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<< Solved >> Catalina on Biostar TH55HD Socket 1156 with Sapphire Pulse RX580 - CLOVER & OC

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Joined
Sep 22, 2011
Messages
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Motherboard
HP EliteDesk 800 G5 Mini
CPU
i9-9900
Graphics
UHD 630
Mac
  1. Mac mini
Mobile Phone
  1. iOS
EDIT: I applied the 10.15.7 supplemental update (19H15) as noted here. I needed to switch to OC to apply the update.

EDIT: I upgraded from 10.15.6 to 10.15.7 as noted here.

EDIT: I upgraded from 10.15.5 to 10.15.6 by following the procedure here.

EDIT: I upgraded from 10.15.4 to 10.15.5 by following the procedure here. An updated TH55HD.zip archive is attached to this post with updated Lilu, AppleALC and WhateverGreen kexts.

EDIT: I upgraded from 10.15.3 to 10.15.4 by following the procedure here.

EDIT: I upgraded from 10.15.2 to 10.15.3. Updated EFI / LE is attached (not needed for the Catalina upgrade, but updated during the process). Also attached is an updated About screenshot.

*** This thread follows my Mojave Installation thread here. Review my Mojave thread for more information about installing macOS on this platform. ***

Catalina installed very easily on this old Socket 1156 MB with Sapphire Pulse RX580.

Catalina seems to work well (except reboot on wake from S3 which is a motherboard problem, not an RX580 issue) with dual displays (using DP Port to DVI adapters). I did the following (maybe more than I had to) and it worked the first time, so I haven't tried another approach to see if any of these steps are unnecessary.

My system is as follows:
  • Biostar TH55HD Socket 1156 Motherboard
  • Xeon X3460 CPU (BCLK overclocked from 133 to 160, peak CPU frequency is 4.16GHz, RAM @1600MHz)
  • Sapphire Pulse RX580 4GB
  • 16GB Crucial Ballistix Tactical 8-8-8-24 DDR3-1600 RAM
  • Multiple SSDs
Installation Steps
EFI and /L/E kexts are attached to this first post in TH55HD.zip.
  1. Create "vanilla" Catalina installer USB, install CLOVER (Legacy) (r5103 at the time of this writing) on the USB (follow Clover config below), use the EFI from the attached TH55HD.zip and change MacModel to MP6,1 (to permit Catalina install). Add latest Lilu.kext and latest WhateverGreen.kext to EFI/Clover/kexts/Other
  2. Configure CLOVER config.plist with the following options (already done in the attached config.plist)
    1. Boot Arg: -no_compat_check
    2. Graphics: Vendor ID: 0x1002, Product ID: 0x67DF, FB Name: Orinoco, Inject ATI, RadeonDeInit
  3. Add the GFX0._DSM below to DSDT (already done in the attached DSDT)
  4. Add Fake EC below to DSDT (my original DSDT did not have an EC and I read a Rehabman post suggesting that a Fake EC was required) (already done in the attached DSDT).
  5. Boot from USB Installer and permit Catalina installer to reboot twice
  6. After final reboot (before booting from the newly installed Catalina partition), change MacModel to MP5,1
  7. After booting the new Catalina installation, install Clover (Legacy) on the SSD and properly install kexts in /Library/Extensions
  8. Welcome to Catalina!

