Bootable M.2 NVMe SSD On GA-Z87X-UD5H

[albertocarlassare]

Hi! I have a working High Sierra hackintosh with a GA-Z87X-UD5H (i7-4770 - 32GB RAM). I want to upgrade to Mojave or higher. I wanted to make a fresh install on a new drive, and I was thinking to move to M.2 NVMe drive. I need to add it through a M.2 to PCIe adapter. I need to update the BIOS in order to get the NVMe working. So I wanted to be sure it worth it.

1. Can the BIOS update make my board not compatible with Clover and Mac?
2. Does the M.2 to PCIe adapter reduce NVMe performance?
3. Will be my M.2 SSD bootable after that?

Thank you for the support.

 

[Jamesbond007]

Hi! I have a working High Sierra hackintosh with a GA-Z87X-UD5H (i7-4770 - 32GB RAM). I want to upgrade to Mojave or higher. I wanted to make a fresh install on a new drive, and I was thinking to move to M.2 NVMe drive. I need to add it through a M.2 to PCIe adapter. I need to update the BIOS in order to get the NVMe working. So I wanted to be sure it worth it.

1. Can the BIOS update make my board not compatible with Clover and Mac?
2. Does the M.2 to PCIe adapter reduce NVMe performance?
3. Will be my M.2 SSD bootable after that?

Thank you for the support.

(1) I don't think so. After the BIOS update, if you reconfigure the BIOS settings to where it was (necessary as the update will return the settings to default) then the system should continue to work with Clover and MacOS.

However, I don't see anything in the BIOS updates from Gigabyte that says anything about NVMe compatibility.

(2) That depends on the adapter you are going to use. If the adapter supports PCIe 3.0, and you install it into a PCIe 3.0 slot on the motherboard, then full speed should be available.

Note that the bandwidth available to the graphics card will be reduced from x16 to x8 after the card is installed into a PCIe 3.0 slot apart from the graphics card slot. Normally you won't see a performance reduction in such a case.

(3) It should. Even if the motherboard has no support, Clover itself supports NVMe SSDs so you should still be able to make it work.

 

[nicksoph]

1. BIOS update - You may mean a BIOS mod which adds NVMe boot support - is it available for your motherboard? (I got mine for Gigabyte Z77-DS3H from BIOS-mods site), if its not available you can make a request there and somebody may do the work for you.

3. Yes. If you get the BIOS mod. If the BIOS mod is not available, you can use a USB stick to hold Clover and Clover to install the UEFI NVMe driver. Then the NVMe drive becomes available to actually boot MacOS. It takes an extra second to boot to Clover from the USB but otherwise there is no difference in use.

 

[albertocarlassare]

OK, people. Thank for your answers! It’s an Official BIOS Update. Gigabyte support told me that the latest BIOS Firmware for my mobo includes NVMe support. Very useful everything you say to me. Really thank you! Now must find a graphic card because it seems everything is sold out because of mining,

 

[Jamesbond007]

OK, people. Thank for your answers! It’s an Official BIOS Update. Gigabyte support told me that the latest BIOS Firmware for my mobo includes NVMe support. Very useful everything you say to me. Really thank you! Now must find a graphic card because it seems everything is sold out because of mining,

You can remove the GTX 950 graphics card and use the CPU integrated graphics from the i7-4770 if you want to install and run MacOS Mojave or later.

Note that MacOS Big Sur will require the OpenCore bootloader (or Clover 5124 and later, which include elements of OpenCore) to boot. Quite different from plain old Clover. If you want to run Big Sur be prepared to learn how to use OpenCore.

 

[albertocarlassare]

You can remove the GTX 950 graphics card and use the CPU integrated graphics from the i7-4770 if you want to install and run MacOS Mojave or later.

Note that MacOS Big Sur will require the OpenCore bootloader (or Clover 5124 and later, which include elements of OpenCore) to boot. Quite different from plain old Clover. If you want to run Big Sur be prepared to learn how to use OpenCore.

Yeah! Sure! I'm gonna buy a RX 580 as soon as I find one because I'm using 4 monitors and the integrated GC doesn't support more than 2.

Thank you also about the info that OpenCore is a requirement since Big Sur, I didn't know, so I start to study that bootloader. Actually, because of the compatibility with the software I'm using I'll stay for sure with Mojave for a while...

And finally, I think I'll stay with SATA SSD because the performance I experience with this technology is good, I don't really need more speed, I prefer to be sure about stability. I'll move to NVMe in the next build (if there will be one considering the future is ARM).

 

[Jamesbond007]

Yeah! Sure! I'm gonna buy a RX 580 as soon as I find one because I'm using 4 monitors and the integrated GC doesn't support more than 2.

Thank you also about the info that OpenCore is a requirement since Big Sur, I didn't know, so I start to study that bootloader. Actually, because of the compatibility with the software I'm using I'll stay for sure with Mojave for a while...

And finally, I think I'll stay with SATA SSD because the performance I experience with this technology is good, I don't really need more speed, I prefer to be sure about stability. I'll move to NVMe in the next build (if there will be one considering the future is ARM).

I see. Then you will need to find a suitable graphics card but their prices, even the second hand ones, are highly inflated at this point.

If you are staying with Mojave, then you can continue to use plain old Clover. I use Clover 4920 to boot and run Mojave on my systems.