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[SUCCESS] Insane Cultist's X99 Workstation - GA-X99-UD4 - i7-5820K - 2x GTX 660 - 10.10.1

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Jul 25, 2013
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447
Motherboard
Asus X99 Deluxe
CPU
E5-2697v3
Graphics
RX 580
Mac
  1. iMac
  2. MacBook
  3. MacBook Air
  4. MacBook Pro
  5. Mac Pro
Classic Mac
  1. iMac
  2. Power Mac
  3. Xserve
Mobile Phone
  1. Android
  2. iOS
[SUCCESS] Insane Cultist's X99 Workstation - GA-X99-UD4 - i7-5820K - 2x GTX 660 - 10.10.1 - 4K Display

Insane Cultist's X99 Workstation:
GA-X99-UD4 - i7-5820K - 16GB DDR4 - 2x GTX 660


750D_hero_low.png

Components

Intel Core i7-5820K
http://www.amazon.com/Intel-i7-5820K-Haswell-E-Processor-BX80648I75820K/dp/B00MMLXIKY

Gigabyte GA-X99-UD4 Intel LGA 2011-3 Motherboard
http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-2011-3-CrossFireX-Motherboards-GA-X99-UD4/dp/B00MPIDNN6/

Corsair Obsidian Series 750D Full Tower Case
http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Obsidian-Performance-Tower-CC-9011035-WW/dp/B00EB6O4N8

Corsair CX Series 750 Watt Semi Modular Power Supply
http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Modular-Bronze-ATX12V-EPS12V/dp/B00ALK3KEM

Crucial 16GB Kit (2x8GB) DDR4 2133 MHz RAM
http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-PC4-17000-Unbuffered-288-Pin-CT2K8G4DFD8213/dp/B00MMLUYQK/

Corsair Hydro Series H105 Liquid CPU Cooler
http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Extreme-Performance-Liquid-CW-9060016-WW/dp/B00HKEI3EY/

Crucial MX100 256GB SATA 3 Solid State Drive
http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-MX100-adapter-Internal-CT256MX100SSD1/dp/B00KFAGCWK

Already Owned

Western Digital Black 1 TB 3.5" Desktop Hard Drive
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Cache-Desktop-WD1003FZEX/dp/B00FJRS6FU

Hitachi Deskstar 1TB 3.5" Desktop Hard Drive
http://www.amazon.com/Hitachi-Deskstar-E7K1000-Terabyte-7200RPM/dp/B001W3NM2C

Samsung 840 EVO 120GB SATA 3 Solid State Drive
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-120GB-2-5-Inch-Internal-MZ-7TE120BW/dp/B00E3W15P0

EVGA GeForce GTX 660 SUPERCLOCKED 2GB GDDR5 Graphics Card
http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-SUPERCLOCKED-Graphics-02G-P4-2662-KR/dp/B00966IREK

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 SUPERCLOCKED 2GB GDDR5 Graphics Card
http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-GeForce-GTX660-OC-2GB/dp/B00942TK8I

TP-LINK TL-WDN4800 Dual Band Wireless N900 PCI Express Adapter
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007GMPZ0A/

Comments

This build was designed to be a replacement to my aging 3,1 Mac Pro. The tower had served me well for quite some time, but over the summer of 2014, for some unexplained reason, it would not boot Windows for very long (BSoD) and I couldn't really deal with the heat output over extended hours of sitting at my desk. So, when I couldn't deal with it any longer, I sold the ol' workhorse on Craigslist, and built this guy.

With X99 and Haswell-E being unsupported by Apple, and Gigabyte's BIOS updates coming slowly, I am more than happy that this machine even boots OS X, let alone does everything I need it to do for me. My drive set up is a bit odd, 256GB SSD for OS X, 120GB SSD for Windows, and then two 1TB hard drives shared between the OS's, for Documents/Downloads/Pictures/etc. and for Games, respectively.

Installation Notes
Haswell-E currently requires a patched kernel to boot OS X, and without it, a simple "Black Screen" is shown, followed by an instant power off if the power button is pressed. Thanks to Stinga11 and all those over at the Installation Guide, a patch for the kernel was created, and installation was very straightforward.