What's Not Working
  1. Wake from Sleep (S3). System sleeps normally and power LED flashes while sleeping, but waking (with keyboard or power button) causes system reboot. This is a problem that I was never able to resolve with High Sierra and Mojave and was a problem with an NVidia 9800GT, so it is not related to the RX580. Because of this, I have S1 enabled in BIOS (not S3).
Observations
  1. Overclocked CPU performance is outstanding. I didn't think the RX580 could make such a big difference in this old system - I stand very corrected. The first Unigine Heaven Benchmark screen shot (attached) is without CPU overclock. The second is with overclock. For some reason, the FPS between tests drops to a much lower value with CPU overclock than without. Each benchmark test does run faster and the pause between benchmark tests is noticeable with the overclocked CPU.
  2. I was expecting to see a black screen until macOS loaded, but the screen is "live" during the entire boot process, so apparently that old problem I read about has been fixed.
  3. Looks like the various reports I read claiming problems with socket 1156 / non-UEFI BIOS and the RX580 were not true or incorrectly installed.
  4. Forgive my terminology - I'm not a power supply expert... My Seasonic 750W Gold PSU is semi-modular. It has permanently connected 8-pin CPU, 8-pin PCI-e and 24-pin ATX motherboard power cables on one "rail" and a second modular "rail" for PCI-e and peripherals. If I connect the permanent CPU and PCI-e power cables to my motherboard and RX580 respectively, my USB keyboard "skips" characters. I resolved this by attaching a PCI-e power cable to one of the modular PSU ports on the second PSU rail and powering the RX580 from this second modular PCI-e power cable (leaving the permanent PCI-e power cable unconnected). It appears that the significant power drain of both the CPU and the RX580 on the same rail caused enough system noise to affect USB performance. Splitting the CPU and RX580 onto separate PSU rails fixed the problem. I did not have this problem when I was powering my old NVidia 9800GT card (lower power draw).

DSDT Edits
Code:
                Device (GFX0)
                {
                    Name (_ADR, Zero)  // _ADR: Address
                    Name (_SUN, One)  // _SUN: Slot User Number
                    Method (_DSM, 4, NotSerialized)  // _DSM: Device-Specific Method
                    {
                        If (LEqual (Arg2, Zero))
                        {
                            Return (Buffer ()
                            {
                                 0x03     
                            })
                        }

                        Return (Package ()
                        {
                            "name",
                            Buffer ()
                            {
                                "display"
                            },

                            "compatible",
                            Buffer ()
                            {
                                "pci1002,67DF"
                            },

                            "device-id",
                            Buffer ()
                            {
                                 0xDF, 0x67, 0x00, 0x00
                            }
                        })
                    }
                }

               // Scope _SB
               Device (EC)
              {
                  Name (_HID, "EC000000")  // _HID: Hardware ID
              }

Clover Configuration
  • Install Clover in the ESP
  • Boot Sectors
    • Install boot0af in MBR
  • Clover for BIOS (legacy) booting
    • Clover EFI 64-bits SATA
  • BIOS Drivers, 64-bit
    • Recommended drivers
      • FSInject
    • File System drivers
      • ApfsDriverLoader
  • Install RC scripts on target volume
  • Themes
    • Choose your desired theme
  • Install Clover Preference Pane
  • After clicking "Continue", if prompted with "This Clover package is incompatible with this version of macOS," install anyway

  • After CLOVER installation is complete
    • Copy the following from the attached TH55HD.zip
      • ACPI patched contents
      • config.plist (change *** MASKED *** values to your own)
      • kexts/Other (remove all other kext folders)
    • Remove christmas and new year folders from themes (if present)
 

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  • TH55HD_v4.zip
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Upgrading to Catalina 10.15.X from Mojave 10.14.6 or from Catalina 10.15.X-1 is easily achieved with a vanilla USB Installer that has the target version of Catalina.

Before you perform the upgrade, BACKUP the partition that you're upgrading.

After you create the vanilla USB installer, insert the USB installer and boot your hack from your boot drive (where your Clover config.plist specifies SMBIOS MacModel MacPro5,1). At the Clover launch screen, move the cursor to Options and change the Clover SMBIOS MacModel to MacPro6,1 (Catalina installer will not install on a MP5,1). Then select and launch the macOS installer on the USB. When the Catalina installer is loaded, select the target partition (with your old version of macOS) and start the install. The Catalina installer will upgrade the target partition while retaining all of your data/programs. If all partitions are grayed-out (unselectable), you forgot to change the MacModel to MP6,1.

