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

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I did, no dice. I have tried the advice on the various threads about dual monitors on the intel 520 graphics and basically can only get it to boot with one monitor connected and then plug in the second while at desktop. Figured i would check in the specific nuc6 thread and see if anybody has gotten it to work.

My next attempt is to use a usb3 evga adapter i have for the second monitor.
 
kungpoo said:
Just followed the guide for a Skull Canyon with a Samsung 960 Evo and it's working brilliantly, thanks RehabMan! Do you accept donations or anything like that? I don't have much to send but I'd like to give something back if possible. I feel like the scripts alone have saved me hours of likely frustration.
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Are you using NVMe with APFS? I havent jumped the gun yet, worried about others reporting very long load time from boot. thanks!
 
Build 1
GA-Z87MX-D3H |  i3 4330 |  HD 4600
Sorry for sort of hijacking the thread, if I could have messaged specific users I would have done (specifically @diskdude), but I'm halfway through replacing the awful stock paste on the Skull Canyon with liquid metal as mentioned earlier in the thread, and noticed that there is a recess/hole in the heating block that sits above the CPU.

Stock Paste
QAPtCXq.jpg

wOKar0I.jpg


Given that you're supposed to spread an extremely thin layer of liquid metal paste on the surfaces, and that it never really solidifies, is it a good candidate for this product? I can't imagine it will 'fill' that hole?

Thanks
 
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Also (I'm still cleaning it) assuming(?) the frame around the edge is aluminium it would get corroded by any liquid metal that came into contact with it. You could cover it in tape but then it would raise the heatsink higher off the CPU.

bDHAMZ4.jpg
 
kaabob said:
Are you using NVMe with APFS? I havent jumped the gun yet, worried about others reporting very long load time from boot. thanks!
Click to expand...

I stuck with HFS+ for now so can't comment on APFS boot times yet
 
In conclusion to my thermal paste questions above, I would not recommend using Liquid Metal in the Skull Canyon. Intel has confirmed that there are aluminium components under the heatsink and the gallium in the paste will obliterate any that it touches. Apologies for the disruption to the thread, happy hackintoshing :) Cheers
 
diskdude said:
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.
Click to expand...

External HDDs work when plugged in when powering on the NUC as long as legacy mode for thunderbolt is enabled. Just plug any device in while