- Joined
- Jan 25, 2012
- Messages
- 648
- Motherboard
- ASUS P8P67-LE
- CPU
- i5-2400
- Graphics
- GTX 550TI
- Mobile Phone
Craig's Build: ASUS P8P67-LE | i5-2400 | GTX 550 Ti
Components
ASUS P8P67-LE ATX Motherboard - Amazon
Intel Core i5-2400 3.10GHz Quad Core Processor - Amazon
2x Kingston 4GB 1333MHz Ram
LG BH10LS30 Blu-Ray Disc Rewriter and DVDRW Drive - Amazon
Zotac GeForce GTX 550 Ti 1GB GDDR5 - Amazon
1TB Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.C 3.5" Hard Disk Drive - Amazon
Cooler Master Elite 330 ATX Mid Tower Case - I bought the 500W PSU along with this tower - Amazon
Items I have bought since the build
Apple Wireless Keyboard - Amazon
Apple Magic Mouse -Amazon
2x Thermalright TR-X-Silent-120 120mm Fan Black Retail -Amazon
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO CPU Cooler -Amazon
XtraFlo 120mm CPU Fan 4-pin - Out of stock currently
Akasa AK-CBFA04-15 PWM Fan Splitter Cable for 2 Fans -Amazon
My Comments
I originally bought the above components for a Windows PC which I was building to replace my age old laptop. I knew nothing of the components I needed and simply customised a gaming system on DinoPC and then looked around for the best prices on the internet, for this reason I have updated the links to include CCLOnline and eBuyer - I have used both companies for buying components several times and would recommend them to anyone buying from within the UK.
As I built the system with Windows in mind, it has been complete luck that I have achieved fully functional installations of Lion and Mountain Lion! There has been minimum complications in Lion and with recent developments able to have HDMI audio output using a GTX 550 Ti - notoriously a for several reasons! In Mountain Lion, there is severe instability with Fermi based cards, seemingly only affecting the models models that are using the GF108 or GF116 GPU. However the current beta of 10.8.3, 12D50 is showing promising signs of fixing the issues with the above cards without having to fiddle with kexts or frameworks.
The OS X build
I am running two versions of OS X on two seperate HDDs, Mountain Lion is still in testing and ironing out all the wrinkles - I don't wish to move all my work until after exams so I know I won't lose everything! I have my main installation of 10.7.4, and 10.8.2 on a secondary drive. There are two issues when using the above system to create a working install of OS X, Asus 1155 boards don't have native power mangement, this can be fixed, and requirement of a SSDT for a processor to run above 1.6 GHz.
Using a DSDT will kernel panic on boot due without a fix from below
For native power management on Asus 1155 boards I am using a modified BIOS rom, version 3602 - to be updated to version 3608 soon. There are several solutions to power management, i.e. NullCPUPowerMangement (found in MultiBeast) or a patched AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement, however I find that the best way is to use a patched rom and flash your BIOS with it. You will only have to do it once and any future updates from Apple will not break this solution! These 100% do work.
A warning! Not all 3xxx roms are available as only P8P67-LE, -M, -M PRO and Maximus IV Extreme have working audio with this series of rom installed. If you still have any other boards than these, remain on the pre-3000 series roms. This problem was discovered a while ago and the database has been updated to reflect which roms will break the system and which will not, so you can only download the working rom for your system. Remember DSDT and bios versions must match up!
From 10.7.4+ CPUs may be stuck at x16 multiplier, limiting them to a clock speed of 1.6 GHz
No Asus P8P67-LE DSDT in the database?
The database does not have a DSDT for my motherboard so I had to create my own DSDT. However I did not use the motherboard patch as stated in the guide, instead I used View attachment Asus Generic Patch without Audio.txt along with this patch for View attachment ALC892_Lion.txt and this patch for View attachment ALC892_ML.txt. This compiles to give the basic DSDT which you will find in the Resources -> DSDT section of this website.
The next step is to fix some cosmetic issues with the GTX 550 Ti. Once installed this card is listed as 1536 MB instead of 1024 MB - this is purely cosmetic and has no effect on performance. The edits in the DSDT allow for GraphicsEnabler=No to be present in org.Chameleon.boot.plist, i.e. more natural support.