Until the upgrade is complete, you will need to change the Clover SMBIOS MacModel to MacPro6,1 before launching the next phase of the Catalina installer (after each Catalina installer reboot). If you don't want to change the MacModel each time, install Clover on your USB installer and edit the config.plist on the USB (changing the MacModel to MP6,1). Then boot from the USB before each phase of the Catalina install.

After the upgrade process is complete, remove the USB and boot from your upgraded boot drive (with SMBIOS MacModel MacPro5,1). With the Clover boot flag -no_compat_check, Catalina will run fine on the MP5,1 after installation/upgrade.
 
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Overclocking the TH55HD Motherboard with Xeon X3460

My TH55HD with Xeon X3460 is running smoothly with no problems. Delidding the X3460 and applying my own thermal paste (AS5) has made a big difference in temps, but a key to stability was to choose the lower of the two QPI settings. My overclock-relevant attributes are defined as follows in BIOS:
  • BCLK (what my BIOS refers to as CPU CLK): 160 (up from 133)
  • DRAM Voltage: 1.630
  • CPU VCore: +.04
  • VTT: 1.210
  • VPLL: Auto
  • DRAM Timing: XMP-2 (8-8-8-24, 1.5V)
  • DRAM Command Rate: 2
  • QPI: 2560
  • PCIe Clock: Manual / 100
  • C3: ACPI C3
  • All CPU power savings features (e.g. SpeedStep) are ENABLED
Here's a good reference: https://www.masterslair.com/vcore-vtt-dram-pll-pch-voltages-explained-core-i7-i5-i3
 
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I'm afraid this thread is going to be boring. It just works - and works extremely well.
 
I upgraded to Catalina 10.15.3 and realized after that I did not have WhateverGreen.kext installed. It looks like WhateverGreen.kext is not required for this MBP5,1 with Sapphire Pulse RX580. There were some graphics artifacts during boot (and during install) that cleared themselves after the OS was fully loaded. I installed WhateverGreen.kext and it appears that these boot-time artifacts have been resolved. I am also running without Clover DSDT fix FixDisplay. As I suspected, this Clover FixDisplay fix is unnecessary since I manually patched my DSDT with a GFX0._DSM for the RX580.
 

Attachments

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As I was confirming proper installation/configuration of USB in Catalina 10.15.3, I used the USBMap tool to verify port mapping / power configuration. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Catalina's IOUSBHostFamily.kext still contains the required references to MacPro5,1, even though MacPro5,1 is not officially supported by Catalina.
 
EDIT: I figured out why audio quality is better and it has nothing to do with the upgrade to Catalina or the RX580 :). During installation of my RX580 video card, I rearranged cabling. I moved the audio cable (unshielded) from the rear PC audio jack to my speakers, so that it was no longer adjacent to the DVI video cables. The audio quality improvement is simply because I'm no longer getting cross-talk from video cables to the audio cable. If I restore the original position of the audio cable, audio quality is as before (still good, but not crystal clear).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Not sure how to explain this, but an unexpected and pleasant surprise is that the built-in audio (rear motherboard audio connector) is crystal clear. Audio was good when I was running Mojave / NVidia 9800GT, but now the audio quality is outstanding after upgrading to Catalina with the RX580. Just reporting an observation - no idea why this is the case. This may be the result of using the modular PCIe power cable as described earlier.
 
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I needed to boot High Sierra 10.13.6 and was pleasantly surprised to find that the Sapphire Pulse RX580 works perfectly in HS.
 
DELETED: I am now able to upgrade from 10.15.3 to 10.15.4 thanks to fix here.
 
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Hi, I have Mojave 10.14.6 installed on my Gigabyte G41M-Combo with Sapphire RX580 8GB Nitro running nicely.
After reading your upgrade path, I followed your instructions and managed to get to the installation screen of Catalina after the language selection part. The installation could not detect my Mojave HD for installation. Any idea what went wrong?
 
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