- Joined
- Jan 31, 2013
- Messages
- 11
- Motherboard
- GA-H77N-WIFI
- CPU
- i7-3770k
- Graphics
- R9 270X
- Mac
- Mobile Phone
[Updated] Willco's Build: i7-3770K - GA-H77N-WIFI - 16GB RAM - 1.6TB Fusion Drive
i7-3770K
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007SZ0EOW/
128 GB Vertex 4 SSD Hard Drive
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007R1FH3K/
Corsair Vengeance 16GB RAM
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006EWUO22/
Gigabyte GA-H77N-WIFI Motherboard
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009JDTWVC/
Seasonic 430 Watt S12II Bronze Power Supply
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002A17OG0/
Kingston Digital DataTraveler SE9 16GB Thumb Drive
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006W8U2WU/
Viewsonic VX2370SMH-LED 23" Monitor
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008RM235I/
Apple USB Keyboard
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005DLDTAE/
Samsung USB External Blu-ray Writer
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AO1XFM0/
Already Owned Components
Seagate Barracuda 1.5 TB 7200RPM Hard Drive
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005T3GRPU/
Apple Magic Mouse
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002TLTGM6/
Comments
The Build
I wanted to build a secondary Mac for occasional software development but mainly for a networked machine to dump photos & music onto that could be shared with my AppleTV. My old iMac was getting too slow to do the job. I thought this would be a fun project and end up with a faster machine at less the cost then a Mac Mini. Since I'm not playing games on it, I though the i7 integrated graphics would be good enough for now.
I chose this case because it's one of the more classy looking PC cases out there (IMHO). Holding 6(!) drives is a bonus, but not really needed as the MB only has 4 SATA headers. The case fans are ultra quiet, they don't connect to the MB and only have a high/medium/low switch on the back. Not a deal breaker but a drawback. I went with the external Blu-ray drive so I could use it to play DVDs on my MacBook Pro if I wanted since it has no optical drive.
As noted else-where this motherboard is very hackintosh friendly. Bluetooth works out of the box as does sleep. With the custom DSDT file, you can enable HDMI audio out. I did have to use the DSDT install to get the audio kext patch to work.
The physical build was straight forward, the power supply isn't as quiet as I'd like, but I also didn't want to break the bank on it so you get what you pay for.
The Install
Through a bit of trial and error (and not searching the internet well enough before I stared
), I figured out since the install was going onto a fusion drive, the normal Chimera install wouldn't put the boot loader in the correct location. To fix this, I copied the Chimera boot files from the package into a folder on the USB thumb drive (Section 2).
Once booted onto the UniBeast USB drive, in the installer screen I opened the Terminal app and created a fusion drive following these steps. I then installed OS X as you normally would off the USB drive. However, at this point it is not bootable because the fusion drives don't have the boot loader in the correct location. I then booted off the USB drive again after restarting and in the Terminal copied the boot loader files from the USB thumb drive onto the "Apple_Boot Boot OS X" partitions of both drives that make up the fusion drive (About 1/2 way down this post). I then copied the /Extras folder onto those partitions as well (which you will need to do every time you run MutliBeast). Restarted and preso, booting fusion drive. I've seen other posts on cloning drives to fusion drives, but hopefully this helps someone setting one up from scratch.
Snags Along the Way
Updates
After living with the stock cooler for about 2 months I couldn't take the whine any longer. I wanted quiet so I went water & upgraded the fan at the same time just to make sure. With my ear directly next to the Noctua I can barely hear it, well worth the money.
Corsair Hydro H60
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A0HZMGA/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Noctua NF-P12
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006GDDV2E/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Update 4-21-14
I was using a WD Green drive for a Windows drive and it gave up the ghost. I decided to move my Seagate 1.5 TB drive (which is very loud) to my Windows drive and purchased a 1 TB WD Black drive for my main Fusion drive. This involved reformatting and reinstalling OS X. I attempted to use Chimera again but it wasn't cooperating for whatever reason so I jumped to Clover. Once I sorted out the configuration options it is a complete joy. The dynamic kext injection/patching features are great. I will post my config.plist if anyone is interested.
My Bluetooth/Wifi card also died recently so I purchased a BCM943225HMB half mini PCI-E Bluetooth/WIFI combo card for $9. With a simple kext plist patch WIFI is supported natively as is Bluetooth.
I've also moved over to Mieze's Realtek ethernet driver as it's under active development and isn't buggy like the default MultiBeast option.
Update 1-7-15
My Bluetooth performance was spotty with the half combo card, so I bought a IOGear GBU521
IOGEAR Bluetooth 4.0 USB Micro Adapter (GBU521) and now I plug it into my keyboard so it's right next to my magic trackpad. No dropouts since.
I then swapped out the half wifi/bluetooth combo card with a natively supported BCM94322HM8L.
Lastly, I bought a MSI Gaming R9 270X http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127761. While it's about 1/2 an inch too long and runs into my power supply cables, I squeezed it in. To get it working, you need to run 10.10 and use Clover. I also changed all my Clover configuration graphics injection values to false.
