MSI X299 SLI Plus and Intel 7820X: installation and post installation steps

[slurpi]

Why am i getting this problem now? I tried with clover 4369, with the OsxAptioFix2Drv-64.efi, the OsxAptioFixDrv-64.efi, the Test-...efi but all give me the same error.

 

Just to be sure, you mean you tried with OsxAptioFixDrv-64.efi + Test-...efi at the same time? Because this is how you should do it, not either one or the other. Test*efi only works together with OsxAptioFixDrv.

 

Then there is also the suggestion from MaLdOn a few posts above. You can try that also. 

 

Good luck!

[slurpi]

If you must run Prime 95 offset your AVX by 2, 512 by 3.

If you only have an 8 pin CPU power cable then don't overclock. 12 pins is ok, 16 is best.

 

I've had nothing but trouble with imac pro 1,1. It slowed my computer down by heaps and won't let me update OS x by app store. I'd wait until it's solid before jumping in. There are no advantages and a lot of issues right now. I've spent a LOT of time with this and so far no good.

 

 

 

These are great suggestions! Thanks a lot. I'll try to tweak the offsets and thus lower the voltage. Other motherboards can get 4.4GHz with 1.15V or less, so the AVX offset might be the issue.

 

And thanks for the heads-up on the iMacPro SMBIOS. I have a test partition just for it, but all this fuss about creating my own installer is too much for now. I am very happy with iMac18,1 (althought technically it should not be the correct CPU architecture for me), so I will only change it if some good gains are to be found.

[zambostraut]

Overclocking the X299 motherboard is great compared to the older ones.

For 4.4 you can just change the multiplier and nothing else. For a higher overclock you can change volts but I only bother over 4.6.

Here is my overclock guide for Gigabyte users.

Leave everything else, including mesh, alone. Apart from XMP of course.

Prime 95 was designed for less cores so in my opinion it's not good to run. Too stressful for the modern CPUs. AIDA is better, but not CPU and AVX together.

If you must run Prime 95 offset your AVX by 2, 512 by 3.

If you only have an 8 pin CPU power cable then don't overclock. 12 pins is ok, 16 is best.

 

I've had nothing but trouble with imac pro 1,1. It slowed my computer down by heaps and won't let me update OS x by app store. I'd wait until it's solid before jumping in. There are no advantages and a lot of issues right now. I've spent a LOT of time with this and so far no good.

 

Only Asus motherboards have MSR locked and require bios patching so far as I know. All other motherboards are fine, so either keep away from Asus or get comfortable with bios patching

 

Hope this helps

Pete

Pete,

 

Great information here and I'll definitely be taking it on board by changing some of my own settings. I actually noticed boosting the CPU Mesh ratio to 3200MHZ gave me about 1000 points extra on GB  and the relevant equivalent in Cinebench. Is it possible your system is reacting differently to this? 

 

Also, I must ask you if you've managed to get your RAM to show correct XMP speed in Os x. Both Slurpi and I can't seem to get it to register anything higher than 2133Mhz despite the BIOS showing the correct overclocked speed. Maybe there is some sort of kernel patch we've missed or you're aware of? 

 

Thanks again and I'll make some of these changes and see what sort of effect it gives. 

 

S

[surfinchina]

Pete,

 

Great information here and I'll definitely be taking it on board by changing some of my own settings. I actually noticed boosting the CPU Mesh ratio to 3200MHZ gave me about 1000 points extra on GB  and the relevant equivalent in Cinebench. Is it possible your system is reacting differently to this? 

 

Also, I must ask you if you've managed to get your RAM to show correct XMP speed in Os x. Both Slurpi and I can't seem to get it to register anything higher than 2133Mhz despite the BIOS showing the correct overclocked speed. Maybe there is some sort of kernel patch we've missed or you're aware of? 

 

Thanks again and I'll make some of these changes and see what sort of effect it gives. 

 

S

 

I'm having the same trouble with RAM. It really bugged me for a while then I found that it was running at 3600, just didn't show it.

