Red Rocket PCIE conflict in Hackintosh?

[Mike Halper]

This weekend I successfully built my first Hackintosh. Everything is working great and it's stable with a 4.5 GHz overclock and 2400 MHz RAM. The only problem I'm having is getting my Atto H680 to work. It seems that when I have my Red Rocket installed the H680 won't work. Take out the Rocket and the H680 works. My Decklink (normally in a Thunderbolt enclosure) card works in the same slot while the Red Rocket is installed. The H680 also won't work via Thunderbolt if the Rocket and Decklink card are installed. Remove the Rocket and it works via Thunderbolt. The H680 doesn't show up anywhere, as if it's not even installed.

Is anyone aware of a conflict with certain cards with the Rocket and how to fix it?

I'm using a Gigabyte Z77X-UP5 TH motherboard and i7 3770K. Graphics card is the EVGA GTX Titan Superclocked. Gigabyte says there's no settings to change for the PCIE slots since they're controlled by the CPU. I've had zero issues using the Rocket and H680 in Thunderbolt enclosures with my MacBook Pro.

 

[houkouonchi]

Are you overclocking the PCI-E bus at all or is it just a strait FSB based overclock? I think its possible on some motherboards overclocking the FSB may change PCI-E speed to which could be your problem although an easy way to rule that out is temporarily taking off the overclock (which maybe you already did?).

 

[luigivaltulini]

go down , not overclock. and try.

 

[Mike Halper]

Overclocking is new to me so I'm not actually 100% sure, but I think it's just a CPU overclock. There aren't really any options or settings for the PCIE slots or FSB. All I see is selecting Gen 1, 2, or 3 for the PCIE buss speed/bandwidth and I set that to 3. However, being that I overclocked the CPU and the CPU controls the PCIE slots it's possible that it's affecting the slots. I'll try turning off the overclock and see if that helps, though I'm pretty certain the H680 wasn't working before I overclocked. I'll also try undeclocking, though I need to learn how to do that properly. Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[Shiblon Wixom]

That particular board has some either/or options, the third PCIe x4 slot drops the second slot, which is normally x8, down to x4 lanes and pretty much guts the thunderbolt interface. If you want to use TB don't use that third internal PCIe slot.

also, the TB controller shares resources with the eSATA and some of the PCIe x1 slots, noted in the manual, and can severely hinder TB performance.

its an exceptional board, but you have to manage resources carefully.

 

[Peter Majtan]

All I see is selecting Gen 1, 2, or 3 for the PCIE buss speed/bandwidth and I set that to 3.

FYI - both the RED ROCKET and the ATTO are gen-1 x8 PCIe and will work in gen-2 x4. I would set the PCIe bus to gen-2...

 

[Mike Halper]

I just got done with a round of troubleshooting tests, with no solution.

Removing the overclock didn't solve the problem.

Underclocking didn't solve the problem.

I removed as many peripherals as I could (WiFi card, FireWire 800 card, disconnected all USB2 and 3 headers, disconnected all SATA ports except for the system drive and disabled the Intel SATA controllers (system drive is on the Marvell), disabled the Intel SATA controller in the BIOS, set the PCI bus to Gen 2, and used an HDMI monitor so the Thunderbolt ports weren't being used at all. That didn't work.

I swapped slots with the GTX Titan and Rocket. That didn't help.

Here's the rundown on the different card configurations and what works and doesn't work. 1=PCIEx16, 2=PCIEx8, 3=PCIEx4. Titan nor Rocket can be installed in slot 3 because of their size.

Cards installed in PCI slots: Titan in 1, Rocket in 2, H680 in 3
H680 doesn't work. Decklink works in Thunderbolt enclosure.

Cards installed in PCI slots: Titan in 1, H680 in 2, Decklink in 3
All work.

Cards installed in PCI slots: Titan in 1, H680 in 2, Decklink in 3
All work.

Cards installed in PCI slots: Titan in 1, Rocket in 2, Decklink in 3
All work. Tried H680 in Thunderbolt enclosure and it didn't work.

Cards installed in PCI slots: Rocket in 2, H680 in 3
H680 doesn't work.

Cards installed in PCI slots: H680 in 1, Rocket in 2
Both work.

So I know it's not necessarily a conflict between the Rocket and H680 since I can get them to work together. I think it's a motherboard issue. The H680 will work in an x4 slot. I talked to Atto and they told me it would, plus it works in a Thunderbolt enclosure which is essentially x4. I'm beginning to think this is the wrong motherboard. The Thunderbolt capability is crippled without hot-plug capability. I have the Sonnet Echo Pro SxS card reader and you can't even eject an SxS card and insert another. You have to restart the computer for every card, even if you leave the reader connected. Maybe it's different with Windows. I know this is a hack, so everything can't be perfect. Might start looking at some other motherboards....

