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[Updated] Stork's Thunderbolt Build: i5-3570K | GA-Z77X-UP5-TH | GTX 760

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I am not sure the "latest" BIOS for that motherboard includes NMVe drivers.
I have the GA-77X-UP5-TH motherboard and it's "latest" BIOS does not NOT include NVMe drivers in UEFI.
I have a modified BIOS which has that driver included.

So before you buy an NMVe drive and PCIe adapter, make sure you have a BIOS that has the NMVe driver.
Modified BIOS is flashed at your own risk ;)

I have Sabrent 1TB NVMe drive and works great on my motherboard.
I have been booting my GA-Z77X-UD5H with the latest official bios (see signature) for 10 months without issues. I am using a Intel 660 1TB NVMe.

More here: https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...geforce-gtx-660-ti.70530/page-60#post-2082384

I read it could be done on a UD5H by reading a few confirmation posts on the internet, such as this post:
https://www.tweaktownforum.com/forum/tech-support-from-vendors/gigabyte/65111-ga-z77x-ud5h-f16j-2017-11-14with-nvme-support?p=748524#post748524

and only with Ivy Bridge.
 
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I have been booting my GA-Z77X-UD5H with the latest official bios (see signature) for 10 months without issues. I am using a Intel 660 iTB NVMe.

More here: https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...geforce-gtx-660-ti.70530/page-60#post-2082384

I read it could be done on a UD5H by reading a few confirmation posts on the internet, such as this post:
https://www.tweaktownforum.com/forum/tech-support-from-vendors/gigabyte/65111-ga-z77x-ud5h-f16j-2017-11-14with-nvme-support?p=748524#post748524

and only with Ivy Bridge.

That's cool.
The point I was making was to make sure there's a BIOS that can directly boot from the NVMe.
The tweaktownforum link quotes one user "I use a custom bootloader from a 36mb fat32 partition on my Sata SSD to allow me to boot to Windows on NVME. It basicly injects the nvme module into the uefi on every boot as i cant edit the bios due to being signed by intel".
That is NOT direct booting off the NMVe.

Direct booting is ideal but not necessary if you have another drive (SATA) as the the boot drive (with either Clover or OpenCore as the boot loader). Both Clover and OpenCore can inject an NMVe EFI driver that will allow booting any OS on the NVMe drive.
 
That's cool.
The point I was making was to make sure there's a BIOS that can directly boot from the NVMe.
The tweaktownforum link quotes one user "I use a custom bootloader from a 36mb fat32 partition on my Sata SSD to allow me to boot to Windows on NVME. It basicly injects the nvme module into the uefi on every boot as i cant edit the bios due to being signed by intel".
That is NOT direct booting off the NMVe.

Direct booting is ideal but not necessary if you have another drive (SATA) as the the boot drive (with either Clover or OpenCore as the boot loader). Both Clover and OpenCore can inject an NMVe EFI driver that will allow booting any OS on the NVMe drive.
While there were many conflicting reports when I did my research last winter, I was trying to link to the post above the one you quoted, that states that it is possible that it works with just the official firmware:

Re: GA-Z77X-UD5H F16j 2017/11/14 with NVMe support?


Originally posted by yesnaby View Post
I have a GA-Z77X-UD5H motherboard working with a Samsung EVO 960 1 TB NVME SSD as boot drive with Windows 7, 64-bit.

It's only work with Ivybridge i7 3770k (not working with Sandybridge i7 2700k) because both intel and gigabyte has told me that pci-e 3.0 x4 is only work with ivybridge for NVMe but not work with sandybridge because the sandybridge don't not support pci-e 3.0 x4 as it only support pci-e 2.0 x4 (NVMe will work for storage only but limit to halves of the speed)

so I tried it and am merely reporting my success in my configuration (below in my signature).

I know this is a thread about a different mobo, but, I was responding here to a post about the Z77-UD5H mobo. I am just confirming for other Z77-UD5H users, some of whom watch this thread, since the UD5H threads seem to be mostly quiet and Stork has been such a wealth of information (Thank you Stork!), that other UD5H users like me, wind up reading here too.
 
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I am not sure the "latest" BIOS for that motherboard includes NMVe drivers.
I have the GA-77X-UP5-TH motherboard and it's "latest" BIOS does not NOT include NVMe drivers in UEFI.
I have a modified BIOS which has that driver included.