About the mesh, I never really noticed but you could be right. At 32 my system just got a bit unstable so I run it at 30 at the moment. It's summer here and hitting 30deg most days :/

[zambostraut]

Well that's a relief r.e RAM speed. I've spent a lot of time fannying about on that one. Just to ask though, how can you be sure Os X is running it at correct speed? All the metrics on there Geekbench / Sys Info / AIDA etc show 2133Mhz or did you work it out from Benchmarking performance? 

 

I agree with you about not pushing the system. As Slurpi and I were mentioning getting an extra 3-5% out of the system for the crazy addition to Watts and Thermals doesn't seem worth it to me. 

 

I'm gonna look over your settings now make some changes and also see if I can overclock the RAM a little more and get back with any results. 

 

Thanks again

[surfinchina]

Well that's a relief r.e RAM speed. I've spent a lot of time fannying about on that one. Just to ask though, how can you be sure Os X is running it at correct speed? All the metrics on there Geekbench / Sys Info / AIDA etc show 2133Mhz or did you work it out from Benchmarking performance? 

 

I agree with you about not pushing the system. As Slurpi and I were mentioning getting an extra 3-5% out of the system for the crazy addition to Watts and Thermals doesn't seem worth it to me. 

 

I'm gonna look over your settings now make some changes and also see if I can overclock the RAM a little more and get back with any results. 

 

Thanks again

 

I figured it out when I did a manual RAM o/c the other day. The benches got slower.

I don't know what speed it's doing on XMP, but if you look at the bottom of the Geekbench results, you can see the memory speeds. Mine were faster on XMP.

[zambostraut]

That would make sense. Going to check that out now too. 

 

Also, I wanted to ask how you're liking the Vega. I've been on Nvidia (currently 1070) for a few years now and predominantly use it for Da Vinci / Premiere Pro / AFX. 

 

How's performance been for you as I know it's natively supported, have you had any issues? 

[surfinchina]

That would make sense. Going to check that out now too. 

 

Also, I wanted to ask how you're liking the Vega. I've been on Nvidia (currently 1070) for a few years now and predominantly use it for Da Vinci / Premiere Pro / AFX. 

 

How's performance been for you as I know it's natively supported, have you had any issues? 

I'll give you the long answer

Jury is still out really.

Before I had a fury on Sierra. Before that a 390x. They were both faster, but had less memory.

 

I use it with Archicad - Architectural software.

I'm liking the Vega in the model space! My models use shaders and with 16gb I get nice fluid movement and can have super complicated models.

In the 2D window I sometimes get frustrating lags - Spinning wheel for around 2 seconds, when I move some objects around. This doesn't happen in windows with the same model on the same software so I'm thinking it's the driver.

 

I'm hoping that when the Vega gets into egpu on the real mac pro the drivers will improve.

 

I like being able to update without modding kexts etc, so all in all I think it's an improvement, given that the Fury didn't work on High Sierra anyway. 

[zambostraut]

Sounds like you've had one improvement in return for a downside elsewhere although I'm confident you'll be fine with this next update which includes the eGPu. I really want to go Vega also however, in the current GPU market it's not feasible to buy anything and I'm lucky I got my 1070 when I did. 

 

On the subject of overclocking. 

 

I made some of the changes you have on your guide and interestingly I saw quite a large performance drop in both Geekbench and Cine. 

 

Dropping CPU Mesh from 32 to 30 and disabling EIST / C1e halt etc saw my scores go from 5434 / 35224 to 5285 / 33255 in Geekbench and I lost around points in Cine. 

 

 

Not sure if these are just cosmetic either. Power usage with CPU mesh at 32 OC 4.4 XMP1 (3000) is hovering just under the 180w mark which I think is passable for the 8pin cpu plug. 

 

Let's see what 10.13.3 brings. 

[surfinchina]

Sounds like you've had one improvement in return for a downside elsewhere although I'm confident you'll be fine with this next update which includes the eGPu. I really want to go Vega also however, in the current GPU market it's not feasible to buy anything and I'm lucky I got my 1070 when I did. 

