UtterDisbelief 4 - i3-4340, GA-B85M-HD3, Crucial 16GB, 500GB HD, GT640 2GB

UtterDisbelief's 4th Build: i3-4340 - GA-B85M-HD3 - 8GB - Gigabyte GT640

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Components

Case: Lian LI PC-A04FNA PC Case Mini-Tower / Micro-ATX / USB 3.0 / Silver
[AMAZON-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004J3OXO8/][/AMAZON-uk]

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B85M-HD3 1150 MATX
[AMAZON-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00D5FC636/[/AMAZON-uk]

CPU: Intel Core i3 4340 Dual Core CPU Retail (Socket 1150, 3.60GHz, 4MB, 54W
[AMAZON-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00EF1G860/[/AMAZON-uk]

HDD: Western Digital 500GB SATA III Black Main O/S Drive
[AMAZON-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/500GB-Desktop-SATA-Hard-Drive/dp/B008968L6M/[/AMAZON-uk]

Memory: Crucial Sport Ballistix 2x8GB DDR3 1600MHz Low-Profile Memory Kit 1.35V unbuffered
[AMAZON-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00A14ZTWE/[/AMAZON-uk]

PSU: Corsair CXM 430w Semi-Modular
[AMAZON-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00ALYP208/[/AMAZON-uk]


Already Owned

Apple OS X Mavericks

Graphics card: Gigabyte GT 640 OC 1GB DDR3 DVI VGA HDMI Out PCI-E Graphics Card
[AMAZON-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0089AGH9G/[/AMAZON-uk]

TP-Link TL-WDN4800 Dual-Band wi-fi PCI-E card
[AMAZON-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B007GMPZ0A/[/AMAZON-uk]

Pioneer DVD-RW SATA optical drive - which I was using in an external caddy previously and is now mounted in the Lian-Li case.
[AMAZON-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004FJG8R6/[/AMAZON-uk]


Comments

My fourth Hackintosh project, hot on the heels of my previous one - UtterDisbelief 3.

I was never happy with UD-3. You can see why on the build page (about 4-pages back by now). Video problems plagued it and when both an SSD and a hard-drive were corrupted by something or other (never identified) it had to go.

I sold the parts individually because there was nothing actually wrong with them, keeping the drives, graphics card and wi-fi card for future use.

The new build was straightforward.

Case first. I went back to my tried and tested Lian-Li for the new project. Despite singing the praises of the Sharkoon I used last time, after a while I realized I didn't like the vertical drive frame and overall dark aspect. The Lian-Li is much more customizable with drive racks for six HDDs and a couple of SSDs, with a full-size ATX PSU all fitting in the Micro-ATX (MATX) format. I invested in the Lian-Li C-02 optical drive door too.

The Corsair PSU is shorter than the previous Be-Quiet with the advantage of flat modular cabling which helps when routing behind the motherboard etc. The BeQuiet's are round.

The Gigabyte motherboard is essentially the same as my previous B85 chipset choice but in this case limited to 16GB of RAM in two slots making the board slimmer. The Audio chipset is Realtek 887 instead of the previous 892.

The Intel CPU is one of the latest Haswell i3's and runs at 3.6ghz. Obviously it has only 2-cores compared with my previous i5's 4, but in use it actually feels faster, probably simply due to the higher clock-rate, and only when doing serious VM or graphics work does the fewer cores show. I'm presently using the stock cooler but this will change shortly.

Graphics and wi-fi are catered for by my previous rock-solid choices.

A notable difference between this and my previous build was that I had to disable on-board Intel graphics before the O/S would choose the GT640 and give me a display. New problem to me but once the BIOS was altered everything was fine.

Temperature-wise the Hackintosh is running coolly with the CPU around the 40-degrees-C mark and the graphics at 30, though I have seen CPU spikes up to 58-degrees and is the reason I will be upgrading the cooler shortly. Interestingly the graphics are running cooler than in the previous build. There are less large holes in the Lian-Li case compared with the previous Sharkoon so it is either due to the aluminium chassis or the uninterrupted airflow from the front case fan as i have removed one of the HDD racks.

Installing Mavericks OS X 10.9.5 went very smoothly using UniBeast. Next MultiBeast 6.5.0 did it’s magic and on first boot I again had the “boot0: Error”. Once more I used the guidance here:

http://www.tonymacx86.com/25-boot0-e...ial-guide.html

... and all is fine now.

