How to build your own iMac Pro [Successful Build/Extended Guide]

[ImaPirate]

Did you try different ports like HDMI, DP and HDMI? Are we talking about a clean install with former Method B.) as the exclusive black screen prevention? If not, rather start from the beginning with a clean install of your macOS System by following the most actual instruction implemented in my guide. Good luck !

Well, one thing I can say is that I'm using 3 x 28" Asus Gaming Monitors and have been for the last 2 years+ going through the struggles of my older Supermicro X9DAi-O setup freezing up for "no reason." We couldn't figure out what was going on and my installer told me that it was a possible memory leak with the nVidia cards. My gut always told me that it was nVidia cards (cause I believe that there just wasn't enough video RAM to handle 3 x 4K monitors) and that's what I'm still standing by.

Ever since I stopped using that setup and broke it down and now just about sold everything, I started with my Gigabyte AORUS Gaming 9 X299/7980XE setup. But even with the new Vega Frontier cards (yes I use two of them), I still had these random freezes again, so I don't know what the heck was going on. That is until I saw this post that KGP started using the Asus Prime X299-Deluxe Super Fantastical Dynamic Tremendous Amazing Stupendous Award Winning Motherboard setup. Hey Asus, can you come up with more adjectives? If you can't don't worry I just did it for you!

In any case, I was so mad and frustrated (and eventually happy ) because of all the time and money spent on this system to get something to replace my 5+ year old SR-2 setup. This was almost 3 years in the making and I'm finally glad to say that we just installed everything yesterday and it's working just fine and ALL of my 3 x 28" monitors are working just fine as well! No freezes (yet - LOL!). I'm glad. So far the only thing that I have enabled is the XMP for the RAM (that wasn't approved by Asus), but it IS working. I just got a LuxMark Score of over 44,000 and a GeekBench of 50,949 and haven't OC'd it yet. So that's good. Looking forward to seeing what I can push it to tonight with my other installer friend.

I'm glad I've got people helping me with this install stuff. Like I said before, I just build cool show piece systems and have other guys help me with the installation of them. Currently I'm using flexible tubing to connect everything in my water-cooling setup (while I'm still in the testing phase), so I'm not retaking pictures yet. Thing that sucks now, is that I have to redo all of the PETG tube bending. Oh well, First World Problems! I'm glad it's working and I'm especially grateful to (my installer who I call - The Clover King! ) and to you KGP for all your detailed help!

Clarino, I hope you figure out your 2 or 3 monitor issue, but I were you, I wouldn't waste my time with nVidia if you want that kind of setup, I would use 2 x AMD Vega Frontier cards (and yes, they're $1,000 a piece, but worth it for a 3 monitor setup). You're also going to need to plug them in certain ports using both cards. Also, you're never going to get the full benefit of using both cards in CrossFire mode (except when you're test rendering in LuxMark), but you WILL be able to use that extra 3rd monitor the way you want to. Now if you're only using 2 monitors, then you may be able to use one 1080 Ti nVidia card, and don't use anything less than that card, as you're going to need at least 12GB from that card. You may want to consider using the new 49" CHG90 QLED Gaming Monitor. It's not very tall, but it is wide. Microcenter has it on sale now for $1,199.99 ($300.00 off it's retail price). Now if they made a 70" or 80" one, THEN I would consider it. Eventually they will come out with something like that. Until then I'm going to continue enjoying my 84" wide monitor setup. Now that's the stuff baby!!!

So here's my current setup and I will be updating my page soon and retaking all my pics to show my system off. I sure do like that Origin PC Case. I'm glad that I bought it when I did, as they don't sell that case by itself and only did that for a limited time.

Motherboard : ASUS Prime X299-Deluxe
RAM: 64GB GSkill TridentZ RGB (F4-3600C17Q-64GTZR) - "Non-Approved" RAM that works anyway - LOL!
CPU: 1 x i9-7980XE (Water Blocked)
GPU: 2 x AMD Radeon Vega Frontier Edition 16GB
PSU: EVGA 1600 T2
Monitors: 3 x Asus MG28UQ 28" 4K

 

[mgregrs]

...even with the new Vega Frontier cards (yes I use two of them), I still had these random freezes again, so I don't know what the heck was going on.

Random freezes with Vega cards are totaly normal, ALL people should be carefull - because very often it's not CPU, Clover or kext problem - it's only Vega driver/drivers... which will be updated soon, and then we will have the best possible native supported Hackintosh graphic cards

 

[flymovies]

OK, slowly coming back to life.

USB Boot + Backup disk worked - it took long to boot though, but I've made it.
Some findings:
1) When booting from USB + NVME, I get a boot cache error (0xE)
2) After copying the EFI folder from the backup to the NVME boot still fails with the same error.
3) When I boot from the NVME only, the system basically breaks down where one would see the "++++++++++++++" in verbose mode

Question: Could this be the result of apfs problems? The NVME runs on APFS. I am now restoring from the backup onto HFS+, hoping this will give better long-term reliability.