 

On the subject of overclocking. 

 

I made some of the changes you have on your guide and interestingly I saw quite a large performance drop in both Geekbench and Cine. 

 

Dropping CPU Mesh from 32 to 30 and disabling EIST / C1e halt etc saw my scores go from 5434 / 35224 to 5285 / 33255 in Geekbench and I lost around points in Cine. 

 

 

Not sure if these are just cosmetic either. Power usage with CPU mesh at 32 OC 4.4 XMP1 (3000) is hovering just under the 180w mark which I think is passable for the 8pin cpu plug. 

 

Let's see what 10.13.3 brings. 

 

The EIST in particular helps with stability and temps when it's disabled. If you're not pushing the limits with o/c it's good to keep it enabled. If I run 4.9 I need it disabled. Same with 32 mesh.

It's great you're experimenting and getting the best settings for you! 

One other thing I don't like about the Vega is that the bios is locked, so no bios mods - o/c on the Mac. Hopefully it'll be good in the future, like you say, but for now I guess sticking with what you've got is a good idea.

[slurpi]

Here's my quick update on AVX and iMacPro1,1:

 

No performance changes on iMacPro1,1, unlike Pete. I used basically the same config.plist as for 18,3, but I had to explicitly enable the Nvidia WebDrivers, otherwise they would not be used. Interestingly,  I was able to install and to run the system without the Nvidia drivers with the 1070. But in therms of hardware compatibility, there were no real improvements. I have a couple of USB 3.0 ports that are not recognized with iMac18,3 (couldn't be bothered to implement a patch), and they are still not recognized now. Everything else seems to work as expected. Sleep and wake and restart all seem to work fine.

 

 

About AVX: What a change! I spent a couple of hours doing stability tests, with Cinebench, Geekbench and Prime95, and here's what I found:

Settings:

OC @ 4.4GHz

Core Voltage @ 1.12V (down from 1.21V!)

AVX: -2

AVX 512: -2

 

Cinebench maintains the score at around 1920 (I even had a run with 1930, but I was not able to reproduce). However, the temps go down by 9C, to around 91C. Great improvement! 

Because the score doesn't change, I suspect it does not use AVX.

 

Geekbench goes a bit lower: 5499/35888. I used to have 55xx/36xxx. So not much of a difference, but this makes me assume that some of the tests use AVX.

 

Prime95 is stable, at least for the 20 min I let it run the Torture Test (one pass of all 4 tests). Temps are also lower by about 5C, but it does use AVX all the time, so performance is at 4.2GHz. There was one test that still had a bit of throttling.

 

So all in all, very good results, what an improvement in the temps! Besides the suggestion from surfinchina to lower the AVX, I suspect the new BIOS version also helps on stability.

 

I still want to test further. I haven't found the lower voltage that maintains stability yet, I didn't have time. I know I can't leave it on auto with 4.4GHz, that I tried and didn't work.

 

I also tested how low I can go:

* Auto voltage at 44x is too unstable. The system reboots as soon as I try Cinebench.

* 1.11V is a bit stable. The system rebooted only after 5 min of Prime95. It worked through Cinebench and Geekbench without any apparent issue.

 

Also, tests on Windows were very similar, except for Prime95. There the temps were too high, and the processor was throttling down to 3.7GHz half of the time.

 

Once I have a more definite answer on voltages for this minimal OC, and when I move to iMacPro1,1, I'll update the main two post to reflect that.

 

Thanks for all the help!

 

----

On another news, I just noticed that KGP started his massive guide here too: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/331658-how-to-build-your-own-imac-pro-successful-buildextended-guide/

 

I wonder how it will work out. I hope it doesn't burst into flames so quickly this time ;-)

[bbuster]

Hmm, i tried today with a new USB stick from sandisk. I do everything you mentioned in the first post and i think everything the same as my last time, but whatever i do, i keep getting a "Does printf work??" error.

 

I also searched online and downloaded a complete EFI/Boot And EFI/CLOVER folder but after the first message (when in this case "Does printf work??" comes, now the pc just shuts down).