After installation, a clone of the drive to an MBR formatted drive is required to boot using Chimera. To do so, simply load up your favourite cloning software, such as SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner and clone your new install to an HFS+ formatted, MBR partitioned drive. Ignore the warnings that the cloning software will give you - we're not using a "real" Mac, so we can boot just fine. After the clone completes, run Chimera 4.0.1 on your new MBR partitioned Yosemite installation, and (if necessary) apply a boot0 fix.

Also, Audio is not supported out of the box nor in the latest revision of Multibeast. To have functional audio, either use the latest revision of VoodooHDA from the regularly updated repository, or use Toleda's X99 Audio Patch. Note that this (at the time of writing this) requires an old-fashioned HDAEnabler kext as opposed to the newer dylib.

BIOS Settings
For my board, all I had to do was to load the optimized defaults in the BIOS. Check to make sure that VT-d is disabled (depending on your BIOS revision, it may be enabled by default) and then check to make sure that your SATA channels are in AHCI mode (should be AHCI by default.) If you make any changes, just save and exit.

MultiBeast Settings

Screen Shot 2015-01-25 at 3.30.35 PM.png

EDIT: (See Below) As of Multibeast 7.2, X99 Support is incorporated into the FakeSMC Plugins and HWMonitor branch bundled with Multibeast.

NOTE: Do NOT install the HWMonitor Plugins with FakeSMC on an X99 board, as they have not been configured for this platform and will cause a Kernel Panic.

EDIT: There is an updated Hardware Sensors provided by kozlek that supports the X99 platform. If you would like plugins to function properly, please use this updated version which can be downloaded HERE.


Benchmarks


Rather unremarkable Geekbench in OS X, most likely due to no native power management.

Screen Shot 2015-01-27 at 10.02.07 AM.png

Here are some Windows benchmarks for comparison.

Screen Shot 2015-01-27 at 10.04.19 AM.png

EDIT 2/8/15 -

This Geekbench was run using Manic Harmon1c's SSDT under OS X. Surprisingly, it's made QUITE a difference. The multi core score has even topped the one run in Windows.

Screen Shot 2015-02-08 at 1.39.56 PM.png

EDIT 2/25/15 -

It appears there is an XHCI bug on the X99 platform that prevents P-States from working. Speed Stepping can be enabled on the X99 platform by disabling XHCI in the BIOS. This requires use of NullCPUPowerManagement.kext, plus I am still using the SSDT. Boots my single core performance to around 3300, about on par in the multicore. However, CPU temperatures are noticeably lower and overall smoothness of the system has improved.

It appears that the Power Management "issues" due to nonexistent CPU and Chipset support for X99 in OS X will not be fixed until Haswell-EP Mac Pros are released (hopefully sometime soon.) Until then, it'll be up to workarounds to get max power out of these machines under OS X. Several members over at the Install Guide Thread (linked above) have suggested running a mild overclock to achieve better performance under OS X. Also, all CPU power is not being utilized even under extreme workloads. When I run a Premiere Pro CS6 render, the CPU (and GPU? might be a software issue) do not seem to be under full utilization. In fact, with iStat Menus installed, I barely ever see any hyper-threaded core usage, except under Geekbench. Also, the first core of the CPU seems to be under increasingly heavy workload (probably a fallback from no power management) but this does not seem to affect performance any more than the Geekbench results indicate. Many users are achieved around 20,000 Geekbench 3 with a mild overclock, which was my goal in upgrading from my 8 core 3,1 Mac Pro (around a 2x raw performance increase.)

EDIT 12/5/15 -

By using the "FakeCPUID" flag in Clover, it is possible to spoof your Haswell-E CPU as an Ivy Bridge CPU and allow for the CPU to maintain a constant clock speed and power usage under load in El Capitan. Previous benchmarks and Intel Power Gadget readouts show that the CPU does not stay steady during load. My post in the X99 El Cap thread can be found here. To mirror these results yourself, simply add a FakeCPUID flag with the CPU ID of "0x0306E0." This should result in benchmarks that are much more consistent than before. You can see my latest Geekbench run - 5820K at Stock on 64bit Geekbench, El Capitan 10.11.1 - here.

4K Update!

