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[Guide] Intel Skylake NUC6 (and Skull Canyon) using Clover UEFI (NUC6i5SYK, NUC6i7KYK, etc)

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RehabMan, thanks for all your hard work on this guide and support files!

I've been running the NUC6i7kyk on some of the HS betas and now the final release (17A365) and I'm pretty happy with it.

The machine is a little noisy, but after modifying the fan settings in the BIOS it's much more manageable. I'm planning on repasting the CPU/iGPU with Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut soon, which others have reported can drop temps by as much as 10C (and thus further reduce noise).

The following is a list of things I can confirm working:
  • Triple displays, using HDMI 2.0, mDP, and USB-C DP.
    • HDMI seems to be the most sensitive of the three: if booted with a display plugged in, I can then hot-plug. However if the display was not plugged in on boot, hot-plug is not assured. Hot-plug with (m)DP works great.
    • I am using the recommended iMac14,2 SMBIOS setting.
    • I do not have to set the primary display to anything in particular in the NUC BIOS: I just set it to my middle display for convenience as the two side displays are in portrait mode (90deg rotated); having them light up in the BIOS means I have to turn my head 90deg. ;-)
    • My displays are: 1920x1200 (USB-C DP; 90deg rotation), 2560x1440 (DP), 3840x2160 (HDMI; 90 deg rotation)
    • MacOS correctly detects the 4K display and allows me to select from a variety of scaling modes: I'm using it as a "1080p retina display" with similar screen real-estate as the 1920x1200 display opposite.
    • I am using this USB-C to DP adapter purchased on eBay, though I suspect any that work with a MacBook Pro 2016/2017 will work here also. I can confirm that it works with the 4K display at 60Hz.
  • 4K display using either (m)DP or HDMI 2.0 works. I have tested with the Dell P2415Q, with HDMI 2.0 support enabled.
    • I do get some random <1sec blanks on HDMI: I think this is simply my low-quality HDMI cable that is susceptible to noise and I'm pretty sure replacing it with a higher quality cable will fix that in the long run.
  • NVMe SSD (Samsung 960 EVO) with no kext patching on HS (trim is enabled by default)
  • FileVault 2 on APFS
    • In order to get this working, I need to manually add the UsbKbDxe-64.efi and UsbMouseDxe-64.efi drivers in my CLOVER/driverst64EUFI folder on my EFI partition. I got them from the Clover ISO: after downloading, unpack the LZMA file using tar -Jxvf CloverISO-4220.tar.lzma then mount the ISO file by opening it in Finder.
    • I also added the apfs.efi driver obtained from the MacOS installer app bundle: "Install macOS High Sierra.app/Contents/SharedSupport/BaseSystem.dmg:usr/standalone/i386/apfs.efi".
    • I haven't tried using a bluetooth keyboard/mouse for the password entry: it will certainly need different EFI drivers, but I am using a cheap $3 CSR-based bluetooth USB adapter that is conveniently plugged into the USB port on my Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad. I have a BCM20702-based one coming soon that I might try instead.
    • One caveat: After a fresh install, I had to let the "encrypt" process complete before rebooting the machine: if I did not do this, the machine wouldn't boot again; Clover would not see the boot drive and booting into recovery left the volume in the encrypting "pause" state without any progress. The encryption process took about 3 days in total for a 1TB NVMe SSD! During that process, I had to disable (display) sleep to ensure progress. Using Caffeine might be easier next time.
  • Thunderbolt peripherals
    • Using Apple's "Thunderbolt 3 to 2" adapter, I could get a second ethernet port working with an old Apple Thunderbolt 2 Ethernet adapter. I don't have any "pure" thunderbolt 3 peripherals to work with, though I'd be surprised if they did not work too.
    • I made sure to first update the thunderbolt firmware using Intel's update under Windows. I also set the thunderbolt security mode to "legacy" in the BIOS. (I'm not sure either of these two steps are mandatory, as I didn't test it without them, but I would highly recommend keeping the thunderbolt firmware fresh after reading about thunderbolt support under Windows in general.)
  • Screen Share (server) from a MacBook Pro (client) worked fine without either end crashing
  • Docker supported after enabling VT-d
    • Docker for Mac worked for me only after enabling VT-d in the BIOS and setting the dart=1 kernel parameter in Clover. I followed RehabMan's guide by setting dart=0 during installation only.
RehabMan, please update your guide with the above as you see fit: I'm happy to provide further details as needed.