The Installation
UniBeast
This guide covers both installing Lion and Mountain Lion on this system using UniBeast to create a bootable USB pen. This method is the easiest for a clean install of either OS X 10.7 or 10.8, I would always recommend a clean install when changing between major operating systems as this prevents unnecessary problems from arising. It can also act as a recovery device to boot into your installation if you break something! This does happen.
After booting to the USB pen and reaching the Chimera Bootloader you want to select USB, this is stated in the guide. If you have problems reaching the installation screen from here try the following things.
Dual Booting
At this point I swapped to a separate guide for dual booting Windows and OS X. I created three partitions so that when upgrading or repairing the operating system on either drive the valuable data is untouched and is easily shared between the two OS.
Post Installation
MultiBeast
After completing the UniBeast installation you will not have any audio, graphics (Open CL) or networking. Using one of the DSDTs above you can select UserDSDT in MultiBeast for either Lion or ML. Refer to the following screenshots of MultiBeast settings for which version you are installing. Remember that selecting UserDSDT installs drivers and definitions itself so these do not need to be checked as these are done for you.
Note: In ML after booting with safe boot, update to 10.8.3 (when released) and then the 550 Ti will be working natively as it did in Lion. Once updated you will not have to boot with -x.
Lion Screenshot - MultiBeast v4.7.0
Mountain Lion Screenshot - MultiBeast v5.2.1
Coming soon
HDMI Audio - Lion & ML
When I first installed Lion I wished to have everything working as intended, HDMI was the last major hurdle. At the time toleda helped me with editing my DSDT. However as much as we tried there was an unknown error:
This was a serious bummer, so I bought some speakers instead - no biggy, just not what I wanted. However time passed and Mountain Lion was released and discoveries were made in the meanwhile..
We have HDMI audio! This required patching View attachment AppleHDA.kext.zip from 10.6.2, however the same kext can be used in both Lion and Mountain and is attached below. This can be installed with KextBeast and then repair permissions with Kext Utility.
CUDA Technologies
BIOS RAM Settings
I looked in my BIOS settings and found I could change the speed of my RAM from 1333 MHz to 1600 MHz, my system seems to be stable and no errors so far. Tests show an geekbench increase of approximately 100 points per stick of 4 GB ram , this is an easy way to buy cheaper ram and get the speeds of higher priced ones!
Summary
Benchmark Programmes
The two programs commonly used to run benchmarks for GPUs are LuxMark - LuxRender and Unigine Heaven Benchmark 3.0. Cinebench does not support Open CL and therefore should not be used.
1. In LuxMark v2.0, when using the ball render I tested with GPU alone and GPU + CPU together:
System Information
Geekbench for Mac OS X x86 (64-bit) Score
Craig's First Build: ASUS P8P67-LE | i5-2400 | GTX 550 Ti
Updated for Mountain Lion!
Updated for Mountain Lion!
Components
ASUS P8P67-LE ATX Motherboard - Amazon
Intel Core i5-2400 3.10GHz Quad Core Processor - Amazon
2x Kingston 4GB 1333MHz Ram
LG BH10LS30 Blu-Ray Disc Rewriter and DVDRW Drive - Amazon
Zotac GeForce GTX 550 Ti 1GB GDDR5 - Amazon
1TB Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.C 3.5" Hard Disk Drive - Amazon
Cooler Master Elite 330 ATX Mid Tower Case - I bought the 500W PSU along with this tower - Amazon
Items I have bought since the build
Apple Wireless Keyboard - Amazon
Apple Magic Mouse -Amazon
2x Thermalright TR-X-Silent-120 120mm Fan Black Retail -Amazon
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO CPU Cooler -Amazon
XtraFlo 120mm CPU Fan 4-pin - Out of stock currently
Akasa AK-CBFA04-15 PWM Fan Splitter Cable for 2 Fans -Amazon
My Comments
I originally bought the above components for a Windows PC which I was building to replace my age old laptop. I knew nothing of the components I needed and simply customised a gaming system on DinoPC and then looked around for the best prices on the internet, for this reason I have updated the links to include CCLOnline and eBuyer - I have used both companies for buying components several times and would recommend them to anyone buying from within the UK.
