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

[ICEVISION]

Impressive single core. Are you overclocking?

Yes, exactly according to this guide

4.2 Ghz

 

[Lorenz_94]

@kgp

Hello, thank for your detailed guide! The last time I've updated my rig was at the time of Yosemite and on my own since there was little to no information around! Now I have a fantastic 10.12.6 rock solid installation! I tagged you to report my results, if you want to add them to your first post.

Specs:
Rampage V Extreme
i7 5960x
16Gb Dominator Platinum C15 2.666mHz
GTX 980 ROG
Thunderbolt EX/II
Samsung 850 raid0 as boot drive

I use bios 3501, the most stable I found until Dicember 2016. I've never upgraded to the newer 3504 or 3701 because I use this pc to work in my Studio and I have no time to test it a lot. What I can say for sure, is that 3402 and 3301 version are very unstable, even without overclock. I preferred to NOT patch the bios. Soon I will upgrade to a GTX 1080 and to a Samsung 960, will report all progress!

Thunderbolt:
Plug your card in the LAST slot of the motherboard (PCIE x8_4, at the bottom) and change your bios settings to:

On
Legacy Mode
Off
Enabled*
Enabled*
On
CPU PCIE Slot
CPU PCIE X8_4

leave the rest alone. With * enabled you can use USB drives without problems and with hot swap.

I currently have 2x UAD Apollo 16 + UAD-2 Quad daisy chained and they work perfect, without any kext rollback like I needed to do in Yosemite.

Geekbech 3 Results:
Benchmarks are even between Mac Os and Windows 10. I reach ~3.600/~37.000 with no OC and my ram set to 2.800 15-17-17-37 (Command Rate AUTO and Rampage Mode 2 - 1,35v).

With overclock at 1,30v I can reach 4,8Ghz with 4,7Ghz cache, ram as above and reach 5.051/39.109.

Anyway, I prefer to work without overlock, I've done this test just to unleash the beast

But I have a little problem:
HWMonitor only shows disks.. I've tried the previous version of the app (6.24), but still no luck. The first time I've enabled thunderbolt, after about 2 minutes in OS X the system rebooted itself without any prompt from me, but since that all is ok. I have tested it with Geekbench's 3 Stress Test for a night (8-9 hours) and everything seems ok.

Boot
Is really fast, but clover "waits" on the apple logo 5-6s before the loading starts.. is that common?

Thank you KGP and thank you all for this super helpful forum!

 

[kgp]

@kgp

Hello, thank for your detailed guide! The last time I've updated my rig was at the time of Yosemite and on my own since there was little to no information around! Now I have a fantastic 10.12.6 rock solid installation! I tagged you to report my results, if you want to add them to your first post.

Specs:
Rampage V Extreme
i7 5960x
16Gb Dominator Platinum C15 2.666mHz
GTX 980 ROG
Thunderbolt EX/II
Samsung 850 raid0 as boot drive

I use bios 3501, the most stable I found until Dicember 2016. I've never upgraded to the newer 3504 or 3701 because I use this pc to work in my Studio and I have no time to test it a lot. What I can say for sure, is that 3402 and 3301 version are very unstable, even without overclock. I preferred to NOT patch the bios. Soon I will upgrade to a GTX 1080 and to a Samsung 960, will report all progress!

Thunderbolt:
Plug your card in the LAST slot of the motherboard (PCIE x8_4, at the bottom) and change your bios settings to:

On
Legacy Mode
Off
Enabled*
Enabled*
On
CPU PCIE Slot
CPU PCIE X8_4

leave the rest alone. With * enabled you can use USB drives without problems and with hot swap.

I currently have 2x UAD Apollo 16 + UAD-2 Quad daisy chained and they works perfect, without any kext rollback like I needed to do in Yosemite.

Geekbech 3 Results:
Benchmarks are even between Mac Os and Windows 10. I reach ~3.600/~37.000 with no OC and my ram set to 2.800 15-17-17-37 (Command Rate AUTO and Rampage Mode 2 - 1,35v).

With overclock at 1,30v I can reach 4,8Ghz with 4,7Ghz cache, ram as above and reach 5.051/39109.

Anyway, I prefer to work without overlock, I've done this test just to unleash the beast

But I have a little problem:
HWMonitor only shows disks.. I've tried the previous version of the app (6.24), but still no luck. The first time I've enabled thunderbolt, after about 2 minutes in OS X the system rebooted itself without any prompt from me, but since that all is ok. I have tested it with Geekbench's 3 Stress Test for a night (8-9 hours) and everything seems ok.

Thank you KGP and thank you all for this super helpful forum!

Tanks for your very positive feedback..

You have to use exactly the HWSensor binaries attached to my post. Copy only the mentioned Sensor Kexts to /EFI/Clover/kexts/10.12. Don't copy the fakeSMC.kext nor the Graphics-Sensor kext! Drop the HWmonitor.app to your Applications folder.

It must work like this!

Cheers,

KGP

 

[Lorenz_94]

Tanks for your very positive feedback..

