Snow Leopard 10.6.4 Apple RAID 0, Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R Rev 1.0, Bios F13

Configuration used:

Core 2 Quad q6600 OC @ 3.2Ghz

Motherboard GA-P35-DS3R ICH9R , Rev 1.0 F13

4 x 2Gb OCZ Reaper 8500 DDR2 @ 1066Mhz

2 x 64Gb SSD SAMSUNG in Raid 0 using Apple Raid on DiskUtil

Gigabyte Nvidia GTX 275

Sata DVD

Software / Bios used:

- Iatkos S3 V2

- Ubuntu to build the bios dump of an original dsdt.aml

- Bios on the Motherboard was updated to the latest F13 Bios for Rev 1.0

Introduction

As you may have noticed, this is not a dream configuration, but I can tell you guys it's pretty good for me, and works like a charm.

Boot times after bios posting vary from 5-8 seconds using the Raid 0.

On the Bios settings load optimized defaults, and make sure you use AHCI for the controller mode, and that's basically what you need out of stock bios settings, down below I've covered some of my changes, some of them probably won't be needed . I had to tweak my RAM since this Gigabyte Motherboard was not stable with 4 memories running at stock 1066Mhz, so I had to drop the speed of the memory to 900Mhz. It can work at 1100Mhz with 4 Gb instead of 8Gb, but I would rather have more memory and a stable system.

GA-P35-DS3R Rev 1.0

Changes in the bios:

Adv bios

HDD Smart -> Enabled

Limit CPUID -> Disabled

No-execute -> Enabled

CPU halt -> Enabled

CPU Thermal -> Enabled

CPU EIST -> Enabled

Virtualization -> Enabled

Peripherals

SATA -> AHCI

Onboard Sata/IDE Ctrl Mode -> AHCI

Power Managment

ACPI Suspend type -> S3(STR)

Soft-off -> 4 sec delay

PME Event -> Enabled

Power on ring -> Enabled.

Resume by Alarm -> Disabled.

HPET Support -> Enabled

HPET Mode -> 64 bit

Power on Mouse and Keyboard -> Disabled

AC Back Funct -> Soft Off

For the installation media I've used Iatkos S3 v2 DVD, booted from DVD ROM, then used Diskutil to create the RAID 0 with the 2 64Gb Samsung SSD, so basically will have a stripped volume of 128Gb. May not be the safest option but considering I'm using TimeMachine with an extra disk I can recover this system any time and still enjoy the speed of the Raid 0.

In the Installation "customise" options used:

AsereBLN's Bootloader which will make sure the RAID 0 installation runs smoothly.

Other choices: Graphics Enabler, SleepEnabler, AHCI Sata, Voodo HDA, NVEnabler, and Realtek 8168.

Of couse that if you do not have a Nvidia Card, the NVenabler should not make too much sense, but the rest should be basically the same.

Installation finished successfully, but was not able to boot.

Reason was be that the disk's order in the Bios differed from Snow Leopard, therefore had to change the order in the bios, and that was it.

The system booted perfectly and running 10.6.3 even with a dual monitor configuration.

After that downloaded Apple's Combo update to 10.6.4, but before installing 10.6.4 combo replaced the SleepEnabler.kext with the new 10.6.4 SleepEnabler from www.kext.com.

System booted fine. But remember that when using a RAID 0, there won't be any /Extra directory, all kexts are under /System/Library/Extensions, so you'll have to be more careful when upgrading, since the combo updates will replace some of the Kexts. Make dure you backup the Extensions directory to a safe place, and compare what was changed after the install.

I will post an article with the dsdt.aml, mine is still under testing. I'm not familiar with any bios dsdt built, so I'm picking pieces and bits from other posts to make sure I've all corners covered . Good Snow installations .