GIGABYTE TRX40 DESIGNARE (REV. 1.1) / AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970 X - TB3 Audio Workstation

[thenightflyer]

Finally, after several doubts and after 10 years of Intel Hackintosh builds i decided to switch to this new platform. The one who suggested and helped me with this new kind of setup was fabiosun. I'm still testing and not finished my build...it's work in progress but i hope to finish and complete this thread during Christmas Holidays.

 

My setup is the following:

Case: Thermaltake Level 20XT TK Level 20 XT

Motherboard: Gigabyte Designare TRX40 rev. 1.1 Designare

CPU: AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X CPU

PSU: Enermax EPM 1700 EGT PSU

RAM: 256GB Patriot Viper Blackout (32GBx8) RAM

CPU Cooler: EK-Quantum Power Kit D-RGB P360 CpuCooler

Thermal Paste: Grizzly Kryonaut CPU Paste

SSD: 1 Sabrent SSD Rocket NVME PCie 4.0 1Tb  Rocket - 2 Sabrent SSD Rocket NVME M2 1Tb Rocket M2 

HDD: 1 Seagate Barracuda Pro 10TB HDD

External HD - Lacie D2 Thunderbolt 3 10Tb Lacie

Monitor: Asus TUF Gaming VG289Q 28" Monitor

GPU: Asus GTX 680 DirectCU II 4GB GPU (waiting for Radeon 6xxx XT osx support!)

Thunderbolt 3 card: Gigabyte Titan Ridge Card 1.0 PCie (patched with custom firmware) TB3

Audio Interface: UA Apollo Twin MKII Duo TB3 Audio Card

OS: MacOS Big Sur 11.1 (20C69)

 

Finally the machine is ready and after several days (due to personal commitments too!) of testing i can tell that everything i need work except some app that require virtualization (like Parallels desktop or Crossover).

Cpu temp are quite low (35°/55° max) because the cpu demand using Native Instruments or other VST plugins is not so high.

Bluetooth and Wi-Fi work without issues, USB ports too. Shut down works with ERP enabled too in Bios. Only if i attach an USB3 hub to any of the rear USB ports after 3 seconds of shut down the system restart. I must still investigate this problem.

But my "victory" is thunderbolt 3....an hackintosh is not a full working machine without thunderbolt! I use a Gigabyte Titan Ridge Card with patched firmware. It's in the last PCI slot, port 7 enabled, it recognizes my audio interface and hot plug works without any issues! I'm using Big Sur, and i've no reset or hangs. Every music production app i use is running without problems, so Native Instruments, Omnisphere Keyscape and Trillian, every VST plugin like Zebra, Diva etc.

I don't use any graphic or video app so i don't need a "big" GPU. I sold my Radeon VII waiting for RX 6900XT support. Now i've an old Nvidia GTX 680 with 4GB....it's native and it's enough for me now!

The only app i cannot use is Parallels Desktop and wine like Crossover. When i launch a Windows machine with Parallels the system restarts. If i use a windows app with Crossover bottles i've exception error with the app.

Maybe it's normal with AMD cpu...but atm i don't care about this issue.

BIos settings are the same as arrakis build. Some voices from 1.0 motherboard rev. and 1.1 are differents. I will try to attach screenshots of my bios settings too.

Attached is my EFI with Opencore 0.65

Thanks to fabiosun for his patience helping me to configure the system, and to arrakis because i took his EFI as sample to start my system after the first setup.

Thanks to all MacOS community too...your suggestions are always welcome.

 

 

 

EFI-TNF-OC065.zip

Edited January 11, 2021 by thenightflyer
Post finished

[thenightflyer]

Any suggestions or help to improve my system are welcome!

Edited January 11, 2021 by thenightflyer

[Kennyhack]

@thenightflyer

did you connect your Thunderbolt Card to the Thunderbolt Header and the USB of the Motherboard. or Is it just plugged into the PCI Slot without any connection to the Motherboard?

Do you know, if a regular GC Titan Ridge Card works or does it have to be flashed?

 

I have a Gigabyte TRX40 Aorus Wifi Rev 1.1 Motherboard with a Gigabyte Titan Ridge TB Card.

You could use Virtualbox to install a Virtual Windows PC on your mac. I does not need Virtualization in the BIOS and should work on AMD Hackintoshes.
Virtualbox is free and in my Opinon better than Parallels or Wine.

https://www.virtualbox.org

On 12/23/2020 at 9:58 AM, thenightflyer said:

The only app i cannot use is Parallels Desktop and wine like Crossover.