I now have all major hardware features of my hackintosh working just like a real Mac.
i7-3770K - GA-H77N-WIFI - 16GB RAM - 1.6TB Fusion Drive
Componentsi7-3770K
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007SZ0EOW/
128 GB Vertex 4 SSD Hard Drive
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007R1FH3K/
Corsair Vengeance 16GB RAM
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006EWUO22/
Gigabyte GA-H77N-WIFI Motherboard
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009JDTWVC/
Seasonic 430 Watt S12II Bronze Power Supply
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002A17OG0/
Kingston Digital DataTraveler SE9 16GB Thumb Drive
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006W8U2WU/
Viewsonic VX2370SMH-LED 23" Monitor
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008RM235I/
Apple USB Keyboard
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005DLDTAE/
Samsung USB External Blu-ray Writer
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AO1XFM0/
Already Owned Components
Seagate Barracuda 1.5 TB 7200RPM Hard Drive
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005T3GRPU/
Apple Magic Mouse
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002TLTGM6/
Comments
The Build
I wanted to build a secondary Mac for occasional software development but mainly for a networked machine to dump photos & music onto that could be shared with my AppleTV. My old iMac was getting too slow to do the job. I thought this would be a fun project and end up with a faster machine at less the cost then a Mac Mini. Since I'm not playing games on it, I though the i7 integrated graphics would be good enough for now.
I chose this case because it's one of the more classy looking PC cases out there (IMHO). Holding 6(!) drives is a bonus, but not really needed as the MB only has 4 SATA headers. The case fans are ultra quiet, they don't connect to the MB and only have a high/medium/low switch on the back. Not a deal breaker but a drawback. I went with the external Blu-ray drive so I could use it to play DVDs on my MacBook Pro if I wanted since it has no optical drive.
As noted else-where this motherboard is very hackintosh friendly. Bluetooth works out of the box as does sleep. With the custom DSDT file, you can enable HDMI audio out. I did have to use the DSDT install to get the audio kext patch to work.
The physical build was straight forward, the power supply isn't as quiet as I'd like, but I also didn't want to break the bank on it so you get what you pay for.
The Install
Through a bit of trial and error (and not searching the internet well enough before I stared
), I figured out since the install was going onto a fusion drive, the normal Chimera install wouldn't put the boot loader in the correct location. To fix this, I copied the Chimera boot files from the package into a folder on the USB thumb drive (Section 2). Once booted onto the UniBeast USB drive, in the installer screen I opened the Terminal app and created a fusion drive following these steps. I then installed OS X as you normally would off the USB drive. However, at this point it is not bootable because the fusion drives don't have the boot loader in the correct location. I then booted off the USB drive again after restarting and in the Terminal copied the boot loader files from the USB thumb drive onto the "Apple_Boot Boot OS X" partitions of both drives that make up the fusion drive (About 1/2 way down this post). I then copied the /Extras folder onto those partitions as well (which you will need to do every time you run MutliBeast). Restarted and preso, booting fusion drive. I've seen other posts on cloning drives to fusion drives, but hopefully this helps someone setting one up from scratch.
Snags Along the Way
- Corrupted video at login screen before running MultiBeast - unplug and replug HDMI cable to monitor to resync. Fix: Check 1080p display in MultiBeast when using HD4000 graphics
- Hang when the machine tried to hibernate (A common SSD problem on OS X) - Fix: Turn it off
- To get audio working use DSDT driver install - Update: DSDT install is not needed, unsure why it wasn't working at first
- Changing the System Definition causes the audio system to 'pop' when OS X tries to power down, don't do it
- USB 3 ports don't work with USB 2 Mass Storage devices - Fix: Turn off xHCI mode in MB UEFI (makes all USB ports 2.0)
- Apple DVD player doesn't like external drives - Fix: Follow these steps
- Edit: Improved dark wake behavior by changing the value to 10 in the boot plist. It now will deep sleep every time instead of once per reboot.
Updates
After living with the stock cooler for about 2 months I couldn't take the whine any longer. I wanted quiet so I went water & upgraded the fan at the same time just to make sure. With my ear directly next to the Noctua I can barely hear it, well worth the money.
Corsair Hydro H60
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A0HZMGA/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006GDDV2E/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Update 4-21-14
I was using a WD Green drive for a Windows drive and it gave up the ghost. I decided to move my Seagate 1.5 TB drive (which is very loud) to my Windows drive and purchased a 1 TB WD Black drive for my main Fusion drive. This involved reformatting and reinstalling OS X. I attempted to use Chimera again but it wasn't cooperating for whatever reason so I jumped to Clover. Once I sorted out the configuration options it is a complete joy. The dynamic kext injection/patching features are great. I will post my config.plist if anyone is interested.
My Bluetooth/Wifi card also died recently so I purchased a BCM943225HMB half mini PCI-E Bluetooth/WIFI combo card for $9. With a simple kext plist patch WIFI is supported natively as is Bluetooth.
I've also moved over to Mieze's Realtek ethernet driver as it's under active development and isn't buggy like the default MultiBeast option.
Update 1-7-15
My Bluetooth performance was spotty with the half combo card, so I bought a IOGear GBU521
IOGEAR Bluetooth 4.0 USB Micro Adapter (GBU521) and now I plug it into my keyboard so it's right next to my magic trackpad. No dropouts since.
I then swapped out the half wifi/bluetooth combo card with a natively supported BCM94322HM8L.
Lastly, I bought a MSI Gaming R9 270X http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127761. While it's about 1/2 an inch too long and runs into my power supply cables, I squeezed it in. To get it working, you need to run 10.10 and use Clover. I also changed all my Clover configuration graphics injection values to false.
I now have all major hardware features of my hackintosh working just like a real Mac.
MultiBeast Configuration for Mountain Lion
