Contribute
Register

Z690 Chipset Motherboards and Alder Lake CPU

Yes it's likely related to USB port map. We can see that the AppleLIFSUserClient process is restarting. LIFS is the LiveFS or Live File System that is supported now for FAT, ExFAT, and NTFS volumes.
hi Casey
After having loaded bestplay’s USB mapping I flashed bios F8a and configured it from scratch but the system is still acting weirdly. Basically, anywhere between one hour and some hours that I have been using it, it becomes unresponsive: mouse freezes every few seconds and it gets worse after a couple of minutes, when it freezes completely.

Now, assuming that bestplay USB mapping is correct, do you believe it could be a faulty motherboard? Let’s say you had to bet, where would you place your odds? This Gaming X motherboard is an Amazon Warehouse product, which was sold as new at a good price taking advantage of the Amazon deals which happened recently.

I am thinking to order a brand new motherboard and see how it goes, but my time is limited that I would like to have your opinion first…
 
hi Casey
After having loaded bestplay’s USB mapping I flashed bios F8a and configured it from scratch but the system is still acting weirdly. Basically, anywhere between one hour and some hours that I have been using it, it becomes unresponsive: mouse freezes every few seconds and it gets worse after a couple of minutes, when it freezes completely.

Now, assuming that bestplay USB mapping is correct, do you believe it could be a faulty motherboard? Let’s say you had to bet, where would you place your odds? This Gaming X motherboard is an Amazon Warehouse product, which was sold as new at a good price taking advantage of the Amazon deals which happened recently.

I am thinking to order a brand new motherboard and see how it goes, but my time is limited that I would like to have your opinion first…
Is this a brand new installation of macOS or was an old macOS disk transplanted into this system?

Before replacing the motherboard, I would recommend doing a fresh macOS installation if this hasn’t yet been done.

I would also recommend doing the USB port map diagram.
 
Is this a brand new installation of macOS or was an old macOS disk transplanted into this system?
Yes, it is a brand new installation. And the funny part, as I was telling etorix, is this one: at first, in order to have my system up and running as quickly as possible, I cloned my macOS 12.5 installation running on my sig Z490 system to a Samsung EVO, replaced firmware and had the system up and running. The Ultrafine was working perfectly and I didn’t have many issues, generally speaking (but it is true I didn’t use my Z690 extensively).
Then I decided to start from the scratch with a brand new installation so I formatted the SX8200 Pro and I am full of issues.

Before replacing the motherboard, I would recommend doing a fresh macOS installation if this hasn’t yet been done.
Done

I would also recommend doing the USB port map diagram.
Right now, I am using bestplay’s USB mapping where I can see he used a unique SSDT name, so I guess he did it properly (I wouldn’t be able to make my mapping at the moment so I wanted to give it a go)
 
Last edited:
@m4rk0,

In late December last year I purchased a pair of DDR5 DIMMs from MicroCenter that were a customer return. At the time, DDR5 memory was hard to find, so I purchased it even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to use it until my Z690 mini-ITX system was assembled a few months later.

When I finally built the mini-ITX system, I found that the memory was defective. My return window had long expired, but fortunately most brand name memory modules come with a lifetime warranty. So G.Skill replaced it.

Because your motherboard is also a customer return, perhaps it’s best to return it while the window is still open. If budget allows, consider getting a Gigabyte Z690 Aero G DDR4 instead, and following my build guide in the Golden Builds section.

This alone is no guarantee that the various issues you mentioned will not exist. They may or may not exist. But we’ll know that the motherboard is good. There are plenty of users with that board, and they haven’t encountered the problems you’re reporting. The only wild card is reliability of LG UltraFine.
 
@m4rk0,

Because your motherboard is also a customer return, perhaps it’s best to return it while the window is still open. If budget allows, consider getting a Gigabyte Z690 Aero G DDR4 instead, and following my build guide in the Golden Builds section.

This alone is no guarantee that the various issues you mentioned will not exist. [..]

That's what I was thinking as well when it comes to returning my board. However, it is impossible to source an Aero G DDR4. I will see what do to, there's yet another BIOS ( F8a -> F20a -> F8 ) which I coupled with bestplay's USB mapping and some tweaks.

In the meantime, with a few bios tweaks, this is where we stand:

Geekbench.png


...take this, Apple Silicon! (forgetting the power consumption...)
 
Thanks.
The Thunderbolt SSDT points to the right path. (Made anew with HackinDROM?)
There should only be one of Hfsplus.efi and Openhfsplus.efi. XhciPortLimit quirk should be disabled when using SSDT-UIAC (and it doesn't work anyway with recent versions of macOS) and DisableIOMapper should also be disabled to load AppleVTD and benefit from the custom DMAR table. There are a few disabled SSDT/kext which could be removed altogether.
But I do not see an obvious issue with Thunderbolt here.

Hopefully @CaseySJ may come and have a look here.
Which are the benefits of using AppleVTD away from Thunderbolt?
 
Which are the benefits of using AppleVTD away from Thunderbolt?
Networking: In recent versions of macOS, AppleVTD is required to use Intel NICs.
I'm not sure if there's any specific benefit for Thunderbolt but the general advice now should be to enable AppleVTD and avoid quirk DisableIOMapper if possible.
 
Networking: In recent versions of macOS, AppleVTD is required to use Intel NICs.
I'm not sure if there's any specific benefit for Thunderbolt but the general advice now should be to enable AppleVTD and avoid quirk DisableIOMapper if possible.
Good to know!
 
Networking: In recent versions of macOS, AppleVTD is required to use Intel NICs.
I'm not sure if there's any specific benefit for Thunderbolt but the general advice now should be to enable AppleVTD and avoid quirk DisableIOMapper if possible.
Apple's Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet adapter -- with a Broadcom chipset -- also requires AppleVTD.
 
Networking: In recent versions of macOS, AppleVTD is required to use Intel NICs.
I'm not sure if there's any specific benefit for Thunderbolt but the general advice now should be to enable AppleVTD and avoid quirk DisableIOMapper if possible.

Apple's Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet adapter -- with a Broadcom chipset -- also requires AppleVTD.

When I gave VT-D - Enable in the BIOS on the X299UD4 PRO, in Monterey network didn't work.
When I gave VT-D - Disable, they started to work.
 
Back
Top