WonkeyDonkey's Steambox Pro - Z87E-ITX - Core i7 4770S - GTX 760 Gaming ITX

[WonkeyDonkey]

I see
Not that I am in need of it but do you anything about the asrock z97 series itx-boards and their performance osx-wise?

I think it has a lot to offer overall. The main thing that would put me off buying it is that the M.2 slot only accepts 30mm and 42mm M.2 SSD's. I would want to put an 80mm one in there, since the 30 and 42 mm ones have relatively low capacity.

A Z97 board and a 4790K CPU would be a really good refresh for a hack, especially since it is used by Apple as well.

Asrock have 2 boards; Z97E-ITX and Z97M-ITX. The Z97M-ITX is a bit weird to me. They went backwards by using the 892 audio, I don't quite see why.

I also looked at their mAtx board, which is the Z97M Pro4. That again seems to have gone backwards. 892 audio, and 2 x legacy PCI slots. Wtf ? How can any manufacturer in this day and age call a mobo a pro product when it has old school PCI slots ?

I have no doubts performance-wise for any of these machines, but I wouldn't buy any one of them today I'm afraid.

Part of me is hoping some of the manufacturers might do a few new boards when Broadwell desktop chips hit the market.

One board I would buy is their Z99M-Extreme4 if only Z99 was supported more in OSX. To build a board in mAtx format with the X99 and the specs it has, was a good move. Some may cry at the fact that it has just 4 ram slots, but I think its a great idea.

 

[WonkeyDonkey]

Not specifically, but i think its fair to say they are open and receptive to customer requests for bios changes and fixes as required.

Apparently there will be no new chipset for Broadwell, it will use the current Z97. Im still hopeful some of the manufacturers will see the release of Broadwell as an opportunity to release new boards though.

I *think* Skylake processors will get the updated chipset if memory serves correct.

 

[Huberer]

Hello,

would someone be so nice and say how much ram in "about this mac" for the HD4600 with iMac systemdefinition is shown?
Mine shows me 1024MB (Intel HD Graphics HD4600 1024MB) with iMac 14.3. I believe that it was 1536MB some weeks/days ago.
This I just realized today.

Thanks in advance
Huberer

Edit: I saw an image from giacomoleopardo same pages earlier and it shows 1536MB ram

 

[WonkeyDonkey]

I believe the amount shown is abitrary and does not necessarily reflect the true amount in use anyway. 1Gb or 1.5Gb sounds reasonable; the only time I would worry about it is if it said something in the range of a few megabytes, which is indicative of an incorrectly configured graphics system.

You could try changing the amount specified in the system bios, but not sure if this will have any effect.

You could also change what is shown cosmetically to a different value if it bothers you to that degree.

 

[Huberer]

Hello WonkeyDonkey,

thanks for your input. I already have changed the bios settings but didn't bring any change. You're right that it's only a cosmetically issue. I did some test with cinebench (15 and 11.5) and realized that the results are quite normal for the HD4600. Everything is working as expected.
I think I don't change the value just for cosmetically reason.... will sleep about it...

thanks again

 

[WonkeyDonkey]

Reporting super smooth 10.10.3 update (through combo) with zero issues.
clover is a beast so far

Downloading 10.10.3 now, although I dont like Yosemite as a whole.

Im thinking of reverting 2 of my machines to 10.9.5.

 

[giacomoleopardo]

Don't like it as well

I dont like Yosemite as a whole. Im thinking of reverting 2 of my machines to 10.9.5.

Just out of curiosity, what lead you guys to not-like Yosemite? Any specific reason?

 

[WonkeyDonkey]

Just out of curiosity, what lead you guys to not-like Yosemite? Any specific reason?

I dont like the UI either, plus the software I develop suddenly looks crap with the Yosemite UI; under Mavericks it looks just fine.

Then they have been tinkering several times with the firewall on Yosemite too; its causing a s**tstorm with some software that uses network connections. My Plex server and several SQL database systems I use.

 

[WonkeyDonkey]

Don't like it as well but it's stable enough to use it productivitywise – too lazy to revert back, it would take a whole day to setup and install everything.
Apart from that devs are forced to update their software for the latest apple os (or bs) – 10.9.5 is fine for now but some software already is yosemite only like omnigraffle for instance, I really rely on that one..

As for 10.10.3: feels snappier/smoother and the new emojis are supercoolfantasticarsesome

***IMPORTANT***

EDIT: Lost sound after sleep, comes back after reboot. Might be due to a freshly compiled DSDT earlier today.
Could you please verify/falsify if that is happening on your machine as well? TIA
Works with logout/login process..

It could well be DSDT related, but then there were reports in the forums of sound being lost following sleep on quite a few systems. Not upgrading right now though, too busy working on the NUC.

Trim support is lost and has to be re-applied, as does the entire audio setup plus the HDMI audio patching. Plus the kernel has to be patched again. Its a lot of work for an update that will get replaced again in the not too distant future.

Updates like this make me grumble.

 

[giacomoleopardo]

I dont like the UI either, plus the software I develop suddenly looks crap with the Yosemite UI; under Mavericks it looks just fine.

Then they have been tinkering several times with the firewall on Yosemite too; its causing a s**tstorm with some software that uses network connections. My Plex server and several SQL database systems I use.

I see...

I just don't like the UI but one gets used to it

Have you experienced no sound after sleep as well, Giacomo?
Or didn't you update to 10.3 yet?

As a matter of fact yes, audio after sleep is not working. Here are the steps to fix it (re-patch Audio with toleda's script):

• Open Applications\Terminal, digit defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1 and press enter
• Open Applications\Utilities\Disk Utility, select Debug from the menu bar, and check Show every partition
• Mount EFI partition
• Delete realtekALC.kext fron EFI\EFI\CLOVER\kexts\10.10
• Empty Trash
• Download toleda’s audio_CloverALC-master from here
• Unzip audio_cloverALC-100.command.zip from Downloads\audio_CloverALC-master
• Double click on audio_cloverALC-100_v1.0.4d.command
• Digit y for “yes” every time toleda’s script asks you for something
• Reboot (once the script is through)

UPDATE: Just rebuild cache with the attached command.

Everything else after 10.10.3 Update is alright

EDIT
On my Zotac Z77 ITX rig Combo Update 10.10.3 has been working just fine. No sound issues at all.

EDIT 2
Would you test something for me, please? BEFORE re-patching audio, would you try to rebuild cache with my command (attached here)? Just unzip it, double click, wait until it's done, reboot. Maybe that would be enough to solve the issue rather than audio re-patching steps! I've re-patched Audio already, so I can't test it on my hack. Thanks!