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UtterDisbelief CL - Z370M-D3H, i3-8350K, RX560, 16GB, High Sierra

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How is your sleep/wake working? I have a very similar build, and it wakes approximately every 5 minutes, then goes back to sleep. It seems to be a USB issue. Does yours do this?
 
How is your sleep/wake working? I have a very similar build, and it wakes approximately every 5 minutes, then goes back to sleep. It seems to be a USB issue. Does yours do this?

Hi there.

No, everything works fine. Either manually putting the rig to sleep or leaving it to its own devices. Pressing a key brings it back.

I am not someone who leaves it in sleep mode for long, usually. Only when necessary, so I haven't tested overnight, for example.

I did have some USB problems and this was down to the BlueTooth adapter polling the port, but creating a SSDT USB config for the system cured that (motherboard headers need a special setting etc).

:)
 
Hi there.

No, everything works fine. Either manually putting the rig to sleep or leaving it to its own devices. Pressing a key brings it back.


:)

Thanks for that. I think I'm going to try a reinstall. My install is a bit evolved so it might improve things.

Have you had any UI slowdowns or freezes? I have a couple of times, possibly related to safari. I didn't have this when I was using UHD630 but it's started happening with the RX560 installed.

I think it's to do with video acceleration. I have the IGP still enabled with a connectionless platform id.
 
Thanks for that. I think I'm going to try a reinstall. My install is a bit evolved so it might improve things.

Have you had any UI slowdowns or freezes? I have a couple of times, possibly related to safari. I didn't have this when I was using UHD630 but it's started happening with the RX560 installed.

I think it's to do with video acceleration. I have the IGP still enabled with a connectionless platform id.

Hi there.

No again, I'm afraid. No slow-downs or freezes. All as smooth as butter. However I have iGPU set to Auto in BIOS so when the O/S kicks-in it is basically invisible and not there. I don't have a rendering requirement etc. I understand a lot of Pro software works better with your config though.

Maybe try turning-off the iGPU or setting to Auto yourself. Although the rendering might suffer you should be able to tell if general smoothness is improved etc?

:)
 
It seems to be when photos tries to encode video into hevc, not to do with safari. I will perhaps try without integrated GPU tomorrow.

I don’t really do anything special other than run parallels. I’d like photos to work though. And a system I can trust.
 
It seems to be when photos tries to encode video into hevc, not to do with safari. I will perhaps try without integrated GPU tomorrow.

I don’t really do anything special other than run parallels. I’d like photos to work though. And a system I can trust.

Well good luck with the test.

I run Parallels too and have no problems with it :thumbup:

Yes, I think there's been a lot of discussion hereabouts about needing the iGPU headless, to enable 'hevc' encoding.

:)
 
Update - NEW BUILD - August 2018

I have just resurrected UtterDisbelief CL after having previously dismantled it, sold many of the parts and built the new UtterDisbelief Black Coffee.

However, I discovered I preferred the M-ATX format and a smaller, silver case. Black Coffee was a serious and sombre affair, built in the kind of case a professional might choose for video editing or sound mixing. It had plenty of space for add-on cards such as Thunderbolt and Firewire (should the need arise). The onboard ALC1220 sound was very good too as was the vast number of SATA and USB ports. But I wasn't going to use them ...

This meant I had to import a new case from Germany again. The company I used was great. This model just isn't available in the UK any more; maybe my friends in the US will find it more readily. However, I’m glad we are still a part of Europe because it couldn’t have been easier. The case was ordered on Wednesday afternoon and arrived on my doorstep on Saturday morning. The cost of delivery was only about $12. (If anyone tells you isolationism is a good idea I would use this great experience as proof it isn’t).

Lian1.jpg
Lian2.jpg
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Lian4.jpg
Lian5.jpg
Lian6.jpg
Lian7.jpg
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Lian10.jpg


You’ll notice from the string of photos of the new/rebuild that there are four points worth making -

1) The PSU 8-pin connector to the top of the motherboard is a bit fiddly with the Corsair’s flat cabling. Normally their slim profile is useful but for this particular location I would much prefer round braided cabling. I’ll keep an eye out for this on any new PSU purchase.

