[SUCCESS] Gigabyte Designare Z390 (Thunderbolt 3) + i7-9700K + AMD RX 580

[Richard325]

Disabling a GPU in PCIe Slot 2
If you have both macOS and Windows installed on this system, and are using an Nvidia graphics card in Slot 2 (the middle long x16 PCIe slot) that works only under Windows, then it is possible to make that card invisible to macOS. This will prevent any issues in macOS related to the unsupported Nvidia card; even the default VESA graphics driver will not load.

To render the Slot 2 GPU invisible:

1. Download the attached SSDT-Designare-Z390-Disable-Slot-2-GPU.aml.
2. Mount the EFI partition of your Mojave SSD.
3. Copy the file to the CLOVER/ACPI/patched folder in the EFI partition.
4. Reboot.

This would be great for my next dual-boot Hackintosh - Sapphire RX 580 and Strix 1080 Ti

The Nvidia card would be invisible to macOS
Would the 1080 Ti card be completely OFF - no spinning fans/power draw/heat?

Thanks for your help.

 

[CaseySJ]

@CaseySJ or anyone who has tried this, what SMBIOS would you recommend for a small build without GPU? Planning to put macOS on my small workstation box, Z390 with a i5-9400f (no built-in graphics) and external GPU (RX 590). Since I'm using Z390, should I go for macmini 8? Or is there a iMac19 variant that I can use?

Thanks for any advice you guys can provide

For Catalina, I recommend using a non-T2 SMBIOS. You should be able to use iMac19,1 with or without iGPU. If you use iMac19,2 then it's necessary to use a patched version of USBInjectAll from this site.

 

[CaseySJ]

This would be great for my next dual-boot Hackintosh - Sapphire RX 580 and Strix 1080 Ti

The Nvidia card would be invisible to macOS
Would the 1080 Ti card be completely OFF - no spinning fans/power draw/heat?

Thanks for your help.

The GTX 1080 Ti will not be completely off, but macOS will not assign any driver to it. This means it won't initialize the card on the PCIe bus, so the card will only exhibit pre-initialization behavior that is coded into its firmware.

 

[CaseySJ]

Yes, I’m booting from my Samsung 970 Evo NVMe (M2P Slot) with Mojave (Clover installed on the EFI partition of the same disk), and my Corsair MP510 in M2M slot with Catalina (and Clover installed on this disk) boots fine just as well. Doesn’t matter here on which disk Clover is installed, it works every time.

As you see here, there are more parameters available for OcQuirks:

GitHub - ReddestDream/OcQuirks: A work-in-progress attempt to port OpenCore's boot quirks to Clover in order to replace AptioMemoryFix.

A work-in-progress attempt to port OpenCore's boot quirks to Clover in order to replace AptioMemoryFix. - GitHub - ReddestDream/OcQuirks: A work-in-progress attempt to port OpenCore's boot ...

github.com

The important one that made it work for me is "DevirtualiseMmio" set to "True". But perhaps you find some other relevant parameters there?

I tried FwFirmwareServices/OcQuirks back on October 15, but it failed on both USB and NVMe. So it is especially encouraging to see that it's working on non-PCIe boot devices in my admittedly picky system. I'll certainly try recompiling it with other settings.

 

[Richard325]

The GTX 1080 Ti will not be completely off, but macOS will not assign any driver to it. This means it won't initialize the card on the PCIe bus, so the card will only exhibit pre-initialization behavior that is coded into its firmware.

Great!!!
Thanks for the quick reply.

 

[kwalter]

@CaseySJ FINALLY the solution to get rid of the "evil" OsxAptioFix2Drv-free2000.efi is here! EDIT: Please test if it works reliably. It works great on my system and on some others’ who have tried it, too.
You can try using the combination of "FwRuntimeServices.efi" and "OcQuirks.efi" instead of "OsxAptioFix2Drv-free2000.efi". It’s important to build OcQuirks.efi with the option "DevirtualiseMmio" set to "True" or it won’t work. But never mind, I have attached the already correctly built file here. The "slide=0" boot argument is still needed.
So: Just delete "OsxAptioFix2Drv-free2000.efi" from EFI/CLOVER/drivers/UEFI and place the two attached files there instead.
EmuVariableUefi.efi is required for it to work.
I hope this works for your system as well. Mine is a Vanilla build, but I don’t think this will make a difference here.
Thanks so much to user "karacho" from the German Hackintosh forum for telling me about OcQuirks! We were talking about OpenCore and then I thought I’ll give this a try with Clover.

There's something at work that I don't believe we understand fully yet, as my system, which as far as I can tell is identical to Casey's (albeit mine with a Radeon IV) works beautifully with AptioMemoryFix - go figure!

 

[kwalter]

Hi @CaseySJ so as promised, an update about the dropping Bluetooth connection. Unfortunately, it's still recurring. And I'm not sure if I'm being paranoid but I think it's gotten more frequently. Anyway, I'm thinking that maybe it's just a hardware problem (maybe I got a lemon Fenvi card or something). And I'm willing to just buy another one if it's really the case. The only thing stopping me is what if it's not the card and something else? So I would just like to ask if you encountered a similar problem from any of your fellows here? It's becoming really frustrating and affecting work more and more. Please help. Anyone?

I had exactly the same problem, but then due to a mistake on my part I ended doing a fresh build and I now no longer have the problem. What was causing it I don't know

 

[CaseySJ]

I tried FwFirmwareServices/OcQuirks back on October 15, but it failed on both USB and NVMe. So it is especially encouraging to see that it's working on non-PCIe boot devices in my admittedly picky system. I'll certainly try recompiling it with other settings.