So before you buy an NMVe drive and PCIe adapter, make sure you have a BIOS that has the NMVe driver.
Modified BIOS is flashed at your own risk ;)

I have Sabrent 1TB NVMe drive and works great on my motherboard.
Hey macnb, have you been able to get this Z77 board to work with the HD400 and an (RX580) dGPU?
 
Hey macnb, have you been able to get this Z77 board to work with the HD400 and an (RX580) dGPU?

I have turned off IGPU in the BIOS and use iMacPro1,1 system ID.
This was so that videos can decode HEVC and FCPX can encode H.264 videos.
With HD4000 enabled (even as connector-less), it uses the CPU to decode video and RX580 is totally ignored. HD4000 is used to decode H.264 but that's not a big deal.
Now I can decode & encode H.264 using the RX580 and decode HEVC.
HEVC encode "appears" to happen but partially on the CPU and partially on the RX580.

Recently I have experimented setting the system ID to MacPro7,1 and that appears to work well too.

I have both 10.15.6 and 11.1 and boot via OC 0.6.4
 
I have turned off IGPU in the BIOS and use iMacPro1,1 system ID.
This was so that videos can decode HEVC and FCPX can encode H.264 videos.
With HD4000 enabled (even as connector-less), it uses the CPU to decode video and RX580 is totally ignored. HD4000 is used to decode H.264 but that's not a big deal.
Now I can decode & encode H.264 using the RX580 and decode HEVC.
HEVC encode "appears" to happen but partially on the CPU and partially on the RX580.

Recently I have experimented setting the system ID to MacPro7,1 and that appears to work well too.

I have both 10.15.6 and 11.1 and boot via OC 0.6.4
Thank you for the response. I was using the iMac Pro 1,1 as well and didn't like it. Seemed finicky to me. Do you feel/think/believe OC is better than Clover?
 
Thank you for the response. I was using the iMac Pro 1,1 as well and didn't like it. Seemed finicky to me. Do you feel/think/believe OC is better than Clover?

The issue with using an "unnatural" model id (such as iMacPro1,1 or MacPro7,1) for Ivy Bridge system is power management. One has to go through hoops to regain some control (CPUFriend). Even, then I have never seen the system idle down to 1.6GHz Low Freq Mode (LFM). It averages around 2.2 Ghz according to Intel Power gadget.
Like I said, I recently tried MacPro7,1 and "seems" better at power management (CPU idles at around 7.5W). However, with this new ID I get the annoying warning message pop-up about using more than maximum memory configuration allowed for MacPro7,1 (but not affect perfomance/functionality). There are work arounds (See Dortania guides) but not perfect.

I have switched to OC (when it was 0.5.7). What I like from the go about OC is it is documented and the configuration doc keeps up with every little change - unlike Clover. And this shows that OC appears to be developed by real s/w devs as opposed to hackers (no disrespect to them without whom we would not have Hackintosh's). The code is well documented & modular too. It is tightly controlled by one or two devs which may upset some but appears to work well as they do not deviate too much from their original goal/intent. But they do listen to users (e.g. added basic GUI to the boot loader which is not finished but works well).

Yes it is harder to configure than Clover as it is a Swiss Knife. Clover hides a lot under the hood. E.g. for the those supported Nvidia GPU's, there's NO Inject Nvidia equivalent in OC but instead you have use use Device Properties (or an SSDT) to create a "manual inject". So with OC you are in charge of having to know your system well and configuring it. Even with the configuration doc it is not easy but once you master the basics of "why" you need a certain setting or "quirk", you'll soon build up knowledge. It is definitely a big step up from Clover.

It emulates Apple EFI better than Clover does; e.g. holding Opt key to display boot GUI just like a real Mac, choose Startup Disk from sys pref allowing to switch to Windows on restart and if you installed Bootcamp assistance on Windows, you can switch back to macOS...just like a real Mac. Even real Mac user users are using OC.
I have even installed OC on my Legacy Dell 530 which has Snow Leopard, Yosemite, Mojave and Catalina and it boots them all in less than 30 seconds (way quicker than Clover). Dortania Guides have grown and matured with OC and there's a wealth of info out there (BTW, my links to those guides seem to get blocked by this site).

