Z690 Chipset Motherboards and Alder Lake CPU

[etorix]

@djlild7hina Good to see you back in hackintoshing

 

[djlild7hina]

@djlild7hina Good to see you back in hackintoshing

I wouldn't say I'm fully back... just more of a lurker . All of these success with Z690 is giving me an itch to attempt it. I'll probably try to install on my extreme for a bit then go back to Windows 11.

Until the new Mac Mini comes out, I'm happy with my M1 Air for now. I've also started using Docker and moved my VMs to a Linux build. Pretty happy with it and was nice timing since my annual subscription to Parallels just expired . Trying to run multiple VMs with 8GBs of RAM was certainly a struggle...

 

[nottooshabby]

If 3 PCI-e slots can be enough for you, I can tell that my Hackintosh with Z690 Aorus Master is the best I ever had. Not even one crash, rock solid stability, sleep, wake, all apps work, fast as hell. What can I say..... I'm happy with it!

Looks awesome, but where did you find DDR5 RAM?

 

[StefanAM]

Looks awesome, but where did you find DDR5 RAM?

Far away from you (I suppose). Romania.

 

[ejh4286]

Got it working on an Asus Z690m Plus D4 w/ 12700k. Used the EFI found here and modded it a little. Everything works so far except E cores (causes panic). Installed Monterey on NVMe (using my Mac mini 2014). Put drive in desktop and used EFI. Couldn't do a clean install as it would hang. Used MacPro 2019 7,1

I have same board and couldn't get Monterey to install. I tried your method using my iMac, and it worked like a champ. Finally having some success!

 

[smoothmove]

I have same board and couldn't get Monterey to install. I tried your method using my iMac, and it worked like a champ. Finally having some success!

Did you get the E cores to work? If I enabled, it would freeze halfway into boot.

 

[etorix]

Did you get the E cores to work? If I enabled, it would freeze halfway into boot.

It's a constant throughout this thread: OS X does not validate the hybrid topology.
You can have:

1. P-core and hyperthreading, with E-cores disabled in BIOS (or a CPU-specific SSDT to hide E-cores); OR
2. P-cores and E-cores without hyperthreading.

Most prefer option 1, but testing by @StefanAM showed that option 2 has limited impact in benchmarks for 20°C less under load, which is not bad if this does not create issues with AVX-512-aware softwares.

 

[ejh4286]

Did you get the E cores to work? If I enabled, it would freeze halfway into boot.

You can use e cores if you turn off hyperthreading. I got a 20% higher cinebench r23 score using just p cores and hyper threading.

 

[ejh4286]

It's a constant throughout this thread: OS X does not validate the hybrid topology.
You can have:

1. P-core and hyperthreading, with E-cores disables in BIOS (or a CPU-specific SSDT to hide E-cores); OR
2. P-cores and E-cores without hyperthreading.

Most prefer option 1, but testing by @StefanAM showed that option 2 has limited impact in benchmarks for 20°C less under load, which is not bad if this does not create issues with AVX-512-aware softwares.

I have a 12900KF and option 2 gives a significantly higher Cinebench score that option 1 (~19000 vs ~22000). In Windows 11 with p and e cores with hyper threading, I get ~27000.

 

[etorix]

Thanks for reporting. It is useful to know that there are real use cases where P+E is better than P+HT.