P8z77-v Pro Manual

[Beltran Mathews]

Thosefour planks are set into Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe mainboard, which supports DDR3 up to 2800 MHz. Unfortunately, the mainboard does not explicitly list this Corsair memory on official support page in the

But this alone was not enough because PC failed to start with those settings. Then I launched CPU-Z utility and it indicated that for 2400 MHz speeds there is value "44" to be set for additional timing called "tRC"; I could not find this specific timing in my BIOS, so I did not set it.

CPU-Z also indicates another parameter to be set -- "Command Rate", which for 2400 MHz speeds shows value "1T". By default in my BIOS this parameter was set to "2", so I changed it to "1" (or maybe I should try to set it to "1T", but I could not; I do not know what "T" is, and why). This did not help either, PC still failed to start.

Or maybe additional timings have to be set to specific values? The BIOS offers incredible number of secondary and tertiary timings, but I have no idea what to set there. CPU-Z does not show any more information, let alone Corsair page for this memory set.

When you enable the XMP, you should not have to manually set timings and voltages. It is possible that your manual timings overruled the timings provided in the memories XMP and that contains secondary timings as well (that you did not set and the board might fail to automatically train). So in the UEFI maybe just load defaults again, then enable the XMP and see if that works.

If you still run into trouble, you may want to try this with only one of your kits installed. The XMP is for one kit only and mixing kits can be hit and miss even with two kits of the same model (like different IC versions not playing nice with each other).

The tertiary timings the MB usually trains by itself. If what i explained above does not work, you can try to manually set primary and secondary timings and manually adjust the voltages (Vdimm -> memory, plus if needed VCCSA/VCCIO -> IMC related).

Are tricks for this available? Or maybe a way to understand why exactly the motherboard can not start up with those timings? Maybe some concrete timings or other parameter is an issue? Can it somehow be "debugged" so I could understand why exactly my motherboard does not want to run this memory at 2400 MHz?

Unfortunately, the motherboard completely fails, even reset button is not working. Only total shut down (long press on power-on button) and then turning on makes the motherboard switching to 1333 MHz and showing a message that "overclocking" failed (though I am not trying to overlock anything), "press F1 to enter setup".

Once Clover was installed, DSDT patching done, and the RealtecALC Toleda patch applied I rebooted and the system now was standing on it's own two feet. Nothing further needed doing on my system, as all appears now to be working fine.

This bit is for those that need it. So if you have an intel Series 8/9 board, or some other system that is going to require a kext injector, it should help you get there. For anyone with a similar system to me, it isn't needed.

You will need to boot into Windows to start mapping ports, but first you should get the device node names for your USB connections. You should already have renamed your DSDT devices to EH01, EH02 and XH01 respectively. Then open your DSDT in MacIASL and search for those devices and look closely at each one. Check out the screenshots below for how mine look.

Under the HX01 device, for mine, you can see I have 8 nodes. However I only have 4 Intel USB3 ports, 2 on the front of my case attached to a motherboard USB3 header and 2 on the back faceplate (disregarding the Asmedia ports). This is because one USB3 port has 2 nodes - one for USB2 devices and the other for USB3. HSP means Hi-SPeed, SSP means SuperSPeed. This obviously means 4 ports turn into 8. For me. this is below the 15 limit that El Capitan has and why I have no issues with USB3 on my machine.

Once you have your node names noted down, you have some further research to do. You stilI need to know exactly what ports you have in your system and where they are located - so it's advisable that you download your motherboard manual. This tells you the port count and locations. My motherboard manual states I have 10 USB2 ports (8 on usb headers on the motherboard, so 4 headers each having 2 ports and 2 rear connections on the backplate) and 4 USB3 ports (1 header on motherboard and 2 rear connections again on the backplate).

Looking at the list I made for my machine, I seem to have 4 extraneous USB 2 ports. So another reason to map is to see which ports actually get used and which don't. USB3 count is correct on my system, other than it also shows the extra USB2 ports that link with each USB3. (Remember one USB3 port is also a USB2 port - two in one). Below is my motherboard diagram showing the USB2 and USB3 port headers, and a backplate showing the connections. The 2 USB3 ports below the PS2 connector on my system are for the Asmedia therefore not used as I have disabled the device.

