[SUCCESS] Pro Audio/Gaming Build: GA-Z97X-UD7 TH / i7 4790k / 32GB / EVGA GTX 970

[SUCCESS] Pro Audio/Gaming Build: GA-Z97X-UD7 TH / i7 4790k / 32GB / EVGA GTX 970 (x2 for SLI in Windows)


Computer Components:
Case: NZXT H440 Case
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD7 TH
CPU: Intel Core i7 4790K
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i Water Cooler
RAM: 32GB Crucial Ballistix Sport XT @ 1866MHz
GPU: EVGA GTX 970 SC ACX 2.0 x 2 (SLI in windows, only utilizing one in Mac)
PSU: Corsair RM 750 PSU
Networking: TP-LINK TL-WDN4800
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 1TB SSD (OSX 10.10)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSD (Windows 7)

Audio Components:
Focusrite Scarlett 2i4
Yamaha HS8 Monitors (x2)
Yamaha HS8 Sub

Audio Software:
Pro Tools 10/11, Logic Pro X, NI Komplete 9 Ultimate, Ozone 5/6 Advanced, Nectar Production Suite, more . . .


Reasoning:
I purpose built this rig for pro audio editing. I am a Sound Supervisor/Music Editor for film and also engineer/produce various bands and do a lot of session editing and mixing on this rig. For all my recordings, I work out of a studio, but this is my rig for editing at home. I needed something that could handle any level of raw video playback while running Pro Tools so I can do my video work (hence the GTX 970 and 32GB of RAM). I would have liked to go with a Xeon or 6-8 core Haswell-E, but I was deferred by cost. I got my i7 4790K and motherboard in a great bundle at Micro Center, making the Xeon or Haswell-E components about 4x more expensive. As for the separate Windows SSD; I couldn't resist the urge to game on this machine, so I got a second drive to keep my stuff separate and easily installed Windows 7 Professional after the main build. Later on I got a second GTX 970 as a gift and set up the system to do SLI gaming. SLI is of course windows-only, but it doesn't cause problems on the mac side, so I am able to leave the second card in at all times.

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Install:
Huge thanks to Spballer for writing an amazing guide that got me through the install. You can find his guide here. In particular, he walks you through some very useful BIOs settings to use for his board (worked with mine too) and the GTX 970. After my initial install though, I ended up tweaking a lot of things, so that will be below.

For install, I followed a combo of Spballer's guide and Tony's Yosemite guide, then rebooted with the following boot flags: no-zp -x -v nv_disable=1

*Update* Later, when I added the second GTX 970, I enabled Vt-D (seems unrelated, but was necessary for me to run smoothly). I had to add "dart=0" as a boot flag to get it to load with Vt-d enabled. I would recommend doing the full install with one GTX 970 and get everything stable before attempting to add the second.

After following Spballer's recommended settings for MultiBeast, I installed the GeForce web drivers, found here, finished out the rest of his guide and was done. The Scarlett 2i4 works without anything required due to the universal audio drivers of OS X.

One important thing to note for any Pro Tools users is that Pro Tools 10 will not install on Yosemite. It thinks of 10.10 as < 10.7 (oldest OS X supported by Pro Tools 10), and Avid refuses to update the installer to fix this. There is a workaround though that works perfectly. All you have to do is set your SystemVersion.plist to show that you have OS 10.9.5 or some other stable version between 10.7.x - 10.9.x, install PT 10, then switch back to OS 10.10.x before the required restart. Instructions for that can be found here.


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Persistent Issues:
No sleep: Corsair Link has no OS X install, so there's no fan speed control functionality there. Worse than that though, if you plug in the USB header (so that you can control it on Windows), the USB header will keep OS X from sleeping. From my searches, the only fix is unplugging the header. There's nothing wrong with that, but you're throwing away functionality in windows if you do that. Also, for those of you thinking about the H100i, the settings you set when on Windows such as colors and RPM are kept when booting into Mac because it's all stored on the H100i itself.
Pro Tools 10.3.9 bad graphics: As noted above, I managed a workaround to install PT 10 on OS X 10.10, but that doesn't change the fact that PT 10 doesn't support Yosemite. There are some graphical glitches in Pro Tools 10 such as select plugin menus being blank until you move your cursor over them. This is frustrating to work with, but still manageable. I would advise trying to move to PT 11 as much as possible because it works flawlessly and is super stable.
Slow boot times: OS X 10.10 takes a while to boot (~1-2min). I think that's due to me booting with Chimera, but I really don't mind, so I haven't tried clover or any other bootloader.