So far all is running well with no crashes. The video glitches of the previous build are gone. No idea what was causing them although the different BIOS causing the minor hiccough above might be a clue.

My org.chameleon.Boot.plist is the same as last time:

<key>EthernetBuiltIn</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>GraphicsEnabler</key>
<string>No</string>
<key>IGPEnabler</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>Kernel</key>
<string>mach_kernel</string>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string></string>
<key>Legacy Logo</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>Timeout</key>
<string>2</string>
<key>HDEFLayoutID</key>
<string>01000000</string>
<key>Graphics Mode</key>
<string>"1920x1080x32"</string>
<key>HDAEnabler</key>
<string>Yes</string>

In the motherboard BIOS I’ve disabled both VT-D and the Windows 8 functions. Parallels Desktop VM software complains about this but runs fine even so.

Wake-from-sleep is, again, something to be tested.

It's early days but so far the set-up seems very solid and reliable. I kept the MultiBeast settings to the minimum with just:


I also used Chameleon Wizard to configure the SMBios.plist because I was getting the SOMESRLNMBR problem in the About This Mac /More Info... box along with a 2001 iMac! All is back to normal now.

New Bluetooth adapter after my previous failing Plugable one. This time a Belkin BT 4.0 dongle. Will update once tested.

Great write up for a nice clean build. Good job!

Urgh..tempting me to build another cheaper, smaller build like this, but I really have no need for it...maybe I should invent some..!

Look forward to reading any updates. Hopefully this build will go smoother than the last one!

DrEskimo said:

Great write up for a nice clean build. Good job!

Urgh..tempting me to build another cheaper, smaller build like this, but I really have no need for it...maybe I should invent some..!

Look forward to reading any updates. Hopefully this build will go smoother than the last one!

Click to expand...

Thanks for your kind words DrEskimo !

Yes, I know where you are coming from re the necessary excuse to get building again. I used my previous less than wonderful experience as motivation to start afresh.

The cheaper i3 is a good route for a budget build and the B85 mobo matches it well. Performance-wise I have no complaints. The Lian-Li was my extravagance but justified because I can reuse it in future.

Update 1:

Not one crash yet.

Sleep and wake is working as it should when the computer is left running with one strange exception. I was cataloguing photos using Portfolio and in the middle of the job the computer went to sleep! True I hadn't touched a key in a while. All started again once I'd pressed a Shift key. Odd none the less. A more serious fly in the ointment is that if I manually put the machine to sleep I get a freeze on wakeup and no HD activity and a black screen once it's spun up.

Belkin Bluetooth adaptor is a BT version 4.0, the model number is F8T065 -



... and it uses a fully compatible Broadcomm 20702 chip. So the same chipset as my previous Plugable brand which worked well until it failed. Belkin should be more reliable. Time will tell!

Update 2:

The cooler I mentioned previously arrived -


[AMAZON-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/Zalman-CNPS10X-Optima-Heatsink-Fan/dp/B0073QBIO6/[/AMAZON-uk]

A Zalman CNPS10X four heat-pipe and very tall aluminium tower. It attaches using a new backplate and preset length screws. The fan is a 120mm Zalman's own.

It was fiddly to fit - as I think all Zalman coolers have become (and I've used a lot over the years) - because the screws are only long enough to fit through your motherboard and attach when quite heavy pressure is applied. This should be fine as there is "spring" built in to the system to keep the pressure on top of the CPU correct, however you need a quite long screwdriver to turn the screws and putting pressure on each runs the risk of a slip and damaging the motherboard. Luckily I did no harm. Getting the screws down there required tape on the screwdriver to provide some form of adhesion otherwise they just fell away. Perhaps you could magnetize your screwdriver first. I feel longer screws with, perhaps, springs on each might be helpful.

Pros -

In use the cooler knocked 10-degrees-C off CPU temps which was pleasing.

Cons -

The supplied fan is fine but in my system "resonated" unpleasantly, making the whole case hum. It attached to the heatsink with spring clips but there is no room for a rubber gasket so it sits down hard. Might be fine for other people but for me it was noisier than stock.

When I decided to remove it I noticed the four heat-pipes hadn't been sitting fully square on the CPU top because of the pattern left in the silver thermal compound I used. There's no easy way to adjust tension on this model. It just screws down, so you get what you get.

The actual cooler is a very good design but for me it was flawed as I describe above. It's tall and only just fitted inside the case. It's a tad under 13cm. Good job I hadn't been tempted by all the 15cm models out there.

I temporarily reverted to the stock Intel cooler so I could work the problem through.