As I built the system with Windows in mind, it has been complete luck that I have achieved fully functional installations of Lion and Mountain Lion! There has been minimum complications in Lion and with recent developments able to have HDMI audio output using a GTX 550 Ti - notoriously a for several reasons! In Mountain Lion, there is severe instability with Fermi based cards, seemingly only affecting the models models that are using the GF108 or GF116 GPU. However the current beta of 10.8.3, 12D50 is showing promising signs of fixing the issues with the above cards without having to fiddle with kexts or frameworks.
The OS X build
I am running two versions of OS X on two seperate HDDs, Mountain Lion is still in testing and ironing out all the wrinkles - I don't wish to move all my work until after exams so I know I won't lose everything! I have my main installation of 10.7.4, and 10.8.2 on a secondary drive. There are two issues when using the above system to create a working install of OS X, Asus 1155 boards don't have native power mangement, this can be fixed, and requirement of a SSDT for a processor to run above 1.6 GHz.
Using a DSDT will kernel panic on boot due without a fix from below
For native power management on Asus 1155 boards I am using a modified BIOS rom, version 3602 - to be updated to version 3608 soon. There are several solutions to power management, i.e. NullCPUPowerMangement (found in MultiBeast) or a patched AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement, however I find that the best way is to use a patched rom and flash your BIOS with it. You will only have to do it once and any future updates from Apple will not break this solution! These 100% do work.
A warning! Not all 3xxx roms are available as only P8P67-LE, -M, -M PRO and Maximus IV Extreme have working audio with this series of rom installed. If you still have any other boards than these, remain on the pre-3000 series roms. This problem was discovered a while ago and the database has been updated to reflect which roms will break the system and which will not, so you can only download the working rom for your system. Remember DSDT and bios versions must match up!
From 10.7.4+ CPUs may be stuck at x16 multiplier, limiting them to a clock speed of 1.6 GHz
The solution is simple for this, install the corresponding SSDT for your CPU in the /Extra folder which can be found in MultiBeast. There are several choices of SSDTs, however these can be tailored to your specific system using Revogirls SSDT generation script. The standard SSDTs found in MultiBeast are aimed at i5 and i7 CPUs - there are specific ones for i5/i7 CPUs which are overclocked to 4.2 GHz.tonymacx86 said:Apple updated the power management drivers. These new drivers are effecting performance, as some CPUs are stuck at a 16x multiplier, thus limiting them to a maximum clock speed of 1.6 GHz.
No Asus P8P67-LE DSDT in the database?
The database does not have a DSDT for my motherboard so I had to create my own DSDT. However I did not use the motherboard patch as stated in the guide, instead I used View attachment Asus Generic Patch without Audio.txt along with this patch for View attachment ALC892_Lion.txt and this patch for View attachment ALC892_ML.txt. This compiles to give the basic DSDT which you will find in the Resources -> DSDT section of this website.
The next step is to fix some cosmetic issues with the GTX 550 Ti. Once installed this card is listed as 1536 MB instead of 1024 MB - this is purely cosmetic and has no effect on performance. The edits in the DSDT allow for GraphicsEnabler=No to be present in org.Chameleon.boot.plist, i.e. more natural support.
The Installation
UniBeast
This guide covers both installing Lion and Mountain Lion on this system using UniBeast to create a bootable USB pen. This method is the easiest for a clean install of either OS X 10.7 or 10.8, I would always recommend a clean install when changing between major operating systems as this prevents unnecessary problems from arising. It can also act as a recovery device to boot into your installation if you break something! This does happen.
After booting to the USB pen and reaching the Chimera Bootloader you want to select USB, this is stated in the guide. If you have problems reaching the installation screen from here try the following things.
- Asus Motherboard + NVIDIA Graphics - type PCIRootUID=0
- Unsupported graphics - type GraphicsEnabler=No
Dual Booting
At this point I swapped to a separate guide for dual booting Windows and OS X. I created three partitions so that when upgrading or repairing the operating system on either drive the valuable data is untouched and is easily shared between the two OS.