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Conclusion:
Despite the above issues, I am able to run everything I need extremely well. This includes Pro Tools 11 and Logic Pro X both with many plugins such as NI Ultimate 9, Ozone 5 and 6, Nectar Production Suite, etc., all standard Mac apps, the app store, Eclipse and Netbeans for coding, and many more. I also am able to game extremely well in Windows 7 on my other drive. I can play games such as Far Cry 4 and Tomb Raider 2013 at highest settings with no hiccups or anything. Everything is extremely nippy and very stable.

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Benchmarks:
Geekbench 64-bit multi-core: 18118
Cinebench CPU: 878
Cinebench OpenGL: 107.37
Unigine Heaven 4: 2756 (Windows 2 x GTX 970 in SLI), 1514 (Windows 1 x GTX 970), 1170 (OSX)(direct3D11 on windows/OpenGL on mac, ultra quality, extreme tessellation, no stereo 3D, 1 monitor, 8xAA, full screen, 1920x1080)
Evan Logic Benchmark: 139 tracks stable

hayskeys said:

After following Spballer's recommended settings for MultiBeast, I installed the GeForce web drivers, found here, finished out the rest of his guide and was done.

Click to expand...

I've been struggling with the same set up (only dif Gigabyte instead of EVGA). I've followed Spballer's guide, installed Yosemite, and the Nvidia web drivers (fully updated). However, my 970 isn't showing up in Graphics/Displays! Instead, it's simply listed as "Display GPU PCIe". Did you run accross similer issues?

hayskeys said:

Slow boot times: OS X 10.10 takes a while to boot (~1-2min). I think that's due to me booting with Chimera, but I really don't mind, so I haven't tried clover or any other bootloader.

Click to expand...

Can confirm this as well. Did you ever try to fix it, or is it simply the nature of the beast?

Edit: Added the tonymac recommended boot flags
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>nvda_drv=1</string>

and now comes up as "NVIDIA Chip Model GPU PCIe". Closer, but not really what it's supposed to be...

Edit 2: Ok, looks like all I had to do was NOT boot with nv_disable=1

Yeah, once the web drivers are installed, there's no need for that boot flag anymore. The kernel flags that I have still (via MultiBeast setting them) are: kext-dev-mode=1 nvda_drv=1 -no-zp

As for the slow boot time, it is definitely still slow at booting. I've not really come across anything, so it seems to be the nature of the beast. If you find a solution, please let me know.

Is thunderbolt working for you (other than hot-swapping)?

hayskeys, congrats on your build

Reading through your build post and checking out your persistent issue's, I see a one difference that may or may not help.

I am not using the -no-zp boot. I wonder if this may be why you are experiencing slow boots... (no clue, just noticed that it was different, my machine boots extremely fast).

Here is what my boot.plist looks like.

<dict>
<key>EthernetBuiltIn</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>GraphicsEnabler</key>
<string>No</string>
<key>HDAEnabler</key>
<string>No</string>
<key>HDEFLayoutID</key>
<string>01000000</string>
<key>IGPEnabler</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>kext-dev-mode=1 nvda_drv=1</string>
<key>Legacy Logo</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>Timeout</key>
<string>2</string>
<key>UseKernelCache</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>Graphics Mode</key>
<string>"1920x1080x32"</string>
</dict>

I know I've read here about the sleep issues from corsair link, and I seem to have come across this topic more than once, which has me thinking there is hope for a fix in the future with those cooling components being popular in the hackintosh community.

I really appreciate the shout out, and hope that in time all your issue's are ironed out! Congrats again!

applescrapple said:

Is thunderbolt working for you (other than hot-swapping)?

Click to expand...

I actually don't have any thunderbolt devices, so I have no way of testing yet. I will let you know as soon as I do get a thunderbolt device to test.

Thanks for the boot.plist settings spballer! I'll check that out later this week once I can afford to have my machine down for a bit if something goes wrong.

Following this guide fixed the slow boot times for me.

http://www.tonymacx86.com/general-help/128748-fix-slow-boot-thunderbolt-2-0-motherboards.html

Weird thing I am experiencing is I cloned my working install to a second, larger capacity SSD trying both with Carbon Copy Cloner and Super Duper, but I'm getting the "Can't Find mach_kernel" error when I try to boot from my newly cloned drive. I tried installing latest Chimera bootloader, repairing permissions, various boot flags, etc... I'm kind of stuck on this one and I would love to get this working.
Any suggestions?

GA-Z97X-UD7-TH, 4790K, 32GB Corsair Vengeance 1866Mhz RAM, Gigabyte GTX 970

I want to make a similar build to yours, another option would be 5820k with X99 and I don't know for sure what would be best for audio. Could you please run the Logic Benchmark test posted here: https://www.gearslutz.com/board/logic-pro-x/371545-logic-pro-multicore-benchmarktest-91.html and tell me what was your result? Do you have it overclocked when running Logic? Thank you so much in advance!

How's the gaming performance side been like?