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10.11.4+ Skylake Starter Guide

Joined
Sep 1, 2014
Messages
2,944
Motherboard
GA-H87N-WIFI
CPU
i7-4790S
Graphics
GT 740
Mac
  1. MacBook Pro
  2. Mac mini
Mobile Phone
  1. iOS
Background: Skylake support was really, uh, limited in the earlier releases of El Capitan. But the current El Capitan releases and tonymacx86 tools make it much more straightforward to get up and running.

1. BIOS Settings
The BIOS settings are fairly typical for modern machines:
  • Load Optimized Defaults
  • If your BIOS has a VT-d setting, disable it
  • If your system has CFG-Lock, disable it
  • If your system has Secure Boot Mode, disable it
  • Set OS Type to Other OS
  • Set XHCI Handoff to Enabled
  • If you have a Serial port, disable it

2. UniBeast Install
You can use a standard UniBeast install drive to perform the installation.

You will need to manually load a driver on there if you have an NVMe system drive, or if for some reason you require network access during the installation.

For convenience, you should copy the latest MultiBeast release onto the USB install drive, so that after you boot into the new installation, you can immediately copy MultiBeast from the install drive to the system drive and run it. (You most likely will initially not have network access to download MultiBeast.)

3. MultiBeast Setup
Run MultiBeast, and you probably want to do something like this:
  1. Select Quick Start / UEFI Boot Mode
  2. Go to Drivers / Audio / Realtek ALCxxx. Select 100 Series Audio. Then also select your specific model of sound device. For instance many, but not all, Skylake boards come with an ALC1150. You must select both items here or else you probably won't get working sound.
  3. Go to Drivers / Network and select your network driver. For an Intel i219 (common on Skylake boards), you can select AppleIntelE1000e v3.3.3 or IntelMausiEthernet v2.1.0d3. The Mausi driver needs a manual fix after running MultiBeast, but the AppleIntelE1000e driver has sleep/wake issues on some machines.
  4. Go to Drivers / USB and select Increase Max Port Limit
  5. If you have a non-Intel USB3 or USB3.1 port on your board (e.g. an ASMedia port), also select 3rd Party USB 3.0 under Drivers / USB
  6. If you are using HD530 integrated graphics, go to Customize / Graphics Configuration and select Intel HD 530. This is not needed if you are using an add-in graphics card.
  7. You may choose which system definition to install. MacPro3,1 is the most reliable for any arbitrary hackintosh installation. iMac17,1 is currently the only Apple desktop with a Skylake chip, though it requires manual configuration to run Nvidia Web drivers (Fix #4 from this thread).
  8. Go to the Build screen and review the selections. Hit Save at the top so you don't have to remember all this next time! Then Install.
After installation, you can quit MultiBeast.

If you installed the IntelMausiEthernet driver with MultiBeast 8.2.2, there's one fix to make: you should open Terminal and run:
Code:
sudo chown -R root:wheel /Library/Extensions/IntelMausiEthernet.kext

Then remove your USB install drive and reboot.

4. Memory

Once you're back up, make sure your network and audio are working as expected.

The next thing to check is the recognized memory. Look under "About This Mac". If the memory total is not correct, you will need to enter memory settings by hand. They go in the SMBIOS section of config.plist.

Just add a block like this inside the existing SMBIOS section. Note that you should use a SlotCount of 4 with slots 0 and 2 populated even on NUCs or Mini-ITX boards with only 2 slots because it's needed to enable dual-channel memory. You can make up the vendor, part, and serial fields if unsure, but don't leave them out. (You can also enter this data on the SMBIOS screen of Clover Configurator, unless you have 16 GB or larger memory chips -- the current version of Clover Configurator only offers up to 8 GB options in the drop-down you need to pick from.)
Code:
        <key>Memory</key>
        <dict>
            <key>Channels</key>
            <integer>2</integer>
            <key>SlotCount</key>
            <integer>4</integer>
            <key>Modules</key>
            <array>
                <dict>
                    <key>Frequency</key>
                    <integer>2133</integer>
                    <key>Part</key>
                    <string>CT2C8G4DFD8213</string>
                    <key>Serial</key>
                    <string>0200020B000C020B</string>
                    <key>Size</key>
                    <string>8192</string>
                    <key>Slot</key>
                    <integer>2</integer>
                    <key>Type</key>
                    <string>DDR4</string>
                    <key>Vendor</key>
                    <string>Crucial</string>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>Frequency</key>
                    <integer>2133</integer>
                    <key>Part</key>
                    <string>CT2C8G4DFD8213</string>
                    <key>Serial</key>
                    <string>0200020B000C020B</string>
                    <key>Size</key>
                    <string>8192</string>
                    <key>Slot</key>
                    <integer>0</integer>
                    <key>Type</key>
                    <string>DDR4</string>
                    <key>Vendor</key>
                    <string>Crucial</string>
                </dict>
            </array>
        </dict>

