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Coffee Lake - i7 8700K + ASUS PRIME Z370-A attempt

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I finally have everything working, including audio. I stubbed my toe multiple times but I was able I resolve most of the gotchas.

Here are my lessons learned:
  • The memory MUST be configured as single channel or it won't work. I believe this has to do with the fact that the default UniBeast profile is for an iMac, which only have 2 memory slots.
  • High Sierra has native support for NVMe M.2 devices, but the macOS disk utility will not recognize the device if it is the only SSD in the system. You'll need to plug in a spare SATA device to initialize the volume. Once this is done, you can remove the SATA device and macOS will find the volume for the OS install.
  • My card was an EVGA Geforce GTX 1060. There was absolutely NO way I could make it through the original install unless the card was completely removed from the system. Once the initial install was done, I was able to install the Nvidia web drivers and boot up with the GPU installed. An even then, the only way the card would work was with the NvidiaSingle option enabled in Clover.
  • Things went much more smoothly after I updated to the latest version of Clover.
  • The UniBeast installer seems to be a bit out of date for a Coffee Lake install. Many options and settings are not optimized. For example, iMac18,3 should be used for SMBIOS profile and many helpful DSDT patches are missing.
  • There are some posts on a different Hackintosh web site specifically related to Coffee Lake and installing Nvidia drivers on High Sierra that I found to be very helpful in figuring out why I was having so many issues.
  • Although not completely needed, I generated CPU stepping profiles for Coffee Lake following an SSDT guide

My suggestion for anyone installing on this Mobo with an Nvidia card and/or M.2 drive is to do their homework before diving in. Apparently AMD cards are supported out of the box on High Sierra, but I wanted to go with an Nvidia Pascal card so I could use CUDA drivers for some development work I'm doing.

I can also share my EFI if anyone is interested.

Good luck to all!

P.S. My apologies for the lack of proper hyperlinks - the editor didn't allow me to embed links in my post.
Does this Motherboard support Thunderbolt3 Expansion Card .... Can you try it and let us know ?
 
hi guys.

just installed new system, perfectly working.

I have 2x 16gb ddr4, installed on slot a2-b2 as manual says.

I have set the ram info as suggested in smbios

the tricky thing, in my case, was to enable the above 4g decoding in bios (advanced/system agent configuration).

this option should be set to enabled if you have a discrete gpu with more than 4gb of ram.

if I set it to disable, I have the common issue (stuck at +++++++++++++)

hope it helps.

ps if needed I can upload my efi
 

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  • Schermata 2017-12-06 alle 20.39.50.png
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hi guys.

just installed new system, perfectly working.

I have 2x 16gb ddr4, installed on slot a2-b2 as manual says.

I have set the ram info as suggested in smbios

the tricky thing, in my case, was to enable the above 4g decoding in bios (advanced/system agent configuration).

this option should be set to enabled if you have a discrete gpu with more than 4gb of ram.

if I set it to disable, I have the common issue (stuck at +++++++++++++)

hope it helps.

ps if needed I can upload my efi

Can you share your EFI?
I'm back at my struggle with High Sierra install. I am now trying to install High Sierra with the latest version but I can't go past some part in the installation process (screen attached).
I am using UniBeast 8.1.0. Which one did you use?

Also, I tried to do a new install using @materiks EFI, and now I can't install macOs, and with the previous version of High Sierra I actually had a successful install.

Thanks
 

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  • 20171210_093114.jpg
    20171210_093114.jpg
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Can you share your EFI?
I'm back at my struggle with High Sierra install. I am now trying to install High Sierra with the latest version but I can't go past some part in the installation process (screen attached).
I am using UniBeast 8.1.0. Which one did you use?

Also, I tried to do a new install using @materiks EFI, and now I can't install macOs, and with the previous version of High Sierra I actually had a successful install.