2) The rear bracket for the CPU cooler cannot be fitted if the motherboard is in place. You need to fit it beforehand. Two ways to do this, either build up the motherboard with cooler and memory attached and then slot the assembly in, or use a couple of screws to hold the backplate in position while you screw the motherboard down. I used Arctic Silver 5 thermal compound between CPU and heatsink.

3) Still with the cooler, its heat-pipes only just clear the inside of the side panel. There is probably 4 or 5mm in reality but it’s not easy to measure when the case is closed.

4) I change the rear fan grill every time I use this case. Lian-Li supply a fine metal mesh, held in place with plastic push-clips. I prefer to use a conventional 80mm circular fan-grill held in place with Allen-headed countersunk screw and nuts, as it lets through more air, direct from that big air cooler.

Once built the PC needed testing and fine-tuning again. I used my High Sierra install SSD from Black Coffee. I currently have four SSDs with macOS on them but the one from Black Coffee was the most up-to-date in all respects.

It booted first time - and as I expected with no sound or USB. At least the hardware was working. To rectify the problems I used my UniBeast stick to boot the system then chose the High Sierra install from the Clover menu. This bypassed my Black Coffee configuration and opened-up all the USB ports. Once I was at the desktop with a working mouse and keyboard I mounted the EFI partition and removed my Black Coffee SSD_USB configuration and replaced it with the CL version. (There's a copy of the template in an earlier post on this thread). I also copied back its config.plist and EFI contents.

Finally before rebooting without UniBeast I re-installed the correct ALC892 audio support using MultiBeast 10.3.

Happily on reboot everything was working perfectly as before.

You have to keep moving if you want to stand still around here ;)

:)
 
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Update - Mojave

I had downloaded the Mojave installer as soon as it was available on the App Store but didn't install straight away and instead kept an eye on the relevant forums here to check how people were faring with it.

It seemed to me that there were a lot of problems. Initially I thought it was about 50-50 but then I realised maybe a lot of people had successful upgrades but weren't writing the process up. Maybe it was easier than than I thought...

I took the plunge last night and here goes:

First thing I did was update Clover to the latest. A "problem" straight away. I now had the Christmas theme on my boot selector! This had happened once before a long time ago, due to a BIOS clock reset. I checked this again but no, everything was as it should be. I rolled-back my Clover install and this seems to have worked. I had installed 4674, so used MultiBeast 10.4 to replace it with 4630. The Christmas theme was at least gone now.

The installation took probably 15-20 minutes with about three reboots along the way. Once done I now have four boot options: Preboot, install Preboot, Boot my SSD and Recovery. It looks messier than before but I just let it timeout to my SSD and it boots.

No audio. **Important point - once Mojave has installed go to your System/Library/Extensions folder and back-up the AppleHDA.kext so you have an untouched copy somewhere safe in case you need it in future.

This gets complicated. Sorry, but it's probably worth sticking with me for a surprising conclusion ...

My motherboard has ALC892 and checking the forums shows this is causing problems.

I removed all audio patches from my config.plist and uninstalled realtekALC.kext, before I got down to things.

First up I tried using the now preferred AppleALC/Lilu kexts solution. Sadly this did not work. I tried installing them in different locations - EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other, L/E, S/L/E but none of them produced any sound devices. Obviously I rebuilt my kext caches between trials.

I read that Apple have deprecated a lot of Audio ID layouts but my usual one - 2 - was still supported. I did try a couple of others just in case but this made no difference.

Encouragingly I *was* getting sound from my RX560 GPU via HDMI though. That happened with no problem at all. Clearly the default macOS drivers for RX560 work well.

With the Lilu/AppleALC kexts in my EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other folder, and feeling adventurous (or reckless), I also installed the VooDooHDA.kext in L/E. Oddly this duplication of code effort actually worked but I detected a fair bit of "crackle" sneaking in to playback audio.

The final solution, the one that worked completely, went against the latest guidance not to use MultiBeast 10.4. More out of frustration than anything else, I decided to give it another try "just in case". I had already removed any previous patches from my config.plist and re-installed the vanilla AppleHDA.kext in S/L/E. I had also removed realtekALC.kext from L/E and rebuilt my kext-caches. Then I used MultiBeast to add all the necessary config patches and install for ALC892. And held my breath.

The result is that, using MultiBeast 10.4 on Mojave against advice, audio is back and working properly as it did previously.

