Z690 Chipset Motherboards and Alder Lake CPU

[huro73]

I am currently thinking about a new build. I have an option, but I would like to hear your opinion. Recommend a motherboard DDR4 with a good VRM.

 

[energy23]

Can anyone with a 12900k give some insight on temperatures with e-cores disabled and hyperthreading enabled? Looks like from the link below, that temperatures with e-cores turned off are VERY high;

Test: Disabling small (E) and big (P) cores of the Core i9-12900K - Page 7 of 9 - HWCooling.net

CPU temperatureThe big.LITTLE concept in Intel Alder Lake processors encourages various “re-configurations” of the cores. Especially in the context of inferior scaling or priority settings that are not good for some applications. However, user interventions in this direction will more often lead...

www.hwcooling.net

I would imagine that doing any work like rendering or compression via handbrake, cooler fans will be spinning at max speed to keep the CPU cool. I'm wondering if moving down to a 12700k would improve temperatures...?

 

[dehjomz]

Completely Removed the NVIDIA Card, running solely off the Firepro W7000, and same thing happens.

OS is stable for 5-10 Minutes at most and then the screen freezes and then it restarts. No Panic Screen.

What macOS version ?
Early builds of macOS Monterey were similarly kernel panicking every 5-10 min whenever the intel 2.5 gbps Ethernet ports were enabled. But I believe that problem was resolved.

 

[NCMacGuy]

Can anyone with a 12900k give some insight on temperatures with e-cores disabled and hyperthreading enabled? Looks like from the link below, that temperatures with e-cores turned off are VERY high;

Test: Disabling small (E) and big (P) cores of the Core i9-12900K - Page 7 of 9 - HWCooling.net

CPU temperatureThe big.LITTLE concept in Intel Alder Lake processors encourages various “re-configurations” of the cores. Especially in the context of inferior scaling or priority settings that are not good for some applications. However, user interventions in this direction will more often lead...

www.hwcooling.net

I would imagine that doing any work like rendering or compression via handbrake, cooler fans will be spinning at max speed to keep the CPU cool. I'm wondering if moving down to a 12700k would improve temperatures...?

@energy23 and anyone,

I have a Z690 Aero G board which I originally had an i7-12700k with a Noctua NH-U12S cooler installed on. Running Cinebench with HT on and all cores enabled I was getting max temps around 80° C measured with Intel Power Gadget.

I just moved the board to a different case which was too narrow for the Noctua cooler. I removed the cooler and CPU and changed to an i9-12900K and a Corsair H115i Pro cooler with the upgraded standoff screws. I didn't feel that the cooler was tight enough against the CPU, but tried running Cinebench monitoring the temp. The temp quickly rose to 100° C at which point I stopped the test. Unstressed the CPU runs between 25-40° C.

I'm also interested in what others are seeing temp-wise with the i9-12900 with HT and all cores active before I pull the cooler and check the thermal paste distribution.

 

[zgamer2621]

What macOS version ?
Early builds of macOS Monterey were similarly kernel panicking every 5-10 min whenever the intel 2.5 gbps Ethernet ports were enabled. But I believe that problem was resolved.

12.0.1 I didn't do the 12.1 update yet.

 

[scj312]

Success with High Sierra on my 12900K, Asus Prime Z690-A build! However, a few things are not working, and I think they may simply be due to High Sierra's age:

• Built-in ALC S1220A audio (AppleHDAController isn't attached to HDEF, I see a patch was submitted to AppleALC to fix this device ID, but it requires a newer OS) - Currently worked around using USB audio VoodooHDA, after trying many different layouts and device ID patches.
• Built-in I225-V Ethernet - Currently worked around using Fenvi T919 Wi-Fi as en0.
• Hyper-Threading (or E cores) - While I am using OC 0.7.7 with ProvideCurrentCpuInfo, High Sierra panics with something along the lines of "expected 16 threads but got 24" until I lower the system to 16 total cores. Not sure how to resolve this.

Starting out with @etorix EFI folder V0.7 (thanks!), the only thing I had to do for High Sierra specifically was to use a Coffee Lake CPUID. As far as the OS installer, I did not try it as I brought over my disk from my Skylake system. I have also not yet ventured into sleep (it may work as-is, but haven't tried) Sleep works!

If anyone has ideas regarding the above items, I'd love to hear them!

 

[zgamer2621]

What macOS version ?
Early builds of macOS Monterey were similarly kernel panicking every 5-10 min whenever the intel 2.5 gbps Ethernet ports were enabled. But I believe that problem was resolved.

This was the culprit. I had to disable the networking kexts, and device properties for the Intel Ethernet, and I added the boot arg: dk.e1000=0 and not only do the panics have gone away, Ethernet is working perfectly.