With the Zalman on my bench I tested the spring clips to discover they weren't of a hardened material and could be carefully bent. With this in mind I wondered what kind of insulation I could insert between the fan and aluminium fins to dampen the resonance. I had recently bought a couple of cheap mouse mats with a cloth top so decided I could use one to experiment with. I cut out some small wedges that would fit in the moulded recesses around the fan mounting holes. Was going to superglue them but decided against it as once they were in place they stayed there. The spring-clips were opened to accommodate the extra thickness and the system re-assembled.

Next to address the seating problem.

I used carefully spread silver thermal paste for the CPU and removed the foam gasket from the heatsink mounting backplate, replacing it with a piece of thick paper cut to the same dimensions. Once assembled I could screw all screws down the same amount to secure the cooler. Hopefully more levelly. I had no faith in the foam gasket as it was totally crushed in use anyway and seemed to introduce a "wobble" I didn't need.

Happily the resonance has been removed and the case is quiet again.

Temperatures now as I type this as per HWMonitor:

CPU cores = 29-degrees-C
CPU package = 30-degrees-C
Fan running at 1152rpm

I have fitted a Zalman PWM Mate controller


This has four settings, purple (auto-mid), red (auto-high), blue (auto-low) and green. Green is manual and that is what I have it on so that I can vary the speed to my requirements. It is a recommended accessory for experimenters but a pain to locate anywhere. I have it outside on a slot backplate.

Update 3:

The final (probably!) update for this Hack' is to add an SSD and a larger HD as a data drive.

The SSD I chose was a 256GB Crucial MX100. It is mounted on top of the lower HD rack in the case. Lian-Li supply insulated washers that fit pre-cut holes in the plate.

The data drive - a Western Digital 1TB Blue drive is in the central of the three slots in the rack. This puts it far enough away from the SSD to make the distance between the two SATA power plugs on the same cable fit fairly neatly. The upper of the two front 120mm case fans is the one I have connected to another Zalman fan controller, this time the standard FanMate model. This blows air at the CPU and Graphics card but probably misses the HD. Not a problem though because the SSD doesn't get hot and benefits a little from the flow whereas the HD more often than not goes to sleep unless I'm cataloguing photos or using a VM.

Once more I've returned to an Intel cooler but this time one from a Xeon model which features a copper core. The original i3 is just plain aluminium. After all the work on the Zalman cooler you might be wondering why. Well although it worked very well once I'd sorted it, I felt its size stopped easy maintenance and hampered most motherboard removable parts in this small MATX case, the fan overhanging the memory-sticks. I had been considering water-cooling as an experiment but there just isn't the space at the rear, which has an 80mm aperture, or above which is 120mm but right up against the motherboard edge. I have removed the mesh from the 80mm hole and replaced it with a standard chrome grill as it is less restrictive of airflow.

At least I can work on things easily again

Nice job! "UtterDisbelief" is becoming a brand!
My Lian-Li case is also prone to resonating, but it's ok.
Waiting for UtterDisbelief 5, now!

Ha!! Thank you!!

I don't think there will be a UD-5 ... just yet! This one is probably the best so far. It is just a shame that building our own machines stops us being able to view DRM iTunes video. That is my only negative with the whole Hackintosh scene. :

Otherwise

Do *you* have any more plans?

I can certainly confirm that, for me, the i3 running at 3.6ghz is as good, if not better, than my old i5 running at 3.2ghz. As I do not multi-task very much I have learned that there is no advantage to me spending the extra money on more cores!

Sure that the i3 is good enough.
Have you noticed any real change since your first i3-2100?
Now that I've got a fully working and reliable machine (surely more reliable than my last iMac ) it's very likely that I won't change or build anything until something dies in it...
I'm still using, even occasionally, some PPC app, so I'm forced to stay with a compatible build, for now. And it's quite a miracle that my ProTools 8.0.5 and its plugins are still working perfectly under OS 10.9.5 (when all subsequent versions don't!!! ) — that's also why I've got no hurry to go Yosemite.

Well the new i3 runs cooler. It is faster too, probably because of the larger cache size as much as the ghz.

My oldest running program - that still runs without a hitch - is from 2006, just as Apple converted to Intel. It is only a disk cataloguing app but it is still the best I have found. Sadly they developers broke up and it was never updated, but it still works fine.

I almost cried when my PPC apps would no longer run I used to enjoy selecting the startup disk (I think I was running WordPerfect for Mac OS9 back then).