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[Guide] Z820 - El Capitan The great guide (Sucess)


bilbo
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What I did for USB3 is I bought one of these https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JFR2H64

and disabled the on-board USB3 from the bios, and patched the Z820's USB3 cables to this card, so the front USB3 plugs would work.

 

 

 

wow, this is a great idea !

 

 

Now I tried use it on the z820 too and I got working USB3 without errors, freezes, etc (like with GenericUSBXHCI.kext).
Yes, I still not see USB3 controller in the System Profiler, but it is not a pain for me ;)
 

 

:huh: I'll try as soon as possible ... This would be absolutely great !!!!!

 

About SATA connectors, connect the SSD to grey (11) :

 

1425zi8.png2hmh9h1.jpg

 

They are the native achi SATA controller.

 

-The 4 white next to them (15) , is the SCU controller. Forget it.

-The 6 white on bottom of the mb (13) is the LSI controller. From mac os they are only visible if you boot with the astek driver patched in this thread. Anyway I suggested you that use the grey connectors for the System HD.

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bilbo, thank you.

 

I’m slightly confused…

 

About SATA connectors, connect the SSD to grey (11) :

 

 

They are already here… 

Hmmmmm… Maybe I should to change SATA-mode in BIOS from "AHCI+RAID" to "AHCI"? I will try to do it…

Am I right that it will not affect on SAS ports (there is RAID 1 with data HDDs)?
Sorry for stupid questions, but it is a new MoBo for me, and I not explored it completely yet.
 
The 6 white on bottom of the mb (13) is the LSI controller. From mac os they are only visible if you boot with the astek driver patched in this thread.

 

 
Yes, it clear for me. As I wrote above, data storage is connected there; and seems like it works OK. At least no issues at the moment. But thank you in any case.
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oh, yes, that is. The ACHI setting has to be set to "AHCI" only.

 

And no, that doesn't affect to SAS ports . It only affects to native ACHI , grey connectors.

 

By the way, I tried with mXHCD and it doesn't work. I have some patches applied, and maybe it needs take a look with more attention. To makes it shorter, could you send me your efi folder?

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Done.
It is an EFI folder which I use now.

Seems I was inattentive again. My kext and kexts from X79 package have a slightly different size.

Let me know if I can help with something else.

 

UPD: Yes, my problem with "lost" SSDs is solved. Just switch from "AHCI+RAID" to "AHCI" in BIOS.

bilbo, thank you once again.

 

UPD2: Attachment deleted. Working kext you can find in post #159

Or direct link to download it

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As you guess, the external icons patch has no effect on the Astek driver.

 

There is a way, but it cannot be done with Clover, so you have to directly modify the Astek driver:

  1. Find the AstekFusion2Adapter.kext
  2. Right click and "Show Package Contents"
  3. Open the "Contents" folder
  4. Edit the info.plist file. Look for:
<dict>
  <key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
  <string>com.apple.iokit.IOSCSIArchitectureModelFamily</string>
  <key>IOBundleResourceFile</key>
  <string>SASHD.icns</string>
</dict>

and replace with:

<dict>
  <key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
  <string>com.apple.iokit.IOSCSIArchitectureModelFamily</string>
  <key>IOBundleResourceFile</key>
  <string>Internal.icns</string>
</dict>
Save it and reboot.

 

 

 

If by "that environment" you mean using the Astek driver, the answer is no. Your card is a MegaRaid 12Gbit/s adapter and the driver is for 2nd generation, 6Gbit/s, FusionMPT ones.

Thanks. That's what I thought but hope springs eternal.

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Done.

It is an EFI folder which I use now.

 

Seems I was inattentive again. My kext and kexts from X79 package have a slightly different size.

 

Let me know if I can help with something else.

 

 

I can´t understand your config files.. ^_^  It's different in several aspects .. but what I don't understand is how your usb works ...without usbinjectall kext. I tried to copy your config without this kext and usb stops working ... how I expected.  Btw, you have a 5,1 smbios ...  ?¿?¿? Could you tell me what steps followed to fix usb?

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Don’t try to understand, it is a test versions, not final for work.

Yes, I still have a 5.1 SMBIOS. I need to verify an one assumption (if it will be correct, I post it here).

 

Could you tell me what steps followed to fix usb?

 

Just remove GenericUSBXHCI.kext and add mXHCD.kext

Kext only you can get in attachment to this post.

 

but what I don't understand is how your usb works ...without usbinjectall kext

 

Are you sure?  ;) Look at screenshot…

post-48021-0-22073300-1518900631_thumb.png

mXHCD.kext.zip

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Hi guys,

 

A little optimization for our Z820 in multithreaded software use could be this:

 

Disable NUMA memory implementation in BIOS. It seems Mac Os X doesn't take aware of NUMA and then it's not optimum if enabled.

 

I get 51000  Geekbench 3 multithread (When NUMA disabled) in oposite to 49000  (when NUMA enabled)

 

This maybe lost a few points on single-thread.

 

Test your own to confirm if your CPUs benefit from this.

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In general, I followed the guide, especially instructions about DSDT/SSDT. I hope it is obvious from the picture that I did it on Sierra, not El Capitan. I don't use raid, only a single Samsung SSD for target install and HDD instead of USB stick.   