One more thing... I initially had two M.2 NVMe sticks and had planned on using AppleRAID. Unfortunately Apple stopped supporting installations to a RAID device with 10.13. Nevertheless I did get it working but only with AppleRAID JHFS+: this was done by installing the OS to one stick, backing it up to an external drive, setting up RAID 0 ("stripe") on both M.2 sticks, then restoring from backup. I had to ensure the EFI volume (with Clover) was present and having the same contents on both drives. The machine booted 10.13 just fine, and speeds were improved: writes weren't quite 2X but close to it; reads did not benefit much at all (surprising!). I did the same with APFS but I could not get it to start up: after booting, at the Apple logo, the machine would restart before the macOS login screen. I also tried AppleRAID JHFS+ with FileVault2 but that didn't work: it's either RAID or encryption, but not both.

I'm now running on one M.2 NVMe stick (encrypted APFS) with one slot free. Hopefully when APFS fusion drives are supported in a future release, RAID become supported once again. There are several Mac Pro and Mac Mini owners who are pining for support.
 
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I'm planning on repasting the CPU/iGPU with Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut soon, which others have reported can drop temps by as much as 10C (and thus further reduce noise).

Thanks for the tip... I may do the same.

Triple displays, using HDMI 2.0, mDP, and USB-C DP.

Nice setup.

NVMe SSD (Samsung 960 EVO) with no kext patching on HS (trim is enabled by default)

Any problems with slow boot with APFS?
(trim, which is default with NVMe, is proving to cause slow boot [fsck or equivalent running each boot])

I made sure to first update the thunderbolt firmware using Intel's update under Windows. I also set the thunderbolt security mode to "legacy" in the BIOS.

Thanks for the tip. I'll be sure to update and test BIOS settings if I ever get real TB devices.

Docker supported after enabling VT-d
Docker for Mac worked for me only after enabling VT-d in the BIOS and setting the dart=1 kernel parameter in Clover. I followed RehabMan's guide by setting dart=0 during installation only.

You find any documentation on the dart kernel flag?
 
Everything's working perfectly for me, thanks Rehabman. I've got nvme drive - it was very slow on initial startup but after a couple of reboots no issues.
There are some warning messages popping up before the Clover menu. I presume they are not cause for concern? I have no idea what they mean!
what's your nvme drive? Could you kindly share your EFI folder to me?
 
Could you kindly share your EFI folder to me?

If you read post #1, you will discover how to install and create your own EFI/Clover.
 
Rehabman, could you please clarify for me the setup wrt NVMe drives. My read/write speeds have definitely taken a hit. At the moment I am running without the trim patch in config.plist, and with sudo trimforce disabled and an APFS formatted intel SSD. I notice under About This Mac > System Report > NVMExpress it says 'TRIM Support: YES'. Do you recommend fresh install on JHFS+ system to improve speeds?
 
Hello, RehabMan.
I installed MacOS 12.6 on Skull Canyon according to your tutorial, but it has some problems.
1: wake up after sleep screen will flash, (hibernation disabled).
2: Play the movie with Quicktime player for a few seconds The screen will be black and light up after a few seconds.
I am sure that it is installed according to your tutorial, but I can not find a solution to the problem. Uh ... thank you, forgive my English very bad, had to help with Google ...
 
At this point I am trying to install Os X11.6 capitan. I hope to be good, I need to use Os X to study and work, whining ... ...
 
Hello, RehabMan.
I installed MacOS 12.6 on Skull Canyon according to your tutorial, but it has some problems.
1: wake up after sleep screen will flash, (hibernation disabled).
2: Play the movie with Quicktime player for a few seconds The screen will be black and light up after a few seconds.
I am sure that it is installed according to your tutorial, but I can not find a solution to the problem. Uh ... thank you, forgive my English very bad, had to help with Google ...

Read post #1, "Problem Reporting".
 
Did a fresh install of High Sierra. System running well enough, but boot times using APFS have taken a serious hit (currently reaching 40+ seconds). In-system read/write tests show normal disk performance, so issue is purely on boot.

Using Samsung EVO 960 Pro.

Tried disabling TRIM to no effect.

All problem reporting files attached. Screenshot of disk speed test also attached.

Thanks.
 

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Did a fresh install of High Sierra. System running well enough, but boot times using APFS have taken a serious hit (currently reaching 40+ seconds). In-system read/write tests show normal disk performance, so issue is purely on boot.

Using Samsung EVO 960 Pro.

Tried disabling TRIM to no effect.

All problem reporting files attached. Screenshot of disk speed test also attached.

Thanks.

You cannot disable TRIM with NVMe.
Install to HFS+J instead of APFS and your problem will be solved.
 
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