Thoughts?

 

[poshook]

Hello Baggi
Unfortunately I didn't saw/felt that little lag, but on the same time I didn't have enough time to... because yesterday I had 30 min for tests - I installed a beta version of 10.13.2 and my system won't boot again

I didn't tried nothing last weekend - too much of work... I had only few hours for sleep and nothing for pleasure and OS X tests ...
So... I tried to test a lot of ways for that boring "auto-reboot" problem; after OS X choose in clover....
nothing works so ... now I have to reinstall everything I will let you know after...

I got this problem twice. First time I installed 10.3.0. The performance of CPU was not there so I decided to check the performance by HWMonitor with FakeSMC..... not a good idea So I reinstalled once more now with 10.3.1 but after installation of my FW soundcard I can not boot again. So I will try even once more but maybe in the next week as I have a lot of work right now.

 

[ImaPirate]

Random freezes with Vega cards are totaly normal, ALL people should be carefull - because very often it's not CPU, Clover or kext problem - it's only Vega driver/drivers... which will be updated soon, and then we will have the best possible native supported Hackintosh graphic cards

While I don't disagree completely, I don't need to worry about an update, please read my WHOLE post. I also stated:

"We couldn't figure out what was going on and my installer told me that it was a possible memory leak with the nVidia cards. My gut always told me that it was nVidia cards (cause I believe that there just wasn't enough video RAM to handle 3 x 4K monitors) and that's what I'm still standing by."

"Clarino, I hope you figure out your 2 or 3 monitor issue, but I were you, I wouldn't waste my time with nVidia if you want that kind of setup, I would use 2 x AMD Vega Frontier cards (and yes, they're $1,000 a piece, but worth it for a 3 monitor setup). You're also going to need to plug them in certain ports using both cards. Also, you're never going to get the full benefit of using both cards in CrossFire mode (except when you're test rendering in LuxMark), but you WILL be able to use that extra 3rd monitor the way you want to. Now if you're only using 2 monitors, then you may be able to use one 1080 Ti nVidia card, and don't use anything less than that card, as you're going to need at least 12GB from that card."

I believe both nVidia and AMD cards have their own issues. Again, BOTH AMD Vega Frontier cards are working fine for me now and I've had my system up and running all day and so far no issues. I even stress tested the CPU and GPU's (using LuxMark) on and off throughout the day and no freezes yet. Also, kgp's pics showing the stability of the Asus board (by comparison to the Gigabyte board) under stress is showing itself to be true. Very stable board.

On a side (but related) note, the 5+ year old Hackinbeast that I'm still using is has 1 x nVidia C2070 6GB and 2 x EVGA 580 3GB GTX GPUs that are separately plugged in to each of my 3 x 30" 2560x1600 monitors and anytime I use a web browser and go on YouTube to play a video on the C2070 card connected to that monitor, it freezes within about a minute. So I've learned not to that.

All of these cards have their issues, it's just one of those things to work with when you're building Hackintoshes. Using Windows, never had a problem, but hate their OS and can't stand viruses that continually jack up my system. That's why I use Mac OS X. Hope this info helps.

 

[mgregrs]

While I don't disagree completely, I don't need to worry about an update, please read my WHOLE post. I also stated:

"We couldn't figure out what was going on and my installer told me that it was a possible memory leak with the nVidia cards. My gut always told me that it was nVidia cards (cause I believe that there just wasn't enough video RAM to handle 3 x 4K monitors) and that's what I'm still standing by."

"Clarino, I hope you figure out your 2 or 3 monitor issue, but I were you, I wouldn't waste my time with nVidia if you want that kind of setup, I would use 2 x AMD Vega Frontier cards (and yes, they're $1,000 a piece, but worth it for a 3 monitor setup). You're also going to need to plug them in certain ports using both cards. Also, you're never going to get the full benefit of using both cards in CrossFire mode (except when you're test rendering in LuxMark), but you WILL be able to use that extra 3rd monitor the way you want to. Now if you're only using 2 monitors, then you may be able to use one 1080 Ti nVidia card, and don't use anything less than that card, as you're going to need at least 12GB from that card."

I believe both nVidia and AMD cards have their own issues. Again, BOTH AMD Vega Frontier cards are working fine for me now and I've had my system up and running all day and so far no issues. I even stress tested the CPU and GPU's (using LuxMark) on and off throughout the day and no freezes yet. Also, kgp's pics showing the stability of the Asus board (by comparison to the Gigabyte board) under stress is showing itself to be true. Very stable board.

On a side (but related) note, the 5+ year old Hackinbeast that I'm still using is has 1 x nVidia C2070 6GB and 2 x EVGA 580 3GB GTX GPUs that are separately plugged in to each of my 3 x 30" 2560x1600 monitors and anytime I use a web browser and go on YouTube to play a video on the C2070 card connected to that monitor, it freezes within about a minute. So I've learned not to that.