BIOS version = 2.15.1229
Clover version = 2.4k rev 4077


DSDT/SSDT/config.plist in the attached file


The system is very stable, everything works great (all software I use, for example: LightWave 3D, Cinema 4D, RealFlow, FinalCut Pro, LogicPro X ...). As far as I can see the only glitch is when the system resumes from sleep animations in GUI are a bit laggy - probably this goes to NVidia driver. It would be nice if someone tests my configurations (in the attached file) since I think there might be a room for improvements. What I miss the most, are working USB3 ports. As I can see, only two USB2 ports are working.  


Regarding ssdt.aml, first I created SSDT for my CPU E5-2670v1. Power management seemed to work and power consumption of the system was 140W (Wattmeter is always pluged-in), but Geekbench (Multicore Score around 22k) and my renders were too slow compared to Win7. HWMonitor was showing the lowest frequency of CPU was 2.2 GHz. I was playing with the ssdtPRGen.sh script further and eventually it worked out (not sure though) with E5-2670v2 setting. 


ssdtPRGen.sh script parameters that I succeeded:


sh ssdtPRGen.sh -cpus 2 -target 0 -l 32 -c 3


After that, the lowest frequency was correct (1.2 GHz) and full performance was regained (renders as expected, i.e. 3-5% faster than Win7, Geekbench showed almost 39k). That's it. 


Tests and reports by other users are more than welcome. 


Big thanks to author's tutorial, I wouldn't manage without it. 


I made at least 400 reboots with previous OS X versions in the past but power management never worked that well.  


 

 

 

 

What kexts did you use ? both in refi folder and /S/L/E ?

 

I see in your clover folder there is patches in config.plist for AICPUM, did you patch the kext or just use the clover patching? 

 

I have basically the same setup (3.91 bios though, Sierra 10.12.6) but with a pair of 2690 v1 cpus and I cannot for the life of me get this thing turn on PM..  I can get the cpu to scale back if I use nullcpupm but this is no use really.  

 

The rest of the z820 guide is spot on for patching DSDT and installing and setting up all that good stuff but the PM part I'm struggling with, no idea why I can't get this to work when I see reporting like this that it does on your Z620..   Feels like I tried everything and failing, I must be missing something stupid :)

 

I patched AICPUM with the perl patch, tried it also vanilla with clover patches, no joy

I try it was almost all ssdtPRGen flags it seems but pretty much the last run I used the same flags as you .. My ssdt looks same but for cpu diffs I guess..

I have tried in clover many an option from the one in Z820 guide, which would be my preference and many options up to what you have, you seem to have too many I think.  Enabling the c and p states like you have in the config.plist seems to only give me 2 states 28 and 29, which is max... 

 

Any info appreciated.. (from all working z620 owners) (hopefully one with 2690 v1 cpu too) :)

 

Cheers

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Sorry about that. I have no experience in V1 cpus.

 

From my guide:

 

 

 

23- Follow instructions from here:

 

a- Follow step 1 i your cpu is V1 (Sandy Bridge E) . Skip step 1 if your cpu is v2 . It’s not needed for Ivy bridge E cpus. Go to step2

 


 

 

-Did you follow the step 1 of the link?? . for V1 you have the use the patch of step 1 and step 2. It's only download the patch and execute it.

-don't forget the bios setting. There is one menu specific for PM and it has to be enabled. Read the first part of the guide.

 

You don't need use nullpowermanegement.kext. It's a bad habit.  In some mb is needed to avoid KP.  But in our machine is completly useless.

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Sorry about that. I have no experience in V1 cpus.

 

From my guide:

 

 

-Did you follow the step 1 of the link?? . for V1 you have the use the patch of step 1 and step 2. It's only download the patch and execute it.

-don't forget the bios setting. There is one menu specific for PM and it has to be enabled. Read the first part of the guide.

 

You don't need use nullpowermanegement.kext. It's a bad habit. In some mb is needed to avoid KP. But in our machine is completly useless.

Hey Bilbo,

 

Yes I followed it, still seems not to work.. thanks for replying and the guide .. awesome..

 

Cheers

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..and the bios setting?

 

Could you post the syntax to generate the ssdt? and ssdtPRGen version?

 

As general advice, don´t use any drop table function from clover. I think they are incompatible with ssdt generated by ssdtPRGen. In general, all options of KM of clover are useless.

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..and the bios setting?

 

Could you post the syntax to generate the ssdt? and ssdtPRGen version?

 

As general advice, don´t use any drop table function from clover. I think they are incompatible with ssdt generated by ssdtPRGen. In general, all options of KM of clover are useless.

Yes bios also.. pretty much the bios settings I had in place already. I'll check the drop table stuff as I am dropping cpupm and dmac.. sure I had it dropping nothing at one point also but never hurts to revisit.

 

 

Edit - I'll send the ssdt syntax when I get back to pc,. On phone typing this is just now.. for version currently it's 21.x but have used many from V12 to 14 to 15.x.

 

I think syntax will be -target 0 -cpu2 -l 32 -c 0 -x 0

 

But I have tried vanilla and many more with changing cputype panicking on boot.

 

 

Cheers

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