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Gobias’s Comet Lake Build: Prime Z490-A - i7-10700K - RX 6600 - macOS Ventura & Windows 11 Pro

Thanks for this guide. Now that the 4090 came out, think I'm gonna "retire" my Z490P/10900K/3080 machine to serve as my studio Hackintosh to replace the aging but venerable 2009 Mac Pro. I just don't have it "in me" to flash its firmware and upgrade its OS from one obsolete macOS version to another—what's the point? It's still happily still running 10.8, and aside from not recognizing HDR images/videos, HEIC, etc. it's literally perfect.

I mean, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But after those plastic things broke that were holding my heat sinks to the board, and I replaced them with metal screws, I've had a sinking feeling that it was plastic for a reason. Anyway, hence the Hackintosh.

Typically with my Hackintoshes, I get them up and running and then never touch the OS again. What's the point? Our days of having Intel-supported versions of MacOS are limited anyway, but I can tell you I feel pretty stupid for buying an M1 Mac—yeah the 3 programs that are native for it, run extremely well, and it gets great battery life. But by the time that a decent amount of software is natively available for it, the M2 will already be out. I guess that's the price of being an early adopter.

Think I should sell it, but I like to keep a current-era laptop for development and to have the latest OS.
 
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Thanks for this guide. Now that the 4090 came out, think I'm gonna "retire" my Z490P/10900K/3080 machine to serve as my studio Hackintosh to replace the aging but venerable 2009 Mac Pro. I just don't have it "in me" to flash its firmware and upgrade its OS from one obsolete macOS version to another—what's the point? It's still happily still running 10.8, and aside from not recognizing HDR images/videos, HEIC, etc. it's literally perfect.

I mean, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But after those plastic things broke that were holding my heat sinks to the board, and I replaced them with metal screws, I've had a sinking feeling that it was plastic for a reason. Anyway, hence the Hackintosh.

Typically with my Hackintoshes, I get them up and running and then never touch the OS again. What's the point? Our days of having Intel-supported versions of MacOS are limited anyway, but I can tell you I feel pretty stupid for buying an M1 Mac—yeah the 3 programs that are native for it, run extremely well, and it gets great battery life. But by the time that a decent amount of software is natively available for it, the M2 will already be out. I guess that's the price of being an early adopter.

Think I should sell it, but I like to keep a current-era laptop for development and to have the latest OS.
My work computer is an M1 MacBook Pro, and it runs circles around my personal 2017 Intel MacBook Pro, which is basically a toaster with a 2–3 hour battery life at this point. Even my old Haswell hackintosh ran better than my MBP (until the motherboard died last year). I get what you're saying about native app support, though. I've been holding off getting a new MBP until I really feel like I need one, by which point there will hopefully be more native apps.
 

Update 17: Windows 10 Pro, Windows 11, and BitLocker

Background

After setting up UEFI Secure Boot and OpenCore Vault, I wanted to set up Windows Device Encryption. Device Encryption is a more limited version of BitLocker only in Windows Home Edition. Unfortunately, Device Encryption wasn’t even appearing in the Settings app, so I decided to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro to use BitLocker instead.

Windows 10 Pro

I upgraded from Windows 10 Home to Pro using the Windows 10 Pro OEM key from my old build:
  1. Go to Settings > Update & Security > Activation.
  2. Turn off your internet connection to go offline.
  3. Under Upgrade your edition of Windows in Settings, click Change product key
  4. Enter the official Microsoft RTM code VK7JG-NPHTM-C97JM-9MPGT-3V66T and click Next (you can’t activate with this license, it will simply trigger a move to Pro)
  5. Click Start to confirm. Once complete, your PC should reboot automatically.
  6. Reboot a second time manually to ensure the process has been completed.
  7. Turn on your internet connection again.
  8. Go back to Change product key within Settings and enter the Windows 10 Pro OEM key to activate the license.

Windows 11

Since the Windows 11 22H2 update had just been released, I also decided to finally upgrade to Windows 11 from Settings > Windows Update.

A quick note about Windows 11 and UEFI Secure Boot: For a while, I had been under the impression that UEFI Secure Boot needed to be enabled to upgrade to Windows 11 because many articles stated this. However, this is incorrect. TPM 2.0 does need to be enabled (see Update 15 for instructions on how to enable TPM 2.0 on the Asus Prime Z490-A), but your motherboard only needs to support UEFI Secure Boot. It doesn't need to be enabled.

Windows 11 Pro System Info.png


BitLocker

After I finished upgrading Windows, I was able to enable BitLocker for my Windows drive and BitLocker To Go for my external Windows backup drive by going to Control Panel > System and Security > BitLocker Drive Encryption.

BitLocker Recovery

There are a lot of things that can cause BitLocker to enter recovery mode and require you to enter your recovery key to unlock your Windows drive. One time, after booting from a dummy drive to test some OpenCore changes, I triggered recovery mode when I tried to boot Windows again. I thought this might be a consistent problem, and I might need to suspend BitLocker when I need to boot from my dummy drive. Thankfully though, booting from my dummy drive hasn't triggered Recovery Mode since that one time. Hopefully, it won't be a problem in the future.
 