Now you need to boot into Windows. I would advise to remove all extraneous USB devices keeping only things like USB keyboard and mouse plugged in. Have a USB2 thumb drive or external drive to hand as well as a USB3 drive or device so we can test the USB3 ports properly. On mine I had my USB keyboard and mouse in the 2 USB2 ports at the back (keyboard in right port if you were looking at the back face on, mouse on the left). I also put a USB3 thumb drive in the left USB3 port on the front, and internally I have the front USB2 and USB3 connected to their respective headers, along with the bluetooth controller card also attached to a header. (The motherboard diagram above shows what headers I have connected). Why take everything else out you ask? Because some USB devices create another hub, and more nodes to look through and its best for clarity.

You should have an idea now of what you have USB device wise plugged in right now so that they will be easy to spot. On most systems there will be two EHCI controllers and you will need to find out which is which (so it corresponds with EH01 and EH02). Use Windows device manager to look at your USB2 controllers and get information so you can see which one is EH01 and which is EH02 etc. Make sure that in Device manager, in the View menu, you have 'View devices by connection'. Then filter down the ACPI tree until you find the USB controllers, then right click on each in turn and click 'Properties'. Then on the Details tab for the device, pick 'BIOS Device name'.

You now the names for the controllers, so you can start to match the device nodes to each as you plug devices in and map to relevant ports. The next screens show the properties for the keyboard, mouse and bluetooth controller that I have:

From this, on my system, you can see that the 2 USB2 ports on the back (from left to right) are connected to PR15 and PR16 on the EH02 controller. The bluetooth controller, attached to the USB910 header, is on PR17 on the EH01 controller. The bluetooth controller connector is only using half the header (one port) so its safe to guess that PR18 would be the other port off that header (again on EH01 controller).

Next up for me on my system is the USB3 thumb drive in the left USB3 port on the case (these 2 USB3 ports attach to the USB3_34 header on the motherboard). Once the port for that was mapped I removed it, and plugged the USB2 keyboard into the same port to see what port that would connect to. Shots below:

As you can see, for me the left hand USB3 port uses SSP1 when a USB3 device is used in it, otherwise it uses HSP1. Like I did, you now need to plug devices in and out of your different ports so that t he remaining ones can be mapped for your system. If like me you have internal headers and one of those is attached to usb ports on your case, move that connection to different headers so you can map out what ports those headers connect to.

Although Windows Device Manager is great in the sense it shows you the BIOS name, there is another tool you can use for this. Its called USBViewer. The great thing about this tool is you can see all your ports listed at once, whereas device manager only shows ports with something plugged in. You can use this to tally it up with what you find in your DSDT.

Now you can boot back to OS X, as you should have a complete mapping. Now it's time to delve back into your DSDT and have a more closer look at the different nodes there on each controller. Every single one has two items which you need to note down: the _ADR, and the _UPC. THE ACPI specification states that the _ADR is an address object, and the _UPC (USB Port Capabilities) is for allowing the OS to see certain operational characteristics about each port.

_UPC has four values, the last two are reserved and can be ignored (should always be zero). The first one, if the value is anything but 0, means it's connectable. A value of zero means its not connectable. The second value, describes the connection type. 0x00 means a standard USB Type A connector, 0x03 means a USB3 type connector and 0xFF means proprietary (usually used for the hub devices). There are more connection types listed in the ACPI specification.

So we can see that on my system, PR11 is a connectable device, but is marked as a proprietary connection. (0xFF,0xFF,Zero,Zero). The _ADR value is there also. As you will need this information for each node, it may be worth creating a table so you can see what you have at a glance and use later on without jumping in and out of the DSDT. With this information to hand, you can now create an injector kext relevant to your system. A table showing the values for my system:

Now you can go ahead and create your injector kext. As I mentioned previously, I did not need to do one for my system, but I have attached one that I made as an example as it would apply to my system. If you use it as a base for your system, remember to change the relevant information (the SMBIOS used, port-count, USBConnector and port) as necessary for your system. Please check on the reference links for other changes you may need to make, and remember this is just a guide to help you get the information needed.

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