[GUIDE] Asus Prime A320I-K (AM4) Motherboard – OpenCore – macOS Monterey

[craighazan]

Having successfully installed macOS Monterey on my new mods hardware, I thought I'd write a quick guide, as there isn't much out there on the A320I-K. I'd been looking for a candidate for my next mod, which had kind of stalled, and needed a new motherboard, so why this board?. I read an article with the news that Gigabyte had quietly released a BIOS update that allowed Ryzen 5000 series AMD processors to work on the 320 Motherboard, I didn't want another Gigabyte board though, and as this was a 'quiet' BIOS release, it wasn't clear if other manufactures were following Gigabytes lead, or if AMD were even aware of this!. The update contains something called AGESA V2 PI 1.2.0.3C, and upon some researching it appeared that Asus had also released a BIOS update, that too contained AGESA V2 PI 1.2.0.3C. Having searched A320 motherboards Asus offering looked really good, I'm pretty sure it's the smallest at 170mm x 170mm and even has room for a X16 slot, useful as AMD iGPU and macOS are currently non compatible. Standard 24 pin PSU and 8 pin CPU connections exist on this, along with many, many other pins. My favorite two though are those for CMOS or (2 pin CLRTC), allowing you to reset BIOS to its default state, I found that quite handy, but more on that a little later. The features on this 'budget' motherboard are pretty good, I like that it supports M.2 SATA and M.2 NVMe especially, and two RGB headers for lighting it up like a Christmas tree!. But the winner was support for 5000 series processors, extending the life of this versatile AM4 socket board.

Installation. I'm sure all of you are aware of how to create your USB installer, so there's no need for me to explain any of that!. I myself, followed trs96 rather excellent guide, and created a macOS Big Sur 11.5.2 USB installer.

Download macOS Big Sur Directly from Apple Servers with gibMacOS

1. Download this Python script: https://github.com/corpnewt/gibMacOS Select Code and then Download ZIP. Place the gibMacOS folder on your desktop. 2. The video demo will show you how to run the gibMacOS.command script and download Big Sur. Even though this video is under 2 minutes, the...

www.tonymacx86.com

And useful!, needed for adding your own SMBIOS info to the EFI attached below.

Create Unique System & Board Serial Numbers with GenSMBIOS - Video Tutorial

Many in this community are starting fresh with a clean install of macOS Big Sur using the OpenCore bootloader. If you have used Clover bootloader previously, remember to Reset NVRAM first before installing Big Sur. This video guide shows you how to get your new install properly working with...

www.tonymacx86.com

BIOS. My motherboard came from eBay and I was pleasantly surprised with the condition it arrived in, it looked hardly used!, all the pins were perfectly straight!. It came in it's original box with manual, 2 SATA cables, CD, IO cover and even had the NVMe/SATA screw in the tiny plastic bag!. Mine arrived with BIOS 1820 from 2019, so to add AGESA V2 PI 1.2.0.3C and support for Ryzen 5000 series processors, I needed to update to 5862.
In Dortanias OpenCore install guide > Ryzen and Threadripper (17h and 19h), near the bottom of the page are some recommended BIOS settings, not all options are available on this board, but that's nothing to worry about!. The only issue I had was with disabling CSM, I'm not sure if its unique to this board, but I wasn't having much luck with it disabled, Post refusals, black screens, BIOS warnings, I resorted to shorting the 2 pin CLRTC a couple of times, I decided to leave it alone.

Ai Tweaker > Memory Frequency > DDR4-3200MHz (matches my Corsair Vengeance LPX frequency)
Advanced > SATA Configuration > SATA Mode Selection > AHCI (Default)
Advanced > USB Configuration > XHCI Hand-off > Enabled
Advanced > PCI Subsystem Settings > Above 4G Decoding > Disabled (using the boot-arg npci=0x3000)
Boot > Boot Configuration > Fast Boot > Disabled
Boot > CSM (Compatibility Support Module) > Launch CSM > Enabled (Dortania says disable, I have it enabled)
Boot > CSM (Compatibility Support Module) > Boot Device Control > UEFI only
Boot > Secure Boot > OS Type > Other OS


OpenCore. 0.7.4 released the same same time as Monterey and allowed you to update from Big Sur. Info on Hackintosh for this board was rather scarce, someone had reported success on one site but was vague in details. Asking about BIOS settings on another site returned a EFI for me to try, file structure below. Nice and light, not bloated with any unnecessary extras, a good starting point.

SMBIOS. Decided to go with MacPro,7,1, there was a boost in performance over the iMacPro1,1 definition. The SMBIOS info should be added to the config.plist inside the EFI folder. I've attached my new 0.7.7 EFI in post #14.

EFI. Patching your kernels!. Depending on which processor you have, in my case an 8 core Ryzen 7 1700, you will need to do some patching. Check the Data value under Kernel > Patch there are three lines beginning with Comment > String > algrey - Force cpuid_cores_per_package followed by a number. We are going to change the Replace > Data value with a new one that matches your processor cores, for me eight.

B8040000 0000 > B8080000 0000
BA040000 0000 > BA080000 0000
BA040000 0090 > BA080000 0090

HackinDROM. Update, my OC 0.7.7 EFI has been added to the HackinDROM database, see post #22.

 

[craighazan]

Made some changes for the A320I-K EFI. First I updated OpenCore to 0.7.6, a simple process of downloading the latest release, and dragging and dropping Bootx64.efi, OpenRuntime.efi and OpenCore.efi to your EFI folder. You can update other things too, but the above three are essential!. For some reason I had it stuck in my head that my CPU was a Ryzen 1 1700, not 7 1700!, many edits later and I think I have it owned now. GUI for the boot loader, I'm not a fan of Syrah!. Installed AMD Power Gadget for monitoring too, and all is well.

 

[craighazan]

Show me your bench!. I was aware of the single core performance already, which tbh is pathetic. But the multicore score is pretty good, better than a i7-7700K, which, at Newegg currently costs new $482.87, or used for $342, more than twice what I paid for the Ryzen 7 1700.

 

[craighazan]

 

[trs96]

Z690 looks good so far. The main barrier is the high prices of the boards and scarcity of affordable DDR5 memory. Other than that, it's really amazing how compatible the chipset is with macOS Monterey.

 

[craighazan]

Z690 looks good so far. The main barrier is the high prices of the boards and scarcity of affordable DDR5 memory. Other than that, it's really amazing how compatible the chipset is with macOS Monterey.

Amazing how quickly it has happened too, some extremely clever people doing amazing things. I'm also excited about AMDs' plans this year with the upcoming AM5 socket, I wonder if @CaseySJ is looking into it.

 

[craighazan]

Some very good news for A320I-K/M-K owners, there are some specific BIOS settings to pay attention too.

 

[craighazan]

Created a little tutorial video on changing CPU info in 'About This Mac' using ProperTree.

 

[craighazan]

Phew!, updated OpenCore to 0.7.7 and back to desktop successfully!. Updating the kexts gradually as there's been bumper crop of updates recently but Lilu has been causing some issues, that was with an EFI using a MacPro7,1 SMBIOS though, I'm currently using iMacPro1,1 for my stable EFI.

 

[trs96]

updated OpenCore to 0.7.7 and back to desktop successfully!.

Has the HackinDROM app been updated for 0.7.7 yet ?