THANK you everyone. My machine now works well in almost every way I would like it to. All USB 2 & 3 ports, audio front and back...sleep...wake, everything. Everything I needed I found here on Tonymac. If you're not particularly good at all the troubleshooting as I am, my experiences below might help you.
I have the H170 Gaming 3 v 1.0 running 10.11 using Intel Graphics with 16 GB of RAM. I don't understand many of the tools I used, but here's how I got everything working:
0) Before beginning the install I had a lot of hardware issues. For one, the memory I bought didn't work on BIOS F2 or later. I traded it back for something else (I'm in Korea so it's all Samsung) and it ran on F4 fine, so I didn't upgrade. My 830 SSD also didn't work, and I don't know why, but I switched cables and locations and now it works. I might have a bad port. Everything I used to make this, including the CPU are used parts from the famous PC room (gaming dungeons) and are probably not in the best shape.
1) I followed the 10.11 and OP's guide.
2) On the first fresh OS X boot the screen flickers and USB ports work only in USB 2 speeds. The graphics problem is because on-board Intel is not installed. Audio doesn't work. I put Clover, Clover Configurator, and MultiBeast on the machine.
3) I run MultiBeast but only select what I need. I accidentally deleted a screenshot of the config but as OP mentioned above, don't install the audio drivers. Install Fake SMC, Atheros E2200 ethernet 2.2, USB increase max port limit and 7/8/9 support, UEFI boot mode, Intel HD 530, Mac Pro 3,1 (the iMac definitions gave me more USB issues). Using 3,1 works much better for me. Before being able to use MultiBeast, I tried a variety of USB fixes that worked with varying success on later iMac definitions. Unfortunately, I couldn't boot off a few of them
Audio: Copy SSDT-HDEF-HDAS-1.aml onto EFI (search for directions)
Then, I ran audio_cloverALC-120_v1.0f3.command
and like magic, audio works. For the record, audio that is quality audio that you really have to work for sounds far sweeter.
I'm omitting all the things I tried that didn't work. Now that I know what works, I was able to install everything in less than an hour just to make a really clean install.
Oh, and since I had an apple keyboard, Logitech mouse, Eizo monitor (we do a lot of color correction), nice speakers and SSD, I spent less than $400 on this. It feels much more responsive than my 13" 2016 MBP for video editing (probably because it has double the memory at 16 GB), however Brucex is 1:19 on this machine, 1:09 on the MBP running Sierra, and :48 on the 2013 iMac (which has a GPU). I'm not disappointed because skimming and moving chunks of video files without hiccups, and using shortcuts that move as fast as my thoughts do is more important to me. I just played around for 10 minutes today with a heavy file and it felt great. Definitely more responsive than the iMac and MacBook Pro. With a GPU installed, I expect more out of it.
My next steps:
- Get an AMD GPU. Currently the R9 280x is prohibitively expensive here so I'm kinda just...waiting for something to happen.
- I also want a USB C / 3.1 PCIe for external drives
- install more internal hard drives (currently I have one 2TB)
- get a Bluetooth card for an apple mouse.
- Test peripherals like my midi keyboard.
- Install CPU temp monitoring software
- Oh yeah and a big one: I'd like to use my studio 2013 5K iMac as a monitor in tandem with the Eizo...perhaps I need to get a thunderbolt card to do this? It would be nice to do it through USB C...
Thanks again community!