Though we do not have long life on our hacks (sigh) anymore, it's worth switching to OC.
 
I recently tried MacPro7,1 and "seems" better at power management (CPU idles at around 7.5W). However, with this new ID I get the annoying warning message pop-up about using more than maximum memory configuration allowed for MacPro7,1 (but not affect perfomance/functionality).
The 6,1 Mac Pro SMBIOS is still supported in Big Sur and gives you Ivy Bridge CPU PM, try it out. You'll also need the CPU PM ssdt.aml file in your OC ACPI folder to get working power management.

The Late 2013 Mac Pros used Ivy Bridge EP Xeons. PM works the same way in Ivy Bridge Core i CPUs like a 3770K.
The E5-1620 V2 is a slightly higher base clock 3770K without an iGPU and with support for ECC memory.

Screen Shot 3.jpg


i7-3770K
Screen Shot 11.jpg
 
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The 6,1 Mac Pro SMBIOS is still supported in Big Sur and gives you Ivy Bridge CPU PM, try it out. You'll also need the CPU PM ssdt.aml file in your OC ACPI folder to get working power management.

The Late 2013 Mac Pros used Ivy Bridge EP Xeons. PM works the same way in Ivy Bridge Core i CPUs like a 3770K.
The E5-1620 V2 is a slightly higher base clock 3770K without an iGPU and with support for ECC memory.

View attachment 502576

i7-3770K
View attachment 502589

Thx for the reminder on Ivy Bridge. Yes I have tried MacPro6,1 with an SSDT.aml generated with Pike Alpha's script. It's result for me are similar to MacPro7,1 for PM. Even though the real MacPro6,1 uses an AMD GPU (FirePro), I still could not get that ID to decode/encode HEVC in h/w nor H.264 using FCPX with RX580. The CPU would max out. The best ID I found that works well for FCPX to utilise the RX580 was iMacPro1,1 (and now MacPro7,1). The problem is more to do with the FCPX App itself "choosing" what to use for it's encode/decode.

Actually, the best OS/App/Model ID combo I found for FCPX was iMac13,2, Mojave with FCPX 10.4.5 which utilises the RX580 well. When Apple upgraded FCPX to 10.4.8, they disabled h/w encode/decode for Ellesmere GPU's :crazy: Many real Mac users with eGPU's complained but Apple didn't care and now effectively have dumped eGPU support. Currently, I have been experimenting FCPX 10.5.1+11.1+MacPro7,1 and that seems work almost as good as 10.4.5+10.14.6+iMac13,2.


So for me, the choice of which Model ID to use is more to do with getting FCPX to work well rather than PM.
 
Thx for the reminder on Ivy Bridge. Yes I have tried MacPro6,1 with an SSDT.aml generated with Pike Alpha's script. It's result for me are similar to MacPro7,1 for PM. Even though the real MacPro6,1 uses an AMD GPU (FirePro), I still could not get that ID to decode/encode HEVC in h/w nor H.264 using FCPX with RX580. The CPU would max out. The best ID I found that works well for FCPX to utilise the RX580 was iMacPro1,1 (and now MacPro7,1). The problem is more to do with the FCPX App itself "choosing" what to use for it's encode/decode.

Actually, the best OS/App/Model ID combo I found for FCPX was iMac13,2, Mojave with FCPX 10.4.5 which utilises the RX580 well. When Apple upgraded FCPX to 10.4.8, they disabled h/w encode/decode for Ellesmere GPU's :crazy: Many real Mac users with eGPU's complained but Apple didn't care and now effectively have dumped eGPU support. Currently, I have been experimenting FCPX 10.5.1+11.1+MacPro7,1 and that seems work almost as good as 10.4.5+10.14.6+iMac13,2.


So for me, the choice of which Model ID to use is more to do with getting FCPX to work well rather than PM.
This is exactly what my issues were in the past with this build. If I used an AMD card with WhateversGreen.kext there was always an issue with FCPX picking the right h.264 encode/decode platform. But I changed my dGPU to a GTX650 and I am more than happy with the way FCPX performs. Maybe down the line I will upgrade to a K5000 or K5200 if I need more performance from this computer. :)
 
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