 

I have no idea what i can do again. I feel frustrated because it has worked before on the same hardware...

[zambostraut]

@slurpi 

 

Nice work on those benchmarks. I haven't done any further testing on my system as it's been performing well and yet to crash although, I have noticed one strange issue I've seen floating about the Mac community (real as well as hackintosh) which is the 10.13.2 supplemental update doesn't 'really' install. It says it has but when I come back to the comp a day or two later it's back in the App store. I've tried the combo updater / sudo from terminal and the offical app store but all fail in the same way. I have to say that High Sierra appears to be Apple's most buggy (and insecure) OS to date. I hope they sort their {censored} out this year. I blame diversity hires over people who can actually do their job. Rant aside, I long for the beauty that was Snow Leopard / Mavericks. 

 

Bbuster. Sounds like you're having a hard time there and I feel for you. Not sure what other suggestions I can give as you've probably tried everything. Unless it's a dodgy mother board (unlikely) or a dodgy boot disk I'm not sure. 

 

All I can say is I've seen the "printf" error myself numerous times and just contined to restart until it went away. If you get past the inital install ( before the first reboot) I think I had to change either USB location once to get past the PrintF or, I might even have gone from KGP's install on the other Hackintosh site, and used my own USB which was a legit vanilla High Sierra install to get past that stage. 

Sorry to not be of more help and good luck. 

[slurpi]

Hmm, i tried today with a new USB stick from sandisk. I do everything you mentioned in the first post and i think everything the same as my last time, but whatever i do, i keep getting a "Does printf work??" error.

 

I feel your frustration.

 

Have you tried the new AptioFix drivers that have appeared in the mean time:

 

OSXAptioFix3Drv.efi or AptioMemoryFix.efi

 

Others have said it works for them.

 

Also, do you remember to boot from off (not just reboot) between tries? And did you remove slide= parameter from you kernel options?

 

I had to go back to OSXAptioFixDrv.efi + Test.efi, I started getting errors again with just OSXAptioFixDrv.efi...

[bbuster]

Thanks, i have tried multiple times but it always gives that message, my complete system is a few weeks old and my SSD is only 1 week old so i don't think that hardware can cause this problem.

 

I always turn off my pc, sometimes i power off my power supply for a minute and try again but still the same error. I did all the combinations with OSXAptioFixDrv, OSXAptioFix2Drv, Test.efi etc, but nothing worked.

 

I am going to search the OSXAptioFix3Drv and AptioMemoryFix and see if that helps. I don't use slide=..., it worked without this before as well and i don't know how to calculate

 

Do you have a suggestion where to download OSXAptioFix3Drv and AptioMemoryFix? I can search but i am afraid i use the wrong ones.

 

Thanks again!

[UcaUca]

 

 

Do you have a suggestion where to download OSXAptioFix3Drv and AptioMemoryFix? I can search but i am afraid i use the wrong ones.

 

 

 

Its included in the recent clover installer. Try AptioMemoryFix first. It calculates slide automatically so you won't need the slide setting. It worked for me. 

 

I got that message (print blabla) after upgrading to 10.13.2. I had to update my AptioFix in order to boot again. Just keep in my mind, that there has been done a lot of work on Aptio Fix the last weeks. It was crucial to keep your files updated in order to profit from  the  stability improvements.

[zambostraut]

Bbuster. Are you on the same MB as Slurpi? I didn't see your setup I think unless you posted it much earlier on. 

 

The reason I ask is I didn't have to use some of these Aptiofix's mentioned above. Other than some graphics nonsense I think the vanilla install worked for me in the end although KGP's well documented build was the first methond that got me booted and running a stable High Sierra. 

 

Might be worth mentioning that there are a few different versions of HS floating around. My build number is different to Slurpi's for example and up until now it won't let me update to the 10.13.2 supplemental update even though I thought it had. Maybe these different build numbers are causing some problem but that's a long shot. 

 

You said you got something booting before, any chance you can replicate it and we start from that point? 

