- Joined
- May 10, 2011
- Messages
- 2,923
- Motherboard
- Gigabyte B550 Vision D
- CPU
- Ryzen 5900X
- Graphics
- RX 6800
- Mac
- Classic Mac
- Mobile Phone
Middleman's Build:
Gigabyte B550 Vision D + AMD Ryzen 5900X + RX6800
Gigabyte B550 Vision D + AMD Ryzen 5900X + RX6800
COMPONENTS
- Gigabyte B550 Vision D board
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08C9GJ49M/?tag=tonymacx86com-20 - Corsair 32GB 3600MHz DDR4 RAM
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0143UM4TC/?tag=tonymacx86com-20 - AMD Ryzen 5900X 12-core 3.7GHz Chip
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08NXYLBN5/?tag=tonymacx86com-20 - Gigabyte Radeon RX 6800 Graphics Card
https://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-Card/GV-R68GAMING-OC-16GD#kf
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08PFXMLPX
https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16814932382 - Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler Fan
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00335LZU8/?tag=tonymacx86com-20 - WD SN850 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFS6THF/?tag=tonymacx86com-20 - Gigabyte Aorus P750W Modular Power Supply
https://www.gigabyte.com/Power-Supply/GP-AP750GM#kf - Gigabyte Aorus C300G PC Case
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QBQV85H/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
Other tools needed
- 16GB USB Key (for Catalina install)
- MountEFI & Propertree (for editing)
- Spare Hackintosh/Mac (for creating Catalina USB stick/editing if necessary)
- USB 3.0 external slot drive (for copying/editing files and data)
Comments
What works
NVMe detection and bootup
AMD RX6800 (limited - until proper macOS driver arrives)
USB 3.1, 3.0 & 2.0 (hot-plugging and eject on USB 3.1 works)
Full sound ports including digital out with volume adjustment
Ethernet
What doesn't
Bluetooth
WiFi
Thunderbolt (still testing)
GPU graphics (currently set to VESA mode)
Sound (getting crackling from the board)
Reasons Behind Purchase
I work in the imaging industry, and for the work we need speed and the ability to access and process large or large numbers of files on the fly without interruption is of particular importance to our work. Too many systems currently based on the standalone Intel architecture are not just cut up for the job. I've been using Hackintoshes myself for nearly 8 years, and I came to it simply because Apple couldn't provide us what we wanted - good performance for a reasonable price. As a seasoned Apple user who went from PCs and PowerMac 8400s to G4s/G5s/Powerbooks and iMacs/Mac Pros/Macbook Pros, it has been my experience that Hackintoshes are generally (compared to real Apple Macs at least) a lot more upgrade-friendly, wallet-friendly, great value for money and surprisingly reliable. As my last Hack lasted about 7 years with constant daily use, the only thing that was ever broken was the PSU and that got replaced - it was that solid.
My existing 2017 Asus Z270 Prime A system at work, while it was reliable and fast, was slowly beginning to show its age. On certain processes under Photoshop, for example, the 4-core i7-7000, which was powering the system, was beginning to take its toll. Although we employed NVMe SSDs to try to take advantage of the speed, the bottleneck was still mainly the Intel processor.
So I decided to go for a faster setup for 2021. Reading about the chips and latest gear, made me convinced a system based on the new AMD Ryzen 5900X was the way to go. In addition to being much more macOS friendly, it seemed the way to go for the foreseeable future (especially GPUs). For the motherboard, I chose the Gigabyte B550 Vision D. Aside from being designed for the AMD Ryzen, it was also the first to have Thunderbolt included (for AMD chips) as well as industry-leading PCIe 4.0 performance. The Thunderbolt is important to me because we need fast access to our Thunderbolt RAID storage system.
For internal storage, as we were going to use PCIe 4.0, it was a choice between the Samsung 980 Pro or the Western Digital (WD) SN850 NVMe's. We settled on the WD simply because it seemed to be the better choice for speed. I also wanted to see how well WD's NVMe would perform longterm compared to Samsung. But I was aware that the new 980 Pro uses TLC or a less reliable type of flash than the MLCs that were used in the 970 Pro.
Graphics card choice
I initially wanted to get a RX5700 but was told by my local dealer that the card was no longer available - so had to settle for the RX6800, which I was more than happy with. The card comes with 16GB of VRAM, which is more than enough for my (current) needs.
Installation Instructions
I followed CaseySJ's original OpenCore 0.6.3 build on the B550 Vision D using the supplied EFI folder and BIOS settings, created the USB Catalina 10.15.6 installer disk using Apple's recommendations. I booted from the USB stick by pressing F12 at the boot menu, and installed directly onto the WD NVMe SSD which I had already installed in the machine.
For the BIOS settings, as well as setting up the expected settings for this generation of board such as Enable XMP Profile, Enable Above 4G Decoding, XHCI Handoff Enabled, etc., I turned off SMT (AMD's hyperthreading) in case the system went into kernel panic (as advised by other guides I had come across for the Ryzen chipset).
The installation process was relatively smooth and trouble-free. After the install and a few reboots I copied the USB's EFI folder to the system EFI partition using MountEFI and was pretty much done. Now all I am waiting for the display card drivers (mainly) - which as of writing (13/01/21) has still not been officially released yet by AMD for macOS Catalina.
Update: 8th April 2022
I have updated the build to OC 0.7.9 for Monterey. Guide can be found here.> https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...-5900x-rx550-samsung-1tb-970-evo-plus.319781/
The B550 Vision D build was originally meant to be my office' main daily workhorse for imaging production use. Due to certain instabilities discovered during the course of months of use with mainly Adobe software, the system was replaced by an Alder Lake i9-12900K Asus Z690 Prime P D4 system at the end of 2021 (which was deemed more stable). The 32GB of RAM, Gigabyte RX6800 card and WD SN850 NVMe drive from the B550 was all transferred over to the Z690 system, relegating the B550 to free status. I have since decided the B550 will be a spare office unit for performing office tasks, new OS installations and for system tests.
Compared to my last build, some of the components on the B550 have since been downgraded. Memory is now 16GB RGB Corsair Vengeance RS 3200Mhz DDR4s vs 32GB 3600Mhz, the dGPU is now a RX550 (spoofed under Opencore using No-GFX-Spoof) and the 1TB NVMe drive is a spare from one of my laptops from home. While still respectable, performance on Geekbench 5 has suffered a roughly 28% drop from 14276 to 9998 points on multi-core. This is likely from the drop to 16GB of RAM down from 32GB (and possibly slower 3200Mhz speed memory). DGPU 3D performance has also dropped, now down to 60fps from average of 210fps.
The EFI build version is Opencore 0.7.9. and I have included config.plist files for the RX550 as well as RX6800. For technical reasons I have disabled the Intel Bluetooth drivers in the EFI until better BT drivers are released with OpenIntelWireless. For wireless under Monterey, Airportitlwm is the best option so far.
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