Intel S5000PSL/ Dual Xeon 5450s - 100% Vanilla

[trini]

This isn't meant to be a detailed guide, as there are lot of good ones out there - it's a log of the components I used, quick summary of gotcha's and confirmation that they all function perfectly for folks with similar hardware.

 

Relevant components:

The board (and onboard components) and CPUs are nearly identical to an actual MacPro 3,1 which results in a hassle free hack.

• 1 x Intel S5000PSL Server Board
• 2 x Intel Xeon E5450 (3.0GHz Quad Core)
• 24GB IBM DDR2-667 FB-DIMMS
• Boot Disk - 1 x 500GB Samsung 840 Evo SATA SSD
• Fusion Drive Storage - 1 x 128GB Sandisk v300 SATA SSD + 1 x 2TB Seagate LP SATA HDD
• 1 X EVGA GeForce GTX760

Preamble:

This board was running Lion for the longest while until my video card died - it sat idle for a few years, until I decided this weekend that my MacBook Air 1,1 isn't cutting it anymore (2GB ram and a 80GB PATA drive are sometimes painful).  Mainboard, CPUs, memory and HDD made the transition, all other components are new.  Will upgrade to Xeon E5/ C602 eventually, when whatever version of Civ is out decides to make this box crawl..

 

Installation method:

• Retail Mavericks.app from store, installer created on USB
• Latest Chameleon applied, Latest FakeSMC dropped in (both from repo's)
• Use Chameleon Wizard to create a SMBios.plist with a Mac3,1 profile
• Set SATA controller in BIOS to Legacy (else you'll have the Waiting for root device… error), disable on-board video.
• Boot flags "npci=0x2000 DropSSDT=yes"
• Install, reboot, install Chameleon+FakeSMC, rejoice!

 

What works out-of-box:

• Everything!
• PM natively supported (although these Xeons don't clock down that much just to 2GHz)
• Shutdown/ reboot works
• NICs natively supported

 

What does not work:

• Sleep - this is not because of OSX, the main board DOES NOT support the S3 state (server board).  I spent $40 on "Power Manager" to get it to shutdown after inactivity, but someone smarter could probably write a script.  There's an Intel S5000XVN workstation board which uses identical components and does support S3 (untested, YMMV).
• For some reason it won't boot in AHCI mode without the "-f" flag - it seems like the kernel cache doesn't cache the AHCIPortInjector.kext (maybe because it's only a plist?).  It would be irritating if I was booting from a HDD, but with an SDD it barely adds 5 seconds to boot.

 

Tweaks:

• If you have SSDs like me and want TRIM, you'll need to fix up the storage controller.  Drop in AHCIPortInjector.kext (from repo) to get the Intel ESB south bridge detected properly, add "-f" to your boot flags, change Storage controller to AHCI in BIOS, and away you go.  Use TRIM Enabler/ TRIM script to get TRIM for generic SSDs
• Use "BuiltInEthernet=Yes" to get rid of any annoying AppStore errors - this can also be fixed by adding them to the DSDT under PCIQ (tested, works).  I'm running it without a DSDT though and all is well.
• Installed nVidia drivers for my card to get some flakiness with my 144Hz monitor sorted.

 

Summary:

• Extremely easy install
• Low maintenance build - upgraded from 10.9.0 to 10.9.4 without issues.  Don't expect to have any ever, since all the hardware is natively supported.
• If you have this hardware lying around (or can get it free/cheap), it makes for a nifty, zippy low-maintenance workstation.  I wouldn't recommend spending more than $300 though for board/CPUs/memory.  As with all Intel server boards, the boots are slow - all their server boards take about 45sec just to do the BIOS POST.  It's also a bit of a power hog (80W x 2 for 8-cores) - probably better alternatives out there if you're buying new gear.

I'm not bothering to post any files since everything I used was directly from the repos, but will if requested.

 

~trini

[snakeman]

Dude, if you are still around I need some help and additional info.

 

 

AHCI

UEFI at all 

and send the files if you have them .........

 

Which revision are you working with?

 

 

snakeman