Edited April 17, 2022 by Kennyhack

[Arrakis]

@Kennyhack

Hello, it must be connected to the Thunderbolt header and to the USB socket of the motherboard. She must be flashed.

It will no longer be recognized on the Windows side. You need to install it in slot 4.

You can follow the procedure Here

[fabiosun]

@Kennyhackif you don't have a thunderbolt header on your motherboard as mine, you can use it the same doing a connecttion on thunderbolt ridge header port in two pin with a cable to connect them

 

the only difference from people which has a thunderbolt header is the you can't see in your bios nothing about thunderbolt

and, Thunderbolt USB is not shown as device in our ioreg

 

With our thunderbolt ports I can only charge my Apple Watch or similar

 

To use Titan Ridge properly you need to patch its firmware and the to have a chance for hot swap TB devices connected , you have to build a proper SSDT for it

 

As Arrakis said, when you patch your thunderbolt card, it wouldn't work anymore with other systems

To have again it working you must re flash a original firmware

 

[fabiosun]

First one without SSDT (see tb speed tab)

Second one with a proper SSDT

 

[thenightflyer]

16 hours ago, Kennyhack said:

@thenightflyer

did you connect your Thunderbolt Card to the Thunderbolt Header and the USB of the Motherboard. or Is it just plugged into the PCI Slot without any connection to the Motherboard?

Do you know, if a regular GC Titan Ridge Card works or does it have to be flashed?

 

I have a Gigabyte TRX40 Aorus Wifi Rev 1.1 Motherboard with a Gigabyte Titan Ridge TB Card.

You could use Virtualbox to install a Virtual Windows PC on your mac. I does not need Virtualization in the BIOS and should work on AMD Hackintoshes.
Virtualbox is free and in my Opinon better than Parallels or Wine.

https://www.virtualbox.org

If you use a flashed GC card you don't need to connect the cable to TB Header on Motherboard otherwise the controllers will not work! TB Header i sonly needed for non flashed cards! A regular GC card will work on Hackintosh but you will not have hot swap function like you can have with a flashed card

[Kennyhack]

@fabiosun  @thenightflyer

Thanks for your input and help 🙂

I have Thunderbolt up and running.  Everything works fine now.
I installed the SSDT-DTPG.aml into the ACPI Folder of Opencore.
I have no TB3xxxx.aml in the ACPI Folder just the SSDT-DTPG and the SSDT-EC-USBX-DESKTOP.aml
I disconnected the Header Cable from the Mainboard Header but left it in the GC Titan Ridge Card. USB and Power cables are connected to the Mainboard and the TB Card
I did not short PINS 3 and 5, and: it is a regular GC Titan Ridge PCIe Card - no Custom Firmware, no flashing.

I do not have hotplug on the Thunderbolt Audiointerface. I will take care of that later by checking out the TB3xxx.aml on Hackindrom and configuring a TB3 SSDT for my machine.

I have 2 more questions.
When I installed opencore and Big Sur on my z490 Intel i910850K Machine, I  got NVRAM and Big Sur Recovery Partition. 

When I installed opencore and Big Sur on the TRX40 Aorus -  there is no NVRAM and no Recovery Partition.

 

Is this normal or is there something wrong in my config.plist ?
Can I get "Native" NVRAM and macOS Recovery Partition on the TRX40 Aorus Threadripper Machine?

What do I have to look for or change  in order to get NVRAM and macOS Recovery?

Edited April 18, 2022 by Kennyhack

[fabiosun]

7 hours ago, Kennyhack said:

When I installed opencore and Big Sur on my z490 Intel i910850K Machine, I  got NVRAM and Big Sur Recovery Partition. 

When I installed opencore and Big Sur on the TRX40 Aorus -  there is no NVRAM and no Recovery Partition.

 

Maybe they have been hidden in your config.plist

Search for Hide Auxiliary in it or while you see open core boot menu press space bar button to unhide all partitions

[Kennyhack]

On 4/19/2022 at 7:58 AM, fabiosun said:

Maybe they have been hidden in your config.plist

Search for Hide Auxiliary in it or while you see open core boot menu press space bar button to unhide all partitions

Thanks, that did the Trick 🙂