Updating an old friend

[rxninja]

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3
CPU: Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge Quad-Core 3.4GHz
Current Graphics: EVGA GeForce GTX 570 (Fermi) DirectX 11 012-P3-1570-AR 1280MB 320-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express
Monitor: Apple Cinema Display w/ DisplayPort adapter
Current OS: 10.7.5 (Target OS: 10.12 Sierra)

I've had this machine for five years now and I'm finally hitting the point where I truly need to update my OS. In doing so, it occurs to me that if I want to update any hardware, now is the time since I'll likely be wiping the machine to install 10.12 Sierra. I don't see a way to update that doesn't involve starting from scratch, plus it's a good opportunity to wipe my Windows partition that I'm not going to be using anymore.

If I'm going to update any hardware at all, what I really need is a new graphics card, I think. It's a development machine (running Illustrator, Photoshop, and Unity at the same time, usually) and I feel like it could use a bit of a graphics boost at this point. Messing with the processor seems costly and risky when it's served me very well so far, so I think dollar for dollar a new graphics card would probably serve me best.

I've been referencing this page https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/april/2017#Graphics_Cards but I'm just not sure if my machine is too old for compatibility to be current and accurate with that list. I'm leaning towards something like the GTX 1070/1080, especially with the fully supported NVIDIA acceleration now; would such a thing even play nice with what I've got set up already? What should I be looking out for?

This is perhaps a foolhardy update, but it's also what I've got right now. My OS won't even let me use the latest versions of Slack and Gmail because I can't update my web browsers, so if there's a good hardware update I can do I'd like to do it now.

Thanks!

 

[trs96]

Do you have UEFI or Legacy BIOS on your old Z68X ? If you still have legacy, keep it and follow this guide for Sierra.
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...-z68x-ud3h-hd-6850.64951/page-13#post-1373211
The UEFI updates for Z68X motherboards have not always worked well with newer versions of macOS. Also I would think that a GTX 1060 would be perfectly adequate for your graphics needs. A 1080 would certainly be overkill for your system. No reason why any of the Pascal cards shouldn't work with your system if you're on Sierra 10.12.4 and have installed the web drivers.

 

[rxninja]

Do you have UEFI or Legacy BIOS on your old Z68X ? If you still have legacy, keep it and follow this guide for Sierra.
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...-z68x-ud3h-hd-6850.64951/page-13#post-1373211
The UEFI updates for Z68X motherboards have not always worked well with newer versions of macOS. Also I would think that a GTX 1060 would be perfectly adequate for your graphics needs. A 1080 would certainly be overkill for your system. No reason why any of the Pascal cards shouldn't work with your system if you're on Sierra 10.12.4 and have installed the web drivers.

I honestly don't know if I'm using UEFI or Legacy and google searching for how to find that information out was unhelpful (it all points to Windows walkthroughs). The guide you linked makes it sound like I might not need to wipe my machine; is that accurate or is that only if you're installing on a fresh drive and migrating applications from a drive using an older OS?

The 1060 Windforce was on my radar and it's at a good price point, so I'm probably going to go with that after your recommendation.

 

[trs96]

If you never updated the BIOS to UEFI you are booting legacy/BIOS. If not sure boot into the BIOS and see which version is installed. If you are on F9 or F10 or even something lower then you have Legacy BIOS and not UEFI.

Stork's brief Sierra install guide is for a clean install. Not an upgrade from something older. I'd suggest you get a new 120 GB or larger SSD and do a trial install of Sierra on it. That way all your programs and data on the other drive remain intact.

 

[rxninja]

I seem to be stuck. I installed new hardware (added a broadcom network card, a new 256GB SSD, and switched from a GTX 570 to a Windforce 1060), but I can't get it to boot from the bootstick.

I made the stick using the legacy BIOS guide for Sierra and I've been working from the Stork Son-of-Zorro guide, but now it keeps going to a screen I've never seen before. Hitting Continue loops back to the same screen.

I made sure the boot priority was USB first and first boot device was USB-HDD, but that didn't seem to make a difference. It shows the Gigabyte screen where I can hit DEL to go to BIOS settings, then it shows "Loading operating system..." and then goes to the screen in the photo attached.

EDIT: Moving the USB stick to a different USB port did the trick. I don't know why, but that's what it took.

 

[rxninja]

For anyone searching this in the future trying to do something similar:
1. I installed all of the new hardware (network card, new SSD, graphics card swap) all at once, then used the USB stick to install Sierra as a fresh install on the new SSD.
2. The exact USB port used for the boot stick mattered and I don't know why.
3. The SSD I bought is the first drive I've ever bought that didn't have a SATA cable. It's a stupid detail, but it took me literally all day to find one, since computer repair shops close in the early evening. I had to get one the next day after checking Best Buy (they stock one SATA cable and it's a wide profile that doesn't allow a power cable to fit on a drive), Target, Staples, Office Max, Wal-Mart, the Apple store, GameStop, and K-Mart.
4. Disabling the USB 3.0 settings in the BIOS was CRITICAL. It's briefly mentioned in Stork's guide but it's the only true show-stopper that just completely made my computer not boot up at all. Don't skip that step on accident!
5. I'm still working on getting the computer to remember to check "Use Web Drivers" instead of "Inject Nvidia" but when the setting is checked manually everything works perfectly. It's a beautiful piece of hardware.

 

[P1LGRIM]

I'm still working on getting the computer to remember to check "Use Web Drivers" instead of "Inject Nvidia" but when the setting is checked manually everything works perfectly.

Problem 6.

 

[rxninja]

Problem 6 was my first guess, too, but nothing there did anything. Swapping drives out and coming back to the original configuration made EFI Mounter appropriately detect the latest OS install and that's what revealed the config.plist file that needed to be edited.