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Can I run Big Sur on Z170XP-SLI with 6700K and GTX 1080?

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Joined
Jan 24, 2017
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Motherboard
Gigabyte Z170XP-SLI
CPU
Core i7 6700K
Graphics
EVGA GTX 1080 FTW
Hi there!

I built my hackintosh a long time ago, and I'm still running MacOS Sierra. Naturally, updates to all my programs are pretty much unsupported at this point so I'm looking to upgrade my OS to Big Sur. Couple of questions I'm hoping the team might be able to help with:

1. Any chance I could do a direct (standard) upgrade from Sierra to Big Sur just by running the Install MaxOS app? (without booting to USB, wiping the hard drive, doing a brand new install, reinstalling all my kexts, etc)

2. Is there any reason I wouldn't be able to run Big Sur on my existing hardware? I have a Gigabyte Z170XP-SLI, running a 6700K and GTX 1080.

Any guidance or advice would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks in advance!

- Lucasloud
 
Hi there!

I built my hackintosh a long time ago, and I'm still running MacOS Sierra. Naturally, updates to all my programs are pretty much unsupported at this point so I'm looking to upgrade my OS to Big Sur. Couple of questions I'm hoping the team might be able to help with:

1. Any chance I could do a direct (standard) upgrade from Sierra to Big Sur just by running the Install MaxOS app? (without booting to USB, wiping the hard drive, doing a brand new install, reinstalling all my kexts, etc)

2. Is there any reason I wouldn't be able to run Big Sur on my existing hardware? I have a Gigabyte Z170XP-SLI, running a 6700K and GTX 1080.

Any guidance or advice would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks in advance!

- Lucasloud
(1) If you are still running MacOS Sierra on your system, most likely you are still using the Clover bootloader. If so, a direct upgrade using the Big Sur install app will NOT work, since Big Sur requires the OpenCore bootloader (or Clover version 5124 and later) to boot.

If you want to attempt a direct upgrade, you will have to first reconfigure your system to use OpenCore or Clover 5124 and later to boot.

I would most certainly recommend creating a Big Sur install USB stick and install from scratch to a brand new disk instead of doing a direct upgrade.

(2) The GTX 1080 is not supported on MacOS Big Sur due to lack of Nvidia drivers. To run Big Sur with graphics acceleration you will need to remove the card and either use CPU integrated graphics or switch to a supported graphics card like the RX 5000 series or the new RX 6000 series (except 6700 XT). But as we all know the prices of graphics cards are highly inflated at this point.
 
(1) If you are still running MacOS Sierra on your system, most likely you are still using the Clover bootloader. If so, a direct upgrade using the Big Sur install app will NOT work, since Big Sur requires the OpenCore bootloader (or Clover version 5124 and later) to boot.

If you want to attempt a direct upgrade, you will have to first reconfigure your system to use OpenCore or Clover 5124 and later to boot.

I would most certainly recommend creating a Big Sur install USB stick and install from scratch to a brand new disk instead of doing a direct upgrade.

(2) The GTX 1080 is not supported on MacOS Big Sur due to lack of Nvidia drivers. To run Big Sur with graphics acceleration you will need to remove the card and either use CPU integrated graphics or switch to a supported graphics card like the RX 5000 series or the new RX 6000 series (except 6700 XT). But as we all know the prices of graphics cards are highly inflated at this point.
Thank you so much for this detailed reply!

Just out of curiosity, what was the last version of MacOS to support Nvidia drivers? It would be a real shame to render my GTX 1080 useless but I can't keep going on with Sierra...
 
Thank you so much for this detailed reply!

Just out of curiosity, what was the last version of MacOS to support Nvidia drivers? It would be a real shame to render my GTX 1080 useless but I can't keep going on with Sierra...
With the GTX 1080 in place you can only go as far as High Sierra (the next version to Sierra) but no further.
 
Thank you so much for your replies!

I think am just going to sell my GTX 1080 on eBay, upgrade to Big Sur with a clean, fresh install and suffer through running Big Sur on integrated graphics on my 6700K until graphics card prices come back from the moon.

Thank you for all your help!
 
Thank you so much for your replies!

I think am just going to sell my GTX 1080 on eBay, upgrade to Big Sur with a clean, fresh install and suffer through running Big Sur on integrated graphics on my 6700K until graphics card prices come back from the moon.

Thank you for all your help!

That may be the only way to go to Big Sur at this time.

Personally I would make sure that I can successfully install and run Big Sur with CPU integrated graphics before selling the GTX 1080.
 
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