So that's the Mojave upgrade completed ...

Well not quite
... Preview and Quicklook were not working for JPG/JPEG files

There is a thread about this here and I've posted the solution there too.

How it was Solved (thanks to @vulgo for pointing me in the right direction). I now would recommend Method 3 of the following, but have left the others in out of interest.

Method 1:

1) Navigate to the System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/AppleVPA.framework/Versions/A/Resources folder and open the Info.plist with your favourite plain-text editor (Textedit is fine).

2) Locate your own Board ID from the SMBIOS section of your config.plist

3) Search through the Info.plist you've opened (above) for your Board ID. If you find it, back-up the Info.plist in case anything goes wrong, then delete the <key> that contains it and the <dict> ... </dict> below it.

For example:
<key>Mac-123456789ABCDE</key>
<dict>
<key>forceOfflineRenderer</key>
<true/>
<key>jpeg</key>
<true/>
</dict>


Save the Info.plist

4) Reboot.

Hopefully you will have Preview and Quicklook hardware rendering working again.

Method 2:

Simply change your System Definition to MacPro6,1 because it *isn't* in the Info.plist. However be aware that doing this changes your serial-number and might get iCloud asking you to log in and verify things...

1) Ensure iGPU is set to "Auto" or "Off" in your BIOS (I already do this).
2) Remove the Whatevergreen kext
3) Set System definition to MacPro6,1

Method 3:

@vulgo has produced a kext you can just install in your EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other folder to cure the problem and means there is no need to edit frameworks or change your system-definition.

Thanks to both @markmac and @vulgo here.

Working again.:thumbup:




As a P.S - I used HFS+ previously on High Sierra and APFS *is* a lot slower. Sorry to all those who ask why some of us prefer the older version. It may be very clever but it means hardware is working a lot harder just to stand still.

:)
 
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Update - High Sierra or Mojave?

I had a "pause for thought" and began to wonder if I really felt Mojave was a better OS than High Sierra. Now being a keen Mac user and Hackintosh builder, I obviously like life at the cutting-edge OS-wise. BUT I also like the reliability and solidity of a well-sorted system.

I decided to build a second SSD with High Sierra on it. Now I have both operating systems to choose from. In all honesty I haven't left High Sierra very often. Here are a few reasons why Mojave wasn't as great as I was expecting:

1) A simple thing like taking a partial screenshot with Shift+CMD+4 now requires the resulting grab to be opened and okayed by clicking a "Done" button. True you can annotate at this stage but I rarely want to.

2) The new Mac App Store has been needlessly "dumbed-down" I can't see any great advantage to the new layout. It's hard to find something interesting you didn't know about previously, or just "browse", and it uses more screen-space to show less.

3) iTunes 12.9 is now an integral part of macOS and can't be removed to install an earlier version. A pity because as an iPhone user I prefer to run iTunes 12.6.5 which allows me to buy and maintain my apps directly from the Mac desktop. My eyesight isn't good enough to work through a tiny store in my mobile. Sad but true. I need to be able to make a purchase and organise from my desktop.

4) Dark Mode. How to put this politely? "Meh!". Being an Apple implementation of a dark theme I expected it to be more interesting and with superior design. I think more "shades" of grey might have been appropriate. Adobe did something similar a few years back with Photoshop Elements. The first version to include a dark theme allowed you to use a slider to adjust the darkness of the grey/black being used. Next version along they changed this to just light or dark. It was so much more pleasant to be able to select our own shade.

:)
 
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Update - Mojave 10.14.1

I was concerned with this one because it's a large update - the file size is 3.36GB - so I knew it had a lot of changes in it, surely not just the new Emoji and Group FaceTime stuff.

Anyway I took the plunge and ... Everything went fine. Took about 15-mins to SSD, fully rebooting once and a couple of quick restarts.

Only thing not working as previously was the audio, so I backed-up the new AppleHDA.kext (although it has the same size and date as the original Mojave one) and simply used MultiBeast 10.4 to re-install the ALC892 sound driver. No need to mess with AudioID or anything else as it was already in my config.plist.

Not sure why so many people are having to go to odd lengths to install audio for this chipset - and what's more shunning MultiBeast for the job - it has worked perfectly for this build despite not yet being updated specifically for Mojave.

:)
 
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