Thanks

here you are, hope it helps
 

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  • CLOVER 8700k z370-a.zip
    8.7 MB · Views: 560
Thanks.
For now I actually managed to successfully install High Sierra, but had to disconnect my external GPU from the motherboard power. So the problem was probably with my Nvidia GPU.
The dual-channel RAM problem was solved with the SMBIOS edit as described by @materiks
I'll keep you updated, let's see if now I can use my nvidia GPU.
 
Thanks.
For now I actually managed to successfully install High Sierra, but had to disconnect my external GPU from the motherboard power. So the problem was probably with my Nvidia GPU.
The dual-channel RAM problem was solved with the SMBIOS edit as described by @materiks
I'll keep you updated, let's see if now I can use my nvidia GPU.

I keep struggling with my GPU.
I simply can't get my mackintosh to work with it.
I do all the installation with the GPU power plug disconnected.

Then I use multibeast and select NVIDIA Web Drivers Boot Flag and Nvidia Graphics Fixup as explained in this guide
After that (and without rebooting at this point), I installed the latest Nvidia drivers downloaded from their site (17C88 in my case).
When I reboot, I simply can't get to macOS anymore, either with my GPU or integrated graphics.
I get the attached image on verbose boot mode. Any clues? Am I doing any wrong step?
 

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  • 20171217_193916.jpg
    20171217_193916.jpg
    4.7 MB · Views: 361
I finally have everything working, including audio. I stubbed my toe multiple times but I was able I resolve most of the gotchas.

Here are my lessons learned:
  • The memory MUST be configured as single channel or it won't work. I believe this has to do with the fact that the default UniBeast profile is for an iMac, which only have 2 memory slots.
  • High Sierra has native support for NVMe M.2 devices, but the macOS disk utility will not recognize the device if it is the only SSD in the system. You'll need to plug in a spare SATA device to initialize the volume. Once this is done, you can remove the SATA device and macOS will find the volume for the OS install.
  • My card was an EVGA Geforce GTX 1060. There was absolutely NO way I could make it through the original install unless the card was completely removed from the system. Once the initial install was done, I was able to install the Nvidia web drivers and boot up with the GPU installed. An even then, the only way the card would work was with the NvidiaSingle option enabled in Clover.
  • Things went much more smoothly after I updated to the latest version of Clover.
  • The UniBeast installer seems to be a bit out of date for a Coffee Lake install. Many options and settings are not optimized. For example, iMac18,3 should be used for SMBIOS profile and many helpful DSDT patches are missing.
  • There are some posts on a different Hackintosh web site specifically related to Coffee Lake and installing Nvidia drivers on High Sierra that I found to be very helpful in figuring out why I was having so many issues.
  • Although not completely needed, I generated CPU stepping profiles for Coffee Lake following an SSDT guide

My suggestion for anyone installing on this Mobo with an Nvidia card and/or M.2 drive is to do their homework before diving in. Apparently AMD cards are supported out of the box on High Sierra, but I wanted to go with an Nvidia Pascal card so I could use CUDA drivers for some development work I'm doing.

I can also share my EFI if anyone is interested.

Good luck to all!

P.S. My apologies for the lack of proper hyperlinks - the editor didn't allow me to embed links in my post.


I will love to have your EFI folder if it's not a problem for you and thanks HIGHNRG.
 
I filled all 4 ram slots = 16gb but only 2 were us able by sierra. Then this morning I researched online and finally had everything working :)
I edited config.plist ... See attachments

can you please post your config file thanks man HIGHNRG
 
UPDATE: Thanks to @materiks for pointing everyone in right direction! I now have my machine working in dual channel memory configuration.

about-mac.pngabout-memory.pngclover-config.png

I was also able to successfully upgrade to High Sierra 10.13.2. For me this involved booting the recovery partition and using the terminal to copy the latest versions of apfs.efi, Lilu.kext, FakeSMC.kext and AppleALC.kext to the CLOVER folder tree on the boot EFI partition. After successfully regaining access to the machine, the NVIDIA Web Drivers required updating to the latest version (with SIP temporarily enabled). As far as I can tell, everything is working flawlessly (fingers crossed...).

EFI attached for those interested.
 

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  • EFI.zip
    22.4 MB · Views: 482
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