OcQuirks / FwRuntimeServices Experiment​

In our ongoing quest to find a truly viable alternative to OsxAptioFix2Drv-free2000, we plan to compile and test OcQuirks with a number of different parameter settings. We'll consolidate the data here. If my system is one of the most finicky ones around, then hopefully a solution that works for me will work for most or all.

System Configuration:

• Catalina 10.15.1
• BIOS F8 with MSR 0xE2 unlocked
• Intel i7-9700K
• G.Skill TridentZ 4 x 8GB 3200MHz DIMMs with XMP Profile 1
• Clover v5098 (press "A" at Clover Boot Menu to determine your Clover version)
• EmuVariableUefi and FwRuntimeServices both copied to CLOVER/drivers/UEFI folder
• Using VirtualSMC instead of FakeSMC
• SMBIOS iMac19,1
• iGPU enabled with headless platform ID 0x3E980003
• Lilu and WhateverGreen installed in both CLOVER/kexts/Other and /Library/Extensions with Inject Kexts set to Detect.
• M2M (top M.2 slot) = ADATA SX8200 PCIe NVMe 240GB (Windows 10)
• M2P (bottom M.2 slot) = ADATA SX8200 Pro PCIe NVMe 512GB (macOS)
• MSI Gaming X Radeon RX 580 in PCIe Slot 1
• Fenvi FV-T919 WiFi/BT card in bottom x1 PCIe slot
• Original Intel CNVi WiFi/BT module still installed; using NO-CNVW SSDT to disable.

Quirk	Default	Test 1	Test 2	Test 3	Test 4
AvoidRuntimeDefrag	True	True	True	True	True
DevirtualiseMmio	False	True	True	True	True
DisableSingleUser	False	False	False	False	False
DisableVariableWrite	False	False	False	False	False
DiscardHibernateMap	False	False	False	False	False
EnableSafeModeSlide	True	True	True	True	True
EnableWriteUnprotector	True	True	True	True	True
ForceExitBootServices	True	True	True	True	False
ProtectCsmRegion	False	False	False	True	False
ProvideCustomSlide	True	True	False	True	True
SetupVirtualMap	True	True	True	True	True
ShrinkMemoryMap	False	False	False	False	False
QuirksProvideConsoleGopEnable	True	True	True	True	True

Results:

• Test 1 with slide=0 shows good promise. It allows my system to boot consistently from USB and SATA buses only. Boot from USB flash disk on Thunderbolt dock is also okay. Unable to boot from PCIe NVMe bus.
  • Attached: OcQuirks.efi-TEST-1.zip
• Test 2 with/without slide=0 same result as Test 1.
  • Attached: OcQuirks.efi-TEST-2.zip
• Test 3 with/without slide=0 same result as Test 1.
  • Attached: OcQuirks.efi-TEST-3.zip
• Test 4 with slide=0 works perfectly!
  • Attached: OcQuirks.efi-TEST-4.zip

If anyone has suggestions for other test conditions please let me know.

Experiment Concluded.

 

[rondark]

@CaseySJ FINALLY the solution to get rid of the "evil" OsxAptioFix2Drv-free2000.efi is here! EDIT: Please test if it works reliably. It works great on my system and on some others’ who have tried it, too.
You can try using the combination of "FwRuntimeServices.efi" and "OcQuirks.efi" instead of "OsxAptioFix2Drv-free2000.efi". It’s important to build OcQuirks.efi with the option "DevirtualiseMmio" set to "True" or it won’t work. But never mind, I have attached the already correctly built file here. The "slide=0" boot argument is still needed.
So: Just delete "OsxAptioFix2Drv-free2000.efi" from EFI/CLOVER/drivers/UEFI and place the two attached files there instead.
EmuVariableUefi.efi is required for it to work.
I hope this works for your system as well. Mine is a Vanilla build, but I don’t think this will make a difference here.
Thanks so much to user "karacho" from the German Hackintosh forum for telling me about OcQuirks! We were talking about OpenCore and then I thought I’ll give this a try with Clover.

Worked for me on first boot... Will continue to test.
Booting from
Samsung SSD 970 EVO 1TB
in the M2P position

 

[gandem]

Wow, that's interesting, and leads me to a question: does the memmmap change when you install any drive on that bey? Or just the Windows drive? I'd assume any drive added would alter it since that seems to be a firmware thing, but I'm curious.

BTW, how are Adobe apps nowadays with AMD cards? A few years back I remember many would suggest to get NVIDIA card because Adobe favored their hardware/drivers...

Adobe apps appear to be running well, I have installed the 2020 version and things are running smoothly. Have not really put it to the test of everyday editing on a project yet. As far as AMD/Nvidia goes, for Adobe, I think Nvidia is still the best performer, by a significant margin- but that's on the PC side. Will never know on the Mac side since Nvidia drivers have not been released for Mojave and now Catalina. I have a 1080 Ti that is stuck in 10.13.6 land. Very frustrating.

As for other drive options causing allocation errors- I have done a fresh install of Mojave from a Sata SSD which I plugged into a different port on the board. No allocation errors. I then updated directly to Catalina 10.15.1 from there, leaving the Mojave Installer SSD plugged in, again no allocation errors. I have also created a bootable backup to an external TB2 SSD, which I connect to my CalDigit TS3 Plus TB3 port, using Apple TB2/TB3 adapter. I can select my backup drive from the F12 Boot menu and boot perfectly- again no allocation error. All this with iGPU enabled using AptioMemoryFix. No problems until I plug in the Windows drive. I have check the NVRAM since then, and there are no Windows references. To me, it appears that the Windows drive just changes the Memmap enough to cause the error. Once I get the error, the only way out is to clear the CMOS.