Best of luck . 

[Guest]

Hi slurpi, good thread

 

could I ask if you can put here the terminal output of these commands?

 

It is useful if you are using ImacPro1.1 to see how x299 interacts with xcpm and others things

 

sysctl -n machdep.xcpm.vectors_loaded_count

kextstat|grep -y x86plat

kextstat|grep -y appleintelcpu

sysctl machdep.xcpm.mode

 

Thank you

 

Here's my quick update on AVX and iMacPro1,1:

 

No performance changes on iMacPro1,1, unlike Pete. I used basically the same config.plist as for 18,3, but I had to explicitly enable the Nvidia WebDrivers, otherwise they would not be used. Interestingly,  I was able to install and to run the system without the Nvidia drivers with the 1070. But in therms of hardware compatibility, there were no real improvements. I have a couple of USB 3.0 ports that are not recognized with iMac18,3 (couldn't be bothered to implement a patch), and they are still not recognized now. Everything else seems to work as expected. Sleep and wake and restart all seem to work fine.

 

 

About AVX: What a change! I spent a couple of hours doing stability tests, with Cinebench, Geekbench and Prime95, and here's what I found:

Settings:

OC @ 4.4GHz

Core Voltage @ 1.12V (down from 1.21V!)

AVX: -2

AVX 512: -2

 

Cinebench maintains the score at around 1920 (I even had a run with 1930, but I was not able to reproduce). However, the temps go down by 9C, to around 91C. Great improvement! 

Because the score doesn't change, I suspect it does not use AVX.

 

Geekbench goes a bit lower: 5499/35888. I used to have 55xx/36xxx. So not much of a difference, but this makes me assume that some of the tests use AVX.

 

Prime95 is stable, at least for the 20 min I let it run the Torture Test (one pass of all 4 tests). Temps are also lower by about 5C, but it does use AVX all the time, so performance is at 4.2GHz. There was one test that still had a bit of throttling.

 

So all in all, very good results, what an improvement in the temps! Besides the suggestion from surfinchina to lower the AVX, I suspect the new BIOS version also helps on stability.

 

I still want to test further. I haven't found the lower voltage that maintains stability yet, I didn't have time. I know I can't leave it on auto with 4.4GHz, that I tried and didn't work.

 

I also tested how low I can go:

* Auto voltage at 44x is too unstable. The system reboots as soon as I try Cinebench.

* 1.11V is a bit stable. The system rebooted only after 5 min of Prime95. It worked through Cinebench and Geekbench without any apparent issue.

 

Also, tests on Windows were very similar, except for Prime95. There the temps were too high, and the processor was throttling down to 3.7GHz half of the time.

 

Once I have a more definite answer on voltages for this minimal OC, and when I move to iMacPro1,1, I'll update the main two post to reflect that.

 

Thanks for all the help!

 

----

On another news, I just noticed that KGP started his massive guide here too: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/331658-how-to-build-your-own-imac-pro-successful-buildextended-guide/

 

I wonder how it will work out. I hope it doesn't burst into flames so quickly this time ;-)

Edited January 20, 2018 by Guest

[bbuster]

Its included in the recent clover installer. Try AptioMemoryFix first. It calculates slide automatically so you won't need the slide setting. It worked for me. 

 

I got that message (print blabla) after upgrading to 10.13.2. I had to update my AptioFix in order to boot again. Just keep in my mind, that there has been done a lot of work on Aptio Fix the last weeks. It was crucial to keep your files updated in order to profit from  the  stability improvements.

 

Thanks, i found it. When i start the installer i see that it tries to get the correct slide but i see 256 times:

 

Slide xxx at xxxxxx:xxxxxxx cannot be used!

Slide xxx at xxxxxx:xxxxxxx cannot be used!

Slide xxx at xxxxxx:xxx....

 

 

I made a movie about it (https://streamable.com/s4h7e)

Is this the problem of my failure? And did i setup my BIOS wrong?

 

 

 

Bbuster. Are you on the same MB as Slurpi? I didn't see your setup I think unless you posted it much earlier on. 

