Z690 Chipset Motherboards and Alder Lake CPU

[MatiCohen]

I read many bad reviews about that motherboard. Disks not being recognized, cpus as well and what not. How are you finding it? There is a BIOS update that is basically mandatory, F1 to F3, but there were still quite many issues. Many reviews on Newegg if you're interested.

My experience is pretty bad.
my NVMe Disks were not recognized until updating BIOS to F5a.
After replacing the WiFI module they were not recognized once again after a crash, I believe the daughter board was not attached correctly.
after re attaching the daughter board the problem went away.
Been stable for the past 2 days.

 

[dronefriend]

My experience is pretty bad.
my NVMe Disks were not recognized until updating BIOS to F5a.
After replacing the WiFI module they were not recognized once again after a crash, I believe the daughter board was not attached correctly.
after re attaching the daughter board the problem went away.
Been stable for the past 2 days.

Ok. I'll be following your progress since I'm tempted to build an ITX build myself. Since ITX motherboards with DDR4 support are so scarce, and expensive, I might hold off until B670 boards are available in hopefully one or two months.

Best of luck to you.

 

[etorix]

So, a few questions, if anyone has answers!

1. If the core issue with 12th Gen Intel is really just iGPU incompatibility, will Monterey recognize the dGPU natively during the installation process, if I already have my build plugged into an AMD RX 6800 XT or 6900 XT?
My only real concern at this point is that I'd just get a black screen, during the installation process, because maybe I needed to install AMD drivers, but couldn't do it until after-installation? Which would have me stuck.

There are no "web drivers" for AMD: Drivers come with macOS; it works natively, or not at all (RX 6700).
Beware, though, about the RX 6900 XT: There's a RX 6900 XTXH variant which is not natively supported and requires device-id spoofing to a regular RX 6900 XT.

2. Is Clover still a thing, or does everyone use OpenCore, now?
My build's a little aged. As such, I am still on Clover. But I'm willing to learn OpenCore, if it's really that much better.

Community support on this forum is heavily biased towards OpenCore but Clover works, using the same SSDT-CPUR-Z690 (or presumably SSDT-PLUG-ALT) as OpenCore.

3. Would it be simpler, or even possible, to install an older OS, and then update it to Monterey? Or simply move my current High Sierra data over to the NVMe, and update up to Monterey from there? Or would a fresh directly-to-OS12 install be cleaner and easier? I wouldn't mind just starting fresh and moving everything over manually, if a fresh install is more ideal.

There has not yet been reports of running Mojave or High Sierra on Alder Lake. You may do a clean install and import your old data, or install a new GPU in your old build, update to Big Sur/Monterey and then move the drive and GPU to the Alder Lake build.

4. How smooth is Monterey installation, when all parts are compatible?
After much research, this is what I'm currently looking at building:
OS: 12 Monterey
CPU: 12th Gen Alder Lake, Intel Core i9-12900K
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z690 UD AX DDR4 LGA 1700 Intel Z690 ATX

No idea how smooth it is, but there is a Clover EFI for this particular board on InsanelyMac.

 

[phantom8]

4. How smooth is Monterey installation, when all parts are compatible?
After much research, this is what I'm currently looking at building:
OS: 12 Monterey
CPU: 12th Gen Alder Lake, Intel Core i9-12900K
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z690 UD AX DDR4 LGA 1700 Intel Z690 ATX
GPU: Gigabyte AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT Gaming OC (Or preferably 6800XT, if I can find a good deal)
OS/Applications Drive: WD Black SN750-SE 1Tb NVMe
User/Data Drive: WD Black SN750 2 Tb NVMe

I would avoid Gigabyte boards if I were you, unless you're absolutely sure that your DDR4 is compatible. There have been many reports on RAM incompatibilities, especially on Z690 UD series. I was gonna get Asock Z690 Steel Legend, but couldn't find 1 locally. Today, I've just purchased a MSI Pro Z690-A WiFi DDR4. I will start building tomorrow.

 

[StefanAM]

I saw the Cpuid1Data from the last OC build:
• Alder Lake (0x090672) to Comet Lake (0x0906EB):
Cpuid1Data: EB 06 09 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
Cpuid1Mask: FF FF FF FF 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

I've done some benchmarks and with this values I have significant lower results comparing with:
Cpuid1Data: 55060A00 00000000 00000000 00000000
Cpuid1Mask: FFFFFFFF 00000000 00000000 00000000

Perhaps are other reasons to use the first. We will see!

 

[CaseySJ]

** CpuTopologySync has been suspended for now **​

A bit of bad news. About 2 hours ago vit9696 archived (suspended) CpuTopologySync due to the discovery of multiple stability issues.

 

[Romanychev]

** CpuTopologySync has been suspended for now **​

A bit of bad news. About 2 hours ago vit9696 archived (suspended) CpuTopologySync due to the discovery of multiple stability issues.

View attachment 536792​

)) Don't worry. The power of the Russian forum, there is already information
Andrey1970 has already announced that it will be an option in Quirks.

 

[StefanAM]

** CpuTopologySync has been suspended for now **​

A bit of bad news. About 2 hours ago vit9696 archived (suspended) CpuTopologySync due to the discovery of multiple stability issues.

View attachment 536792​

Because they have the real solution. Here we are to receive the goodies! Thanx Acidanthera!

 

[etorix]

I've done some benchmarks and with this values I have significant lower results comparing with:
Cpuid1Data: 55060A00 00000000 00000000 00000000
Cpuid1Mask: FFFFFFFF 00000000 00000000 00000000

Perhaps are other reasons to use the first. We will see!

As far as I recall, there was no specific reason to pick this particular CPUID.
It was found that iMacPro1,1 had better results than MacPro7,1 and the corresponding frequency vector was added to the MacPro7,1 configuration, but there has been no systematic research into CPU management and it is perfectly possible that other CPUID and/or other frequency vectors would improve performance.

I update the post for EFI v.0.6.

 

[etorix]

)) Don't worry. The power of the Russian forum, there is already information
Andrey1970 has already announced that it will be an option in Quirks.

So, the "new approach" is likely a patch of x86_validate_topology(). And the general release will wait at least for OpenCore 0.7.7 next month.

Fair enough. I'll spare some blinis and smoked salmon to go with that vodka.