Update 18: Boot Chime and macOS 12.6.1

Boot Chime

I followed the OpenCore Post-Install Guide to set up OpenCore’s boot chime. These are the settings I used to enable the boot-chime for the green rear audio port on my motherboard:
  • In config.plist, under UEFI -> Audio
    • Set AudioCodec to 0x0
    • Set AudioDevice to PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1F,0x3)
    • Set AudioOutMask to 1
      • This AudioOutMask value only enables the green rear audio port. If you want to use a different port or a combination of ports, you’ll need to follow the Post-Install Guide to determine the correct value to use.

macOS 12.6.1

I also updated macOS from 12.6 to 12.6.1 using System Preferences without any issues. I’m going to wait until at least macOS 13.1 is released before I update to Ventura.

Screenshot of About This Mac showing that macOS has been updated to 12.6.1
Screenshot of Neofetch showing that macOS has been updated to 12.6.1.png
 
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Just made an update with OC 0.8.6 to MacOS 13.0.1 with the same config as you, except for the GC (Vega 64). The update took about 20 minutes with no issue.
Hi
/System/Library/Extensions/IONetworkingFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleIntelI210Ethernet.kext is missing. How do you surf over the internet with Ventura ?
Do you have any trick ?
Thanks for your answer :)
@Gobias, Many thanks for your beautiful work and explanation. Monterey to Ventura update works even on with your last updated config with OC 0.8.5.
I need to change may sign. I own a RX 6900 XT now, and it works without any modification to your files.
Cheers!
 
Hi
/System/Library/Extensions/IONetworkingFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleIntelI210Ethernet.kext is missing. How do you surf over the internet with Ventura ?
Do you have any trick ?
Jumping in here because I had to work through the combinations of options:

The use of the older AppleIntelI210Ethernet.kext is one of at least three ways for handling i225v in Ventura and is not always required.

As of Monterey, if the i225v is a late rev (3, I think) with a proper device ID in HW, enabling AppleVTD allows the ethernet to work natively.

So it's possible in this case that the build was working in Monterey and the upgrade to Ventura required no attention to ethernet.

Injecting AppleIntelI210Ethernet.kext is best when old controller and can't upgrade firmware, or as a quick fix for Ventura which might not work in future.
 
Jumping in here because I had to work through the combinations of options:

The use of the older AppleIntelI210Ethernet.kext is one of at least three ways for handling i225v in Ventura and is not always required.

As of Monterey, if the i225v is a late rev (3, I think) with a proper device ID in HW, enabling AppleVTD allows the ethernet to work natively.

So it's possible in this case that the build was working in Monterey and the upgrade to Ventura required no attention to ethernet.

Injecting AppleIntelI210Ethernet.kext is best when old controller and can't upgrade firmware, or as a quick fix for Ventura which might not work in future.
Thanks for your kind reply.
I don not know about different revision of ASUS prime z490-A discussing here nor on ASUS website. I do not know which Ethernet hardware revision it comes with. I will investigate in next days.
Maybe @1sword got the answer already.
I will report back soon anyway
Cheers
 
Thanks for your kind reply.
I don not know about different revision of ASUS prime z490-A discussing here nor on ASUS website. I do not know which Ethernet hardware revision it comes with. I will investigate in next days.
Maybe @1sword got the answer already.
I will report back soon anyway
Cheers
You can find the revision under Hardware > Ethernet in System Information. In the screenshot, you can see that I have revision 2. I haven't updated to Ventura yet, though.

Revision ID.png
 
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You can find the revision under Hardware > Ethernet in System Information. In the screenshot, you can see that I have revision 2. I haven't updated to Ventura yet, though.

View attachment 559790
Yep! Same version here.
Eth.png

ID: 0x15f2 stand for I225-LM while 0x15f3 stand for I255-V, but I could be wrong. :)
On the "paper" manual of the board I can read I255-V. Is it spoofed somehow?
WARNING WARNING WARNING
Anyway, thanks to @c-o-pr , enabling Vt-d (and reset NVRAM) did the trick. Ethernet adapter works out of the box without playing with DMAR or other .aml stuff (at the moment).
Also, e1000=0 deleted from boot args.

WARNING WARNING WARNING
I am not be able to boot Windows anymore. It works, but the screen goes black after the Windows boot screen. If I unplug and plug the monitor cable, I can see Windows perfectly fine for few seconds, then black again.

At the moment:
Clean NVRAM : no go
Boot directly from win boot loader : no go
Reset CMOS : no go
Disable Vt-d : no go
Refresh BIOS : no go
Format/reinstall : no go
Change port from DP to HDMI : no go
Change monitor : no go
(I can follow all the procedure on screen, but when it reach the desktop for the very first time, I get the black screen).
Ventura works like a charm …
Still investigating …

WARNING WARNING WARNING

@Gobias in your latest (super cool) EFI folder posted (OpenCore 0.8.5) you have left log activities enabled.
You will not saturate your 200MB EFI partition soon, but it was happened to me on my last 3 year old build.

Again, many many thanks for your work !

Cheers!

----------------- win 11 black screen on boot momentary solution found -----------------
Oh guys ! Never happened in 30 years of smashing computers !
It was the monitor. It needs to be reinizialized. Unplug and plug the video cable again do not work. Push power button off and on do the trick.
Ventura works without any issue. When I need windows I have to power off the monitor and power on again to see the login screen (already reached but in total black color).
Still investigating ....
 
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