z77x-up5th/BIOS 12/ OSX 10.11
Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge 1155
Dell U2413 Display
TP-LINK TL-WDN4800 wifi card
I year ago I flashed the BIOS on my GA-Z77X-UP5-TH motherboard with the latest BIOS from Gigabyte (F12 BIOS) the update went OK and I got a better boot GUI, but since then I could never get the motherboard to boot from a USB drive. I tried different sizes (8, 16, 24gb) and different ports (USB 3, USB 2) and different manufacturers of USB thumbdrives. No luck. If you google "gigabyte boot USB" you will learn this is a problem with many gigabyte motherboards and there does not seem to be a good explanation, but it seems flaw is in the new BIOS firmware because back when I had the F2 Bios I could boot from USB.
In any case, since I could not install from USB I had to find another way. My solution was to go on EBAY where I bought a used 16GB SSD drive for $14.00 (free shipping.) When I got the SSD drive. I plugged it in internally. I formatted it and proceeded with the instructions in the latest Tonymac Guide "Install OS X El Capitan on Any Supported Intel-based PC." (10/1/15)
Following those instructions, I downloaded a fresh copy of the El Capitan (10.11) installer from the Apple Store and directed Unibeast to load it on the SSD I had formatted (1 partition, GUID). Unibeast is happy to recognize the internal 16 GB SSD just like an external USB thumb drive. I was using onboard Intel HD Graphics 4000, because graphics cards may not be recognized at this step, so onboard is simpler.
At "step 4," I selected my boot menu by keying F12. In previous attempts, I could see USB drives at boot but the board would never boot into the OSX installer from USB. However, my new option was to boot from the Unibeast-created 16GB SSD installer. This time it worked, booting into the Apple interface to install El Capitan. The El Capitan installer ran quickly and smoothy and successfully set up a new 240GB drive as El Capitan. But this El Capitan drive was not yet bootable. I could see that because when you tried to boot from it you'd get the black apple loading screen with the progress bar and the progress bar would run for awhile then freeze. So = unbootable, no surprise.
Next, I booted from from my old system drive (10.9.2) and from there ran my post-installation choices, targeting the 240GB drive with the un-bootable El Capitan fresh install, and running the needed stuff to make it bootable.
1) I ran: Clover_v2.3k_r3270_UEFI.pkg
2) I ran: CustoMac Essentials to install FakeSMC and ethernet support.
Next I downloaded and ran Clover Configurator, which is an amazing but scary-complicated tool for adjusting the specifics of your particular Clover boot-loader settings. Here, I made an error in selecting the wrong SMBIOS settings. I should have picked MacPro3,1, but somehow I got the wrong settings as Macmini (Ooops.) This SMBIOS profile being correct is essential to your system booting (I learned to my dismay). If you do not have the right setting, you will either get a "denied" sign at boot or some other problem. I got a kernel panic, a "prohibited sign" and then an "OsxAptioDrvFixI" problem message. All these were fixed by going back into Clover Configurator and getting the correct SMBIOS settings in the 240Gb Clover profile as MacPro3,1.
Once I had that right, the system booted into the El Capitan set-up screen (with two slightly peculiar glitchy screen flashes in the process, but nothing significant). It allowed me to set-up my OSX user account and I had a fully-working clean install of El Capitan on the 240 GB SSD. Everything worked except no sound so, from my new El Capitan install I downloaded the CloverALC110 script and the EFI Mounter V2 software from Tonymac. The EFI Mounter software lets you bring up the EFI partition where Clover "lives." You may be presented with several options of which drive to mount if you have multiple drives in your system. You can type at the command line "diskutil list" and that will show you all attached drives and should make it obvious to you which one you want to mount. Then, select it in EFI Mounter, and the drive will appear on the desktop. Now, you can double-click the CloverALC110 script. You will be presented some options for modifying your sound in Clover. Selecting "Y" (yes) for all worked to enable my sound. I rebooted and opened Apple Menu>preferences>sound and "line-out" worked to enable my speakers.
So -- fully operational it seems. I may need to do some further post-config. But this all feels like it's working. Took a full day, would have been a lot easier if I had not messed up the SMBIOS setting with the wrong profile. Oooops. Hope this helps anybody out, especially if you have a GA-Z77X-UP5-TH.