Now I just have to fix my sound and map my USB ports. However, the issue I'm running into right now is only USB 2 devices show up. I plug a USB 3 device into any of my ports and nothing is detected.

 

[energy23]

@energy23 and anyone,

I have a Z690 Aero G board which I originally had an i7-12700k with a Noctua NH-U12S cooler installed on. Running Cinebench with HT on and all cores enabled I was getting max temps around 80° C measured with Intel Power Gadget.

I just moved the board to a different case which was too narrow for the Noctua cooler. I removed the cooler and CPU and changed to an i9-12900K and a Corsair H115i Pro cooler with the upgraded standoff screws. I didn't feel that the cooler was tight enough against the CPU, but tried running Cinebench monitoring the temp. The temp quickly rose to 100° C at which point I stopped the test. Unstressed the CPU runs between 25-40° C.

I'm also interested in what others are seeing temp-wise with the i9-12900 with HT and all cores active before I pull the cooler and check the thermal paste distribution.

YIKES.

Those kinds of temperatures are way too high. I would try potentially doing a number of things;

1) Reduce the power limit
2) Re-apply thermal paste
3) Try Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut thermal paste
4) Reduce voltage on CPU in BIOS

I'm glad im finding out how hot these CPUs run, i'm actually willing to sacrifice some performance if it means having a very quiet system. My current 4790k with a Phanteks TC14PE cooler @ stock speeds hovers around 70c when running at full loads (Handbrake). The fan speed doesn't increase by much and overall the system is VERY quiet. I kind of need a quiet build since my PC is in my bedroom.

 

[ccx4700]

I wrote a experimental kext for change core / thread recognition.

This kext enables 16 cores / 24 threads recognition with Core i9. It is also possible to make 8 cores / 24 threads recognition by making the CPU behave like a 3-way SMT.
In addition, with HT disabled, you can make it look like an 8 cores / 16 threads CPU by making E-Core behave as a HT logical core.

My purpose is to keep single-thread or real-world performance with this kext when E-Cores enabled.
At least when HT disabled, I confirmed an increase in Geekbench 5 multi score from 16 cores recognition. I didn't see differences in Geekbench 5 scores when HT enabled, but I hope it affects the performance.

How to use it:
- OpenCore 0.7.7 nightly + ProvideCurrentCpuInfo = true
- CpuTopologySync.kext I attached
- -ctssmt boot arg enables 3-way SMT spoofing.

This kext is based on original CpuTopologySync, but it's mostly rewritten.
The source code(ugly!) is here, so please let me know if there are any improvements.

CpuTopologySync for 16c24t, 8c24t, 8c16t(HT disabled+E-Core) recognition ( ProvideCurrentCpuInfo=true required )

CpuTopologySync for 16c24t, 8c24t, 8c16t(HT disabled+E-Core) recognition ( ProvideCurrentCpuInfo=true required ) - CpuTopologySync.cpp.txt

gist.github.com

If there are any ideas to measure real-world performance with E-Cores enabled, please let me know.

Some Geekbench 5 scores:
- 16 cores / 24 threads : https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/11861794
- 8 cores / 24 threads : https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/11872440
- 8 cores / 16 threads(HT disabled) : https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/11872688
- 12 cores / 20 threads(pseudo i7) : https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/11872777
- 10 cores / 16 threads(pseudo i5) : https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/11873195

Current problems:
- I don't use the Alder Lake machine for daily usage yet, so it has stability problem possibly.
- 3-way SMT spoofing is unstable at boot time, may require some restarts. -> Fixed?
- 3-way SMT spoofing especially may not work for 6P+4E Core i5 ( I tested with Core i9-12900KF, I couldn't boot 6P+4E configuration with -ctssmt. ) -> Working now.

Updates:
- I made some fix to improve stability, boot freeze issue maybe fixed. ( CpuTopologySync-1.0.1-RELEASE-2.zip )

 

[etorix]

Hyper-Threading (or E cores) - While I am using OC 0.7.7 with ProvideCurrentCpuInfo, High Sierra panics with something along the lines of "expected 16 threads but got 24" until I lower the system to 16 total cores. Not sure how to resolve this.

Thanks for this report! @ori69 inquired about Mojave, but I think you're the first to report success with an OS older than Catalina. Well done!
The source code for ProvideCurrentCpuInfo suggests it may work from Mojave onwards. Obviously the quirk doesn't work with High Sierra, and the only solution would be to disassemble the High Sierra kernel to find out how x86_validate_topology() has changed and then work out an alternative quirk…
If your use case allows, you may try Mojave and report whether ProvideCurrentCpuInfo works.