 

[Mike Halper]

Does anyone have this motherboard with a similar setup (Nvidia graphics card, Rocket, and an HBA or RAID card that's working)? I was thinking of getting a RAID card anyway. One with 16 channels that would allow me to run an internal RAID array in the case (it's running cool enough that I think that would work) plus 2 SAS ports that would give me up to 8 eSATA ports. The Areca ARC-1882-ix-16 I think would do the trick. I'm concerned that I'd buy the card and run into the same problem. I found a thread on a different forum where a couple other people were having the same problem I am with a Highpoint card.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

FYI - both the RED ROCKET and the ATTO are gen-1 x8 PCIe and will work in gen-2 x4. I would set the PCIe bus to gen-2...

ATTO H680 is PCIe Gen2. The older H380 is Gen1. Not that it matters, as it's all downward compatible.

Shiblom has touched on the most likely problem. The X8 and X4 PCIe slots, as well as the Thunderbolt header, share resources. You are most likely running into a situation where the H680 card does not want to play in a community sandbox. This is the unfortunate reality of desktop-class PC platforms where there is a shortage of PCIe lanes and they can't accommodate all the slots at capacity. I bought one of these Gigabyte boards when it was released and had some serious UEFI issues as Gigabyte was still trying to iron out all the kinks. I returned to NewEgg though because the Thunderbolt, at that time, wouldn't even work. Not under OSX or Windows.

I'm betting if you were to put your H680 in the top X16 slot and your GPU in the X8 slot, Decklink in the bottom PCIe 3 slot, it would all work. Unfortunately that would be a poor allocation of resources for the Titan. Actually PCIe 3.0 X8 is more than good enough for the Titan, but the real problem here is the shared resources that further detracts from those slots.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Is the firmware on the H680 up to date? Drivers?

 

[Mike Halper]

Yep, upgrading the firmware is one of the first things I tried. The thing is I can't get the H680 to work in the x4 slot even when there's nothing plugged into the TB ports and the resources for Thunderbolt is set to minimum. And if I arrange the cards as you suggest, then the Rocket has to be in a Thunderbolt enclosure, which I'm trying to get away from, especially with Rocket-X coming. The current Rocket won't fit in the x4 slot on this motherboard because the fan hits the system header ports. I'd really like to get all my cards inside the case and not have a TB enclosure. Right now, I really just want TB for my SxS reader. If I can't get it to work I'll just get the Sony USB3 reader and go with a non-TB motherboard.

I agree that the Gigabyte motherboards are just too limited in resources. I'm going to try an Asus Maximus V Extreme this weekend. Still has 1 TB port, but has more resources for the PCIE slots. If that doesn't work, then I'll just go non-TB or wait for more Haswell motherboards (with TB) to come out that will hopefully have more resources.

It's a shame that these motherboard manufacturers aren't adding additional chipsets to give more resources for PCIE slots. The motherboard I want just doesn't exist (2 TB ports, 2 x16 bandwidth slots that don't go down to x8 when you use both, 2 x8 slots the same way, etc.) I really think there's a market for these boards if they'd just make them.

 

[Johnny S]

What you are asking for is out of the specs for the ivy bridge chipset. You get extra pcie lanes when you jump to Sandy Bridge-e (or upcoming ivy-bridge-e chips), but no thunderbolt. Vice versa, you get fewer lanes with ivy bridge, and then you lose more with thunderbolt.

I have the same motherboard. I have a GTX 780 in the 16x slot. Alongside it, I have used the H680 in the x16 or x8 slots, or the redrocket. Never both. I only need the h680 with Arriraw Codex, and redrocket for Red. So I never need both at the same time (currently).

Furthermore... what thunderbolt SxS reader are you using? the only one I know of is the Sonnet Echo. It works...if you reboot for every card! (due to the lack of thunderbolt hotswap on Windows/Hackintosh). So I am using the USB 3.0 SxS Reader without any problems.

 

[Thomas Koch]

I have this same setup. I run my rocket in a Magma thunderbolt 3T. I have two 8x cards in my mac. SAS and GFX. I could never get 3 cards to work in there, even at slower speeds.

 

[Mike Halper]

Eventually I think I'll move to a dual processor setup with the new Xeons. I'm hoping that will provide more PCIE lanes for all the cards and Thunderbolt. We'll see.

In the meantime, late last night/early this morning I was able to install a new motherboard. I went with the Asus Maximus V Extreme. It has one Thunderbolt port and 5 PCIE 3.0 x16 slots plus a PCIEx4 slot. The awesome thing about it is that it allows you to run cards at high bandwidth. I'm currently running it at x8/x16/x8/x8/x4. So my Titan is in the x16 slot running at x16 and my Red Rocket, H680, and Decklink are all in x16 slots running at x8. And I have another card in the x4 slot. And all cards are working as far as I can tell. I didn't have time to do any real testing before having to leave for set, but the Rocket shows up in RCXP, the Decklink card shows up in the Preferences pane, the H680 mounts drives, and the Titan works. I haven't tried the Thunderbolt port yet, but even if it doesn't work it's still the only i7 motherboard I could find that would give me an x16 slot running at x16 and three slots running at x8. Pretty impressive actually. The only issues I'm coming across so far are the USB 3.0 ports not working (kernel panics when something is connected to them), my slim BD burner keeps ejecting during startup, and the built-in wifi card isn't working. I'm sure I'll be able to get those working.

So it does appear to be a limitation with that other motherboard.