You have to use exactly the HWSensor binaries attached to my post. Copy only the mentioned Sensor Kexts to /EFI/Clover/kexts/10.12. Don't copy the fakeSMC.kext nor the Graphics-Sensor kext! Drop the HWmonitor.app to your Applications folder.

It must work like this!

Cheers,

KGP

This is exactly what I've done, and the App shows only my SSDs. I found a guy on this thread suggesting to try the previous version and I gave it a try, but with the same results. This is not something I need, but it can help for sure..

I would take advantage of your reply to ask you if its normal at the boot stage that clover "hangs" on the apple logo a bunch of seconds before the loading bar starts to be filled! I've never experienced this.. all bios settings and other stuff are exactly as you described. Thank you.

 

[kgp]

This is exactly what I've done, and the App shows only my SSDs. I found a guy on this thread suggesting to try the previous version and I gave it a try, but with the same results. This is not something I need, but it can help for sure..

I would take advantage of your reply to ask you if its normal at the boot stage that clover "hangs" on the apple logo a bunch of seconds before the loading bar starts to be filled! I've never experienced this.. all bios settings and other stuff are exactly as you described. Thank you.

It does not hang, it just initiallizes drivers.. thats normal

 

[Synth1980]

Pre-latest release on binaries solves this but now I have random reboots. FakeSMC is 100% from kexts.zip, not the included from binaries one.
Does anybody have this in a SystemLog, in Console

com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.bsd.dirhelper[1264]): Endpoint has been activated through legacy launch(3) APIs. Please switch to XPC or bootstrap_check_in(): com.apple.bsd.dirhelper

I have a lot of this messages. But not sure was it before HWSensors or after.

 

[kgp]

Pre-latest release on binaries solves this but now I have random reboots. FakeSMC is 100% from kexts.zip, not the included from binaries one.
Does anybody have this in a SystemLog, in Console

com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.bsd.dirhelper[1264]): Endpoint has been activated through legacy launch(3) APIs. Please switch to XPC or bootstrap_check_in(): com.apple.bsd.dirhelper

I have a lot of this messages. But not sure was it before HWSensors or after.

Then remove HWSensor to check!

 

[Synth1980]

Then remove HWSensor to check!

Already done!
Reboots are now less frequent but still happens while I am in Abode After Effects. In idle, system seems to stay forever.
No errors in log =(

kgp can you please share your latest working config?
I am a bit confused with those kernel patches. I will try to update 10.12.5 -> 10.12.6 then.
Thanks!

 

[Creative-Minded]

not really a week,
as you have everything tested with a 2696v4 on it and it is only a tiny mod considering the base of this guide
I will say: 2 hours to have a stable Hack Pro

with last bios + the mod i had to do...
the 2696 v4 will be pretty happy

with 2 EVGA GTX 1080Ti
it will be great to see results,
on benchmark the Pascal ones are above the Maxwell (Open CL etc etc)

but strangely, PUGET System (known as professional shop and super in term of benches they do)
they shows that on Premiere pro, on W$10
the gain between a TITAN X Pascal and a Maxwell is only 3% more

strange
and would like to know if it is cause the Premiere pro is not optimized for Pascal (which I doubt a lot)
or cause the Pascal is only a benchmark graphic card (optimized for it)
like the Ryzen which on paper kills everything and on a real case: people cry to have one cause not so much gain than old gen. Intel

Maybe a mis communnication, I mean that I have done the install a week ago but what you say 2 hours it's done

I have received the E5-2696 v4 today and installed it without updating the bios, works but see in the bios only 18 active cores ¿
When booting I get stuck on a black screen, I have tried to add the frequency vectors manually + AGDPFix 1.3 + reinstall nvidia web drivers but nothing works

Only with the flag "nvidia_disable=1" I reach the OS and see with HWMonitor also not 22 cores..
Have done the change: VoodooTSCSync: IOCPUNumber -> 43 and installed it in UEFI->Clover->Kexts->10.12

Strange but when I remove the clover flag: nvidia_drv=1 it boots without nvidia web drivers but can't change OSX or Nvidia driver support

 

[GDS]

I know this problem

so:

1/ u wil never see more than 18 cores in the bios (u dont care by the way)

2/ for now if you want to boot without problem: do not activate HT in bios you will have only 22 cores and 22 threads
but the Nvidia web driver will work

if you can boot normally with only 22 cores
I know where is the problem
and will let u know how to do

good luck

Maybe a mis communnication, I mean that I have done the install a week ago but what you say 2 hours it's done

I have received the E5-2696 v4 today and installed it without updating the bios, works but see in the bios only 18 active cores ¿
When booting I get stuck on a black screen, I have tried to add the frequency vectors manually + AGDPFix 1.3 + reinstall nvidia web drivers but nothing works

Only with the flag "nvidia_disable=1" I reach the OS and see with HWMonitor also not 22 cores..
Have done the change: VoodooTSCSync: IOCPUNumber -> 43 and installed it in UEFI->Clover->Kexts->10.12

Strange but when I remove the clover flag: nvidia_drv=1 it boots without nvidia web drivers but can't change OSX or Nvidia driver support