Jump to content

Asus Sabertooth Z77, GTX 680, i7 3770K Build - stable?


Vosster
 Share

5 posts in this topic

Recommended Posts

Hi!

 

Years ago I was very happy with my "Supermarket-Computer-Hackintosh" running perfectly with Tiger 10.4.3. I loved being a part of the hackintosh community and reading in this forum. But then I decided to finally buy an Apple mac an ended up with the first unibody (Late 2008) MBP. It works well until this day but I want something new. And it has to be very powerful, good value for money and NOT WINDOWS! :D That means of course I need a new Hackintosh! Unfortunately my knowledge about setting up a good hackintosh system died slowly over the past years and I really need your help with that now. :blush: So please take a look at my desired system configuration and tell me if and where I could run into trouble or incompatibilities:

 

 

Board: Asus Sabertooth Z77

RAM: 16GB (4x4) Corsair Dominator 1600Mhz

 

- Could you give me any information about this board? Its fairly new and I couldn't find anything about it on osx86project.org.

 

 

CPU: Intel i7 3770K

GPU: EVGA Geforce GTX 680 2GB

 

- The Ivy Bridge CPUs aren't released yet but I guess I shouldn't have any problem with it, also not with the GTX 680, what do you think?

 

 

SSD: 2x120GB Corsair Force GT in RAID 0

 

- My biggest concern. Will I be able to run OSX Lion on a RAID 0 configuration with a small windows partition in dual boot?

 

 

LG Blueray RW Drive

 

- Does OSX support Blueray read and write? Maybe with a little workaround?

 

 

I hope you can help me. Thanks!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd say you'd have about 2 stopping issues which will most likely stem from the Sabertooth Z77 board and the 680.

 

Starting with the Z77, it's quite new indeed so the odds of getting a solid boot out of it are in question as it is although I must say I was on newegg last night looking at the board and it's quite sweet.

 

The 680 has two dilemmas one which will hopefully soon be solved.

 

1.) OS X drivers to support the card

 

2) For the card to finally be back in stock @_@.

 

And I noticed you said you want to run a small windows partition is that going to be on the raid 0 config? If it's a hardware RAID config you should be fine but if it's software based I wouldn't opt for you to squeeze windows on there with OS X because they're known not to sleep nicely when put together.

 

You should be fine with the other stuff like the second gen SNB cpu although IVB is right around the corner but it's up to you how long you want to hold out. =p

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thank you for your explanations!

 

I will have to wait for the i7 3770K anyway (the release date for IVB should be the 23. April) so it wouldn't matter to wait for a 680 to be (back) in stock as well. :)

It seams that nearly every Nvidia Card got its proper OSX drivers on the long run. Should be a matter of time.

 

The Z77 is indeed a nice board. I like the TUF components and this "thermal armor"-thing. Asus gives it 5 years of warranty instead of 3 years for all their other boards. I think that speaks for its quality.

To buy it now could be a risk, yes, but I think the odds are quiet good as the worst thing might be just something like the LAN not working properly or so.

 

It seams I just have to hold on for a while to be sure that everything will run stable with these new components.

 

But what you said about the RAID config seams to be a real problem. I want to run the two SSDs in sofware raid just by the board. With two partitions on that Raid drive, one for OSX and the other for Windows I really might run into trouble? :o

 

And blueray really works in OSX?

 

:)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hopefully they don't delay IVB anymore I'm craving to upgrade from my 1st gen quad core and yeah the 680 will be instock eventually and not soon after it should have OS X support since Apple has been rumored to be going back to nVidia cards. Funny thing I noticed is that the prices of the 79xx cards have dropped due to the fact that they aren't selling like hot bread as the 680 has been.

 

I've loved the Sabertooth since I've seen it on the X58 platform its always been a mobo I've been looking forward to upgrading to. If you're able to boot up with it then you should for the most part be okay but I just have a slight feeling it might KP or boot loop due to the architecture being currently bleeding edge new. As for the ethernet I bought a pcie adapter so I could drop an airport extreme card in so I can always have a native working connection in any case.

 

Regarding the RAID config you have to keep in mind that if it's software RAID right, then the RAID array won't be constructed until the OS is booting up so I'm not exactly sure how would the booting with Windows work. I could be wrong but I believe a hardware RAID solution would make it more possible where the RIAD array is made at boot but try it out and see how it works out just make sure you have another disk as your dedicated Time Machine disk I can't stress how helpful it is to use to dev and test things.

 

As with the bluray working in OS X? I recently came across this lurking about the Internet so it does seem very much possible. =)

 

http://9to5mac.com/2012/04/10/how-to-add-a-usb-bluray-player-to-your-mac-for-39/

 

I might just join you on the Sabertooth bandwagon eventually :star_sunglasses:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So Sabertooth, IVB and 680 it is then! :)

 

I dont like radeons cards for no particular reason. I simply believe that Nvidia is better and has better support. :)

 

Maybe I will buy a raid-controller as well. I shouldn't run into any problems with it and it also might be more stable than a software raid.

 

Interesting link. So I guess it's worth a try. If it doesn't work I will have to stick with windows when it comes to streaming blueray onto my tv.

 

Thank you and welcome to the Sabertooth club! :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...