 

The reason I ask is I didn't have to use some of these Aptiofix's mentioned above. Other than some graphics nonsense I think the vanilla install worked for me in the end although KGP's well documented build was the first methond that got me booted and running a stable High Sierra. 

 

Might be worth mentioning that there are a few different versions of HS floating around. My build number is different to Slurpi's for example and up until now it won't let me update to the 10.13.2 supplemental update even though I thought it had. Maybe these different build numbers are causing some problem but that's a long shot. 

 

You said you got something booting before, any chance you can replicate it and we start from that point? 

Best of luck . 

 

My build is:

 

MSI X299 SLI Plus

Intel I7-7820x

MSI GTX 1080 ti (for installation MSI GT 720 2GB)

Corsair DDR4 Vengeance RGB 4x8GB 3000

Samsung 850 EVO (250gb)

Corsair H100i - V2

 

 

Can i see what High Sierra Installation version i have on my computer?

 

I tried replicate everything as before but i must do something wrong because everything i thought i did before doesn't work anymore.

[UcaUca]

Did you try to reflash your current BIOS? 

 

1. Save your BIOS profile/settings on a FAT32 formatted USB stick
2. Set BIOS to default
3. Reflash current BIOS
4. Do your settings BIOS Settings or load from your USB stick. This will work only if you maintain BIOS Version.
5. Try to disable as many unnecessary devices in BIOS as possible. Serial Port, Bluetooth Device etc.

[zambostraut]

 You'll see the different build numbers on this article which assumes you've made it into an install of course. You might be able to do it from the Clover terminal using sw_vers -productVersion 

 

Did you get the APFS.efi loaded onto your USB Installer also? If I remember I had issues once getting past the first install stage (reboot one) without that file as I'd installed the OS into APFS with no partition for EFI. Not sure if that would give you the "PrintF" message but it's worth noting. If you select APFS option without any EFI partition I believe you can't boot again. One of the more experienced members may know for sure though. 

[Guest]

@bbuster

if you have no tried yet try these two things

1) in boot clover menu press O and in booting insert

slide=128

if also this produce previous result try to enter in your bios and if you have in boot tab 4G option try to enable/disable

 

If you check aptiomemoryfix efi thread you can find some useful infos

 

Thanks, i found it. When i start the installer i see that it tries to get the correct slide but i see 256 times:

Slide xxx at xxxxxx:xxxxxxx cannot be used!

Slide xxx at xxxxxx:xxxxxxx cannot be used!

Slide xxx at xxxxxx:xxx....

 

 

I made a movie about it (https://streamable.com/s4h7e)

Is this the problem of my failure? And did i setup my BIOS wrong?

 

 

 

 

My build is:

 

MSI X299 SLI Plus

Intel I7-7820x

MSI GTX 1080 ti (for installation MSI GT 720 2GB)

Corsair DDR4 Vengeance RGB 4x8GB 3000

Samsung 850 EVO (250gb)

Corsair H100i - V2

 

 

Can i see what High Sierra Installation version i have on my computer?

 

I tried replicate everything as before but i must do something wrong because everything i thought i did before doesn't work anymore.

for understand which installation you have 

slide message is normal debug..reset no!

[bbuster]

Wow thanks! I resetted everything to factory settings but that didn't work, now it seems to work again!

I installed the same version (150). There are newer versions but i am not sure that will make things worse (slurpi installed it with the same firmware)

 

but that didn't complete my build
 

Now i get the next 2 screens. The first one seems okay but it stays there for a few seconds (10 / 15 seconds i guess). Then i see the next image.

 

 

[Guest]

sorry I can't see well message on verbose screen but stop sign could be different problem..some times usb related and other stuff

[bbuster]

Wow, i used a different usb port and i am in the installer now! Let's hope i don't screw this one up

Thanks!

 

 

Installation succesfull!

Do i need to do the same things i did to my usb drive (install clover, clover configurator, copy kext, drivers64UEFI etc) on my SSD where Mac OS is installed on?