WD with a CarbonCopy task scheduled to mount it, clone the boot disk and umount it. That happens once a day. And finally, a small 120G SSD which has a full 10.12.4 install and I called it “CloverBoot”. That’s my emergency, recovery disk, also set to start not mounted. As I had another extra 2TB WD disk, I set the second one as the Time Machine disk.

I have yet to configure the RAID 5. I will do that tomorrow.

The build:

1 x Intel Core i7-6950X
1 x SAMSUNG 960 PRO M.2 2TB NVMe PCI-Express 3.0 x4
4 x HGST Deskstar NAS 3.5" 6TB
1 x G.SKILL TridentZ Series 64GB (8 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3300 (PC4 26400)
1 x Corsair Hydro Series H100i V2 Extreme Performance Water / Liquid CPU Cooler

The rest I used stuff I already had, including a GeForce GTX 980TI

View attachment 248475


P.S. What's up with this motherboard? It looks like a mariachi band with all those silly, flashing LEDs.

Great that you succeeded with build and guide. Flashing LEDs of the board can be controlled via the mobo-BIOS. You can choose a static led configuration, change colors or switch-off the mobo-LEDs at all. The mariachi band mode chosen by ASUS for the factory-settings was also not my personal front runner

 

[kgp]

@kgp Your work was a HUGE time saver. It took "only" six hours from unboxing the stuff to a fully installed and functional system. Thank you!

Great that you succeeded with build and guide. And everything within some reasonable time. There might be people not succeeding with a fully installed, stable and functional build within a lifetime. Thus, your six hours might be negligible in comparison .

 

[kgp]

!! Less than 4 hours left until official AORUS lift-off!! ​

T -03:58:40


​

 

[dogmaphobic]

Hmmm... I built a RAID 5 through the BIOS (Intel Rapid Storage). 4 drives on sata 1,2,3,4, which are set to RAID. Other (normal, non RAID) drives on sata 7,8,9,10. macOS will not see it. It doesn't show at all. Any clues?

Is the RAID truly built instantaneously? I've never seen that. It usually takes hours to build a RAID 5. Given that there is no indication that is being built (it shows as ready), I'm assuming it should be, as it says, ready.

P.S. Forgot to mention, Wifi and BT4 worked out-of-the-box as native Wifi and AirDrop working. Thanks @Thireus !

 

[flmmkr]

This really is an excellent build. Thank you for posting. On the X99-A II and X99-Deluxe II are:

1) all the USB 3.0 ports working and at 3.0 speeds (5Gbps)? I would expect 400-500MB/s read/write rates.
2) the USB 3.1 gen 2 ports working at 3.1 gen 2 speeds (10Gbps)? I would expect 700-800MB/s

I'm considering building a new hackintosh with one of those motherboards, using this guide, and those ports are crucial for me. Thanks!