5. USB

The procedures above include quick-n-dirty USB support -- raising the Apple-default limit on total USB ports from 15 to 30 so all the USB ports provided by the chipset on your machine should be recognized. However, this may have unforeseen consequences. If it works for you, great. If you want to be strictly correct, though, you should identify and configure at most 15 USB ports for your machine.

If you want to do that, for now, follow the USB procedure in the older Skylake guide (you don't need anything else out of that guide, just the USB procedure).
 
Thanks for this info. Can you mention what the manual fix is if using the Mausi driver for ethernet. I really want to try and get my hack to sleep.

It's the line you run from Terminal that's in the "code" block just after the MultiBeast directions. Here again:
Code:
sudo chown -R root:wheel /Library/Extensions/IntelMausiEthernet.kext

I should add (for future reference) that will be fixed in the next MultiBeast release -- it just needs to set the permissions as part of the installer.
 
It's the line you run from Terminal that's in the "code" block just after the MultiBeast directions. Here again:
Code:
sudo chown -R root:wheel /Library/Extensions/IntelMausiEthernet.kext

I should add (for future reference) that will be fixed in the next MultiBeast release -- it just needs to set the permissions as part of the installer.

I used AppleIntelE1000e v3.3.1 and it worked straight out of the box, no sleep wake issues, no fixes are needed.
any idea why is that?
 
ammulder,

Is this update compatible with (for instance) your signature hardware setup? i.e., if I use Unibeast 6.2 and Multibeast 8.2.2 to download El Capitan (replacing my Chimera 4.1 install of Yosemite), how much of this procedure would actually work? (Check my equipment list.)
 
I have a fully functioning Skylake build (Asus Maximus VIII Hero/6700k) thanks to the hard work put into the older guide and related threads.

Question: Would reinstalling using the updated guide be worthwhile? I don't have too many issues except the following two:

1. The biggest issue I have is that I have to separate the drives used by OS X to use the mobo's ASMedia SATA controller, and the drives used by Windows (including my RAID1 array) set to use the the Intel controller set to RAID mode. Seems like OSX could not see the drives when the intel controller was in RAID mode, only in AHCI mode. Would be nice if OS X could talk to my RAID drives--not a necessity because I use the two OSes for different purposes, but still.

2. Other than that, I still face the occasional audio device detection (probably because I have a PCIe sound card) and Displayport issues (Known Nvidia card issue)... Minor inconveniences at most.
 
I used AppleIntelE1000e v3.3.1 and it worked straight out of the box, no sleep wake issues, no fixes are needed.
any idea why is that?

Probably just depends on the hardware and driver combination. I would use whatever works for you. :)

ammulder,
Is this update compatible with (for instance) your signature hardware setup? i.e., if I use Unibeast 6.2 and Multibeast 8.2.2 to download El Capitan (replacing my Chimera 4.1 install of Yosemite), how much of this procedure would actually work? (Check my equipment list.)

Well, there may be more steps needed. For instance on my ASRock 170 board, it needs USB FixOwnership = true in config.plist, and I think all of my 100-series ones needed the memory fix described in the first post. I used USB SSDTs on the Gigabyte and ASRock, though the NUC has so few ports that everything works right out of the box USB-wise. I use a Nvidia card on the ASRock and Gigabyte, so I use a SSDT to enabled HDMI audio on Nvidia. I also have SSDTs for the respective CPUs. Bottom line, this guide should be a good "Starter", but a system-specific guide may have a few more items to totally configure things.

Question: Would reinstalling using the updated guide be worthwhile?

I can't think of any reason to reinstall unless an OS upgrade goes horribly wrong or something...
 
I still get those extra boot partitions that I just bcfg boot rm __ them everytime I boot, but is there a permanent method to fix this yet, or should I just keep doing what I've been doing?
  1. Create a new entry pointing to '\EFI\CLOVER\CLOVERX64.EFI' (I used EasyUEFI on Windows)
  2. Rename '/EFI/BOOT' to '/EFI/BOOT.disabled'
See this thread for further details. Good Luck!
 
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