All of these cards have their issues, it's just one of those things to work with when you're building Hackintoshes. Using Windows, never had a problem, but hate their OS and can't stand viruses that continually jack up my system. That's why I use Mac OS X. Hope this info helps.

Sorry, that's true I don't have always enough time to read all long posts
But...
in few words:
I never used Nvidia C2070 but I know that GTX 580 etc are old cards..
I don't know your friend who make your installation, but
I never had problems with 2 or 3 monitors with GTX 9XX or GTX 10XX or Radeon R9/470/480 or others
and the same things is with my new Vega, but now I have only 2 monitors 1x 34" and 2nd 22"...

"my installer told me that it was a possible memory leak with the nVidia cards"
- it's depend your what you do ... your work etc
because for internet/video/audio simple Windows/OS X usage... no I don't think it was a memory problem
but if your usage was - pro programs/applications - yes... maybe it was that...

... btw... It was soooooo long time ago... so old hardware - is don't even worth to mention about that, and
you shouldn't build your experience with graphic cards... only because you had few problems with 3rd monitor etc
Today it's not the same technology, drivers, systems etc... so we have sometimes similar problems but
we shouldn't compare today with old things from almost 8 years ago (GTX 580 times - 2010-2011)

"both nVidia and AMD cards have their own issues" - ohh yes...thats 100% true

"BOTH AMD Vega Frontier cards are working fine for me now" - did you tried use Google Chrome few minutes, some Electron apps or even "build-in" photo editor... (take a desktop screenshot, open it, try to select everything with mouse and copy somewhere , this is always my first test, and always fail )

 

[oznem]

I’ve done a few searches and power management/p-states appear to be a bit of problem with the Skylake-X platform. If anyone has any advice on how to disable power management in clover/osx or in relation to this, even if it’s to say I’ve misdiagnosed the issue, I’m happy to hear it!

Hi @justdatruth,

not having received and tested my X299 components yet, maybe I shouldn't speak yet, but let me try to reason in a more generalized way:

1-It CAN be true that Mac OS X ignores some BIOS setting, that is because they are meant and implemented mainly with Windows in mind.

2-That is exactly why a well implemented Power Management specific for Mac OS X should ALWAYS be a good thing, not because It affects your benchmarks, but because it optimizes the way your system uses the CPU for all tasks, continuously all of the time!
In the system I am currently running (Z97 on I7-4790) this was also the case: I was getting good benchmarks, But when I analyzed the CPU frequencies with Intel Power Gadget I suddenly realized It was a mess: I had frequencies Jumping all over even in idle!
After generating a custom SSDT that was gone. So my guess is that you probably still have to refine that, ad as soon as I get my system up and running, since I will be having a similar problem (my mobo is a ASRock Fatal1ty X299 Gaming K6 and CPU is a I7-7820X so they are not exactly the same), maybe we can help each other and all the guys using ASRock mobos.

3-If I correctly understand, you say that even in Windows the X299 systems uses al lot more CPU percentage than it should.
So if it is not even a Mac OS X specific issue, than my guess is that it relates in how the software reacts to the hardware in general. I have to agree with (Klaus) @kgp on that; X299 platform is still VERY fresh, with Intel rushing all The Skylake-X CPUs just because of the fierce AMD Ryzen competition. As far as I know DAW software in general may not be very well optimized for new platforms yet. If that is the case I'm afraid you'll just have to wait (and hope).
After all IT history is full of unoptimized software!

bye

OZ

 

[RuleBreaker01]

OK, slowly coming back to life.

USB Boot + Backup disk worked - it took long to boot though, but I've made it.
Some findings:
1) When booting from USB + NVME, I get a boot cache error (0xE)
2) After copying the EFI folder from the backup to the NVME boot still fails with the same error.
3) When I boot from the NVME only, the system basically breaks down where one would see the "++++++++++++++" in verbose mode

Question: Could this be the result of apfs problems? The NVME runs on APFS. I am now restoring from the backup onto HFS+, hoping this will give better long-term reliability.

Thoughts?

Did you still keep OC few cores at 4.9? Because I could never boot into OS with any core at 4.9.
So maybe lower them down to 4.8?

 

[mgregrs]

Did you still keep OC few cores at 4.9? Because I could never boot into OS with any core at 4.9.
So maybe lower them down to 4.8?

Winter is coming, so we will have a great time to cool our machines from outside
You know... 3 to 5 meters tubing from outside directly to our processors and.. easly 5Ghz stable



OK maybe that wasn't a great joke
but BTW ... (more serious...) I'm interested what kind of liquid do you use for your WCooling system..?

 

[RuleBreaker01]

Winter is coming, so we will have a great time to cool our machines from outside
You know... 3 to 5 meters tubing from outside directly to our processors and.. easly 5Ghz stable

View attachment 290566

OK maybe that wasn't a great joke
but BTW ... (more serious...) I'm interested what kind of liquid do you use for your WCooling system..?

I am using this ones,


Btw, I will probably building the 8700K pretty soon, haha