- 150 GB for Windows 7 - NTFS Format
- 150 GB for OS X Lion - Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)
- 700 GB for shared data drive - Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)
Post Installation
MultiBeast
After completing the UniBeast installation you will not have any audio, graphics (Open CL) or networking. Using one of the DSDTs above you can select UserDSDT in MultiBeast for either Lion or ML. Refer to the following screenshots of MultiBeast settings for which version you are installing. Remember that selecting UserDSDT installs drivers and definitions itself so these do not need to be checked as these are done for you.
Note: In ML after booting with safe boot, update to 10.8.3 (when released) and then the 550 Ti will be working natively as it did in Lion. Once updated you will not have to boot with -x.
Lion Screenshot - MultiBeast v4.7.0
Mountain Lion Screenshot - MultiBeast v5.2.1
Coming soon
HDMI Audio - Lion & ML
When I first installed Lion I wished to have everything working as intended, HDMI was the last major hurdle. At the time toleda helped me with editing my DSDT. However as much as we tried there was an unknown error:
toleda said:That problem in IOReg remains. Even when you do the AppleHDA.kext editing properly, you will not have HDMI audio. In IOReg/PEGP/GFX0/NVDA,Display-B@1/audio-codec-index, the value of 4 is not valid; 0, 1, 2, or 3 are valid. I don't know what causes it or how to fix it. The only way I've resolved the problem is a different graphics card.
This was a serious bummer, so I bought some speakers instead - no biggy, just not what I wanted. However time passed and Mountain Lion was released and discoveries were made in the meanwhile..
The working AppleHDA.kext_v1.7.9 is from 10.6.2 and was the first to support HDMI audio, Nvidia only. Device_ID validation was added in the next version for all audio codecs. I had noticed 1.7.9 kext always had HDMI audio on the second HDMI codec and verified it on one of my systems. If you look at your IOReg, the invalid audio-codec-index is still there, however, the kext ignores the value and makes HDMI audio. The problem occurs with the GTS 450 and GTX 550 Ti.
We have HDMI audio! This required patching View attachment AppleHDA.kext.zip from 10.6.2, however the same kext can be used in both Lion and Mountain and is attached below. This can be installed with KextBeast and then repair permissions with Kext Utility.
CUDA Technologies
The latest version of CUDA is 5.0.37 (as of Sat 12 Jan) which can be found at nVidia Drivers 5.0.37 for Mac Release.nVidia CUDA said:CUDA™ is a parallel computing platform and programming model invented by NVIDIA. It enables dramatic increases in computing performance by harnessing the power of the graphics processing unit (GPU).
BIOS RAM Settings
I looked in my BIOS settings and found I could change the speed of my RAM from 1333 MHz to 1600 MHz, my system seems to be stable and no errors so far. Tests show an geekbench increase of approximately 100 points per stick of 4 GB ram , this is an easy way to buy cheaper ram and get the speeds of higher priced ones!
Summary
Benchmark Programmes
The two programs commonly used to run benchmarks for GPUs are LuxMark - LuxRender and Unigine Heaven Benchmark 3.0. Cinebench does not support Open CL and therefore should not be used.
1. In LuxMark v2.0, when using the ball render I tested with GPU alone and GPU + CPU together:
- GPU only - 2669
- GPU + CPU - 4465
- Average FPS of 30.2
- Score of 760
- Sleep, Wake from Sleep and Shutdown
- Wireless keyboard and mouse in Chimera and can be used to wake from sleep
- On-board sound - ALC892
- Gigabit Ethernet - Realtek RTL811E
- Speed-stepping - Ran MSRDumper for 5 minutes and saw 7 P-States reached: 16 17 18 19 20 36 37
- HDMI audio through GTX 550 Ti
- FireWire 400Mb/sec
- USB 3.0 Drivers - These currently work as 2.0 ports
- Install Apple Branded WiFi Card or TP-LINK TL-WDN4800
- Upgrade i5-2400 to i5-2500K and OC to 4.2 GHZ
- OS X 10.8.3 update to fix my Mountain Lion installation
System Information
Geekbench for Mac OS X x86 (64-bit) Score
Attachments
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