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MicroATX mobos

aquanutz

By aquanutz,
in OSx86 10.5 (Leopard)

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Stravaganza
Stravaganza
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I'm looking to make a microatx system in the near future. What boards to you recommend? Looking to put it in a tiny lianli type case.
  • Gigabyte GA-945GCMX-S2: It's cheap but excellent for Core 2 Duo processors. It supports some high end processors. It's not in the market but if you can find one under 40 USD on eBay, you should take it. All onboard subsystems work with or without patches. Sleep/Wake and Shutdown work natively. With a patch, Restart works. I am using this motherboard very happily.
  • Abit LG-95: It's pricy but good for Core 2 Duo processors. It does not support high end processors. It's about 50 USD (Buy.com or Newegg.com). All onboard subsystems work with or without patches. Sleep/Wake works natively. With a patch, Restart works. In my case, Shutdown doesn't work but according to a reliable source, Shutdown seems to work. I helped my friend to set up Mac OS X with this motherboard and he is happy.
  • Gigabyte GA-G31MX-S2: It's cheap but good for Core 2 Duo/Quad processors. It supports some 45nm processors too. It's not in the market but if you can find one under 40 USD on eBay, you may want to take it. All onboard subsystems work with or without patches. Sleep/Wake and Shutdown work natively according to a reliable source. He wasn't sure about Restart. You may need a graphics card.
  • Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R: It's absurdly pricy but good for Core 2 Quad processors. It supports some 45 nm processors too. It's not in the market. It comes with FireWire. You may need a patch to use all SATA ports (it seems to be the main problem for all mATX boards with G33 bridge). You may need a graphics card. I have been trying but couldn't get information about Sleep/Wake, Restart, and Shutdown. Here is a guide.
  • ASUS P5K-VM: It's absurdly pricy but good for Core 2 Quad processors. It supports some 45 nm processors too. It comes with FireWire. You may need a patch to use all SATA ports (it seems to be the main problem for all mATX boards with G33 bridge). You may need a graphics card. You may not get more than two channel audio and LAN need to be fixed to work unlike the others. I have been trying but couldn't get information about Sleep/Wake, Restart, and Shutdown. Here is a guide.

All of them have 8 channel audio and gigabit ethernet on board. The first two have Intel GMA 950 and the rest have Intel GMA 3100. You can get a FireWire card for the first three from eBay under 4 USD (including S/H). Red ones are superior in the number of patches in each processor class.

--S

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boltdozer
boltdozer
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Wow Stravaganza, you've obviously done your research! Thanks for the suggestions!

 

You mentioned the two recommended mobos are not available on the market. Do you know if there are any new Gigabyte boards that are on the market that replace these discontinued ones (and obviously still work for osx86)?

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Hagar
Hagar
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I just bought an ASUS P5GC-MX/ 1333: extremely cheap & very compatible, patching was a breeze, only surprise was that it had an alc662 sound codec rather than the 883, so no master volume control. I bought it for 2 reasons: 1, it was the cheapest board I could find to run my E4500 c2d, and 2, it fits well in a G3 case. it claims 1333fsb and 45nm capable, so although it is the final end for this aging chipset, it makes a good budget option.

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Stravaganza
Stravaganza
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Wow Stravaganza, you've obviously done your research! Thanks for the suggestions!

 

You mentioned the two recommended mobos are not available on the market. Do you know if there are any new Gigabyte boards that are on the market that replace these discontinued ones (and obviously still work for osx86)?

Hi boltdozer,

 

Yes, there is an L (short for light, I guess) version, which replaced its normal version.

It's a real shame that Gigabyte uses inferior audio and LAN CODECs on these replacements while the prices for them are even higher than those of corresponding normal versions. Both use 6 channel Realtek ALC 662 CODEC (with this you only get two channel out with OS X). Both use Realtek RTL 8111C LAN CODEC, which requires a non-native driver unlike their discontinued versions. Pity. Good news is that these replacements support 4GB memory officially (well, the normal versions also support 4GB unofficially). And yes, both L versions are known to work with Leopard.

 

Also there is a C (short for compact, I guess) version, which replaced its normal version.

It's even worse. The LAN CODEC is Realtek RTL 8101E whose speed is 100Mbps not 1Gbps. The audio CODEC is Realtek ALC 662. The price is about the same as that of the discontinued one. This one also works with Leopard.

 

I am not sure any of the above replacements works fine with ACPI functions: Sleep/Wake, Restart, and Shutdown.

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  • 3 weeks later...
xenophon
xenophon
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Great thread, thanks!

 

Here's some more data points, based on my experience.

 

I've abandonded an ASUS P5L-MX 1394 build, which was excellent except for sleep - somehow, I think it's essential for everyday use -, no matter which kernel I used. Furthermore, it fried my HD camcorder when attached to its firewire port.

 

After reading your post, I opted for the Gigabyte GA-31MF-S2, along with the ATI 2600 XT graphics card. The problems I encountered were as follows -

 

1) four Kingston DDR2 667 1Gb double-sided chips, when installed in the mobo's 4 RAM slots, were only recognized as 2 Gb total. Apparently, one cannot use double-sided DIMMs in all slots. So, essentially I downgraded to 2 Gb memory.

 

2) install was essentially vanilla, using a retail Leopard disk image and the excellent guide by LS8 (at http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...;hl=bMacintosh)

 

3) all I had to do was to remove AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement and AppleEFIRuntime, and install dsmos.kext, netkas' AppleSMBIOS (from April, 2008) and the IONetworking fix for Time Machine. Oh, and Natit.kext for the graphics card, and Taruga's HDA patcher with the appropriate ALC662.txt codec (without changing the stock AppleHDA.kext)

 

4) Sleep was fine with this setup (Kernel 9.2.2 vanilla, updated via Software Update), but without proper shutdown and restart. Netkas' 9.2 sleep kernel, installed via the Kalyway "ALL.KERNELS.pkg" fixed that. My only concern is that System.Kext is still version 9.2.2 and I've read recent posts about the issues raised by this discrepancy. Oh well....

 

The final results is as follows - all onboard systems (Gigabit Ethernet, USB, Firewire, Audio out) work. The only issue is with Firewire, which only detects devices when attached during booting. Furthermore, one gets a "Firewire GUID is invalid" message periodically in the console, but the devices attached seem to work OK, and there's no significant CPU activity.

 

I'm quite happy with this setup, and I thank all of you for the information you compiled.

 

Greetings from Athens,

 

Xen

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Stravaganza
Stravaganza
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3) all I had to do was to remove AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement and AppleEFIRuntime, and install dsmos.kext, netkas' AppleSMBIOS (from April, 2008) and the IONetworking fix for Time Machine. Oh, and Natit.kext for the graphics card, and Taruga's HDA patcher with the appropriate ALC662.txt codec (without changing the stock AppleHDA.kext)

 

Greetings from Athens

The following is off the topic. You may use EFI string to get rid of the following modified kexts (and get back to original ones): IONetworking binary, Natit.kext, and ALCinject.kext. Go to forum.netkas.org and read a thread originated by DoMs under PC EFI subforum. You may fix your Restart problem. Go to irc.osx86.hu and join #leopard to get REBOOT FIX if you didn't try that one yet.

 

Greetings from Tucson, AZ, U.S.A.

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