Today, I picked up an Acer B286HK for a great price to use with my new workstation. The screen is beautiful, despite the criticism it often gets for being a TN panel. It was as easy as making space on my desk, and plugging it in via DisplayPort 1.2. I've chosen the "Pseudo 2560x1440" Scaled Resolution under OS X. (Wish this was just as easy under Windows...)

I'd also like to note that despite the age on my GPUs, the games I play under Windows perform very well. There is a little bit of UI lag in demanding scenarios, but Skyrim, BioShock Infinite, and Titanfall were all more than playable at 4K on Max or Very High settings using my 660s in SLI. Just a little bit of a note for all you gamers out there...

~ [12/5/15]

A lot has changed software wise, here. I am now running El Capitan via Clover with a significant performance increase in the CPU numbers. A basic UEFI Clover install yields a fully working El Capitan system - the Metal API has done wonders for Mission Control performance on my 4K display.

Thank you for reading about my build!
-IC
 
Last edited:
Could you post some of your benchmark scores? Particularly with Geekbench?
 
Hi, you can post your chameleon.Boot.plist?
And youse nvidia we bdriver?
Thanks
 
Hi, you can post your chameleon.Boot.plist?
And youse nvidia we bdriver?
Thanks

Sure! The .plist is attached to this post for your reference. Booting with Chimera 4.0.1 and the NVIDIA web driver.

Could you post some of your benchmark scores? Particularly with Geekbench?

Yes, I will run them in a few moments and edit the original post. Just need to finish up a few things. They'll be up within the hour. :mrgreen:
 

Attachments

  • org.chameleon.Boot.plist
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I think so far the results are dissappointing from all of the X99 systems. It shows that Intel has not improve the processor from Ivy Bridge at all.

Here is my 3930K Geekbench.

http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/733970

Multicore Score: 21002

My system is:

3930K
Gigabyte X79S-UP4
32GB DDR3 1866mhz
GTX780
 
Question: when Apple finally supports X99 processors, will the support be in Mavericks or Yosemite-only? Or is it all speculation at this point.
 
Question: when Apple finally supports X99 processors, will the support be in Mavericks or Yosemite-only? Or is it all speculation at this point.

The support would be Yosemite only, for sure, if we even get support in this OS. As far as Apple is concerned, Mavericks is done. Any future innovation will be on Yosemite or a future release.

I think so far the results are dissappointing from all of the X99 systems. It shows that Intel has not improve the processor from Ivy Bridge at all.

I don't think this is the case at all. If I were to overclock my CPU to 4.0 GHz, as you have in that benchmark, and run Geekbench under a supported platform, I think I would result in a similar score. Your benchmark is also run in 64 bit, while mine was run in 32 bit, which also has a large impact at this level, give or take about 1000 points, in my experience. One difference is that X99 uses DDR4 RAM, which is speedier, plus my CPU cost me $300~ at launch and yours was $600~ at launch. Sure, it might not be huge in raw performance, but they're both 6 core CPUs. And keep in mind, the architecture jump from Sandy Bridge to Haswell had a lot to do with mobile power management and graphics updates, two things that are useless on the enthusiast platform.
 
I don't think this is the case at all. If I were to overclock my CPU to 4.0 GHz, as you have in that benchmark, and run Geekbench under a supported platform, I think I would result in a similar score. Your benchmark is also run in 64 bit, while mine was run in 32 bit, which also has a large impact at this level, give or take about 1000 points, in my experience. One difference is that X99 uses DDR4 RAM, which is speedier, plus my CPU cost me $300~ at launch and yours was $600~ at launch. Sure, it might not be huge in raw performance, but they're both 6 core CPUs. And keep in mind, the architecture jump from Sandy Bridge to Haswell had a lot to do with mobile power management and graphics updates, two things that are useless on the enthusiast platform.

4GHZ was just a mild setting, I don't even consider an overclock since I could hit 4.3GHZ and jump out to a 24k Geekbench3.

I don't think DDR4 makes a huge difference in general, the bandwidth is nice but the latency is not different than DDR3. I think right now it's not worth doing a X99 without any type of native OSX support. The X79 mobos are pretty cheap right now and I got my 3930K for $400 1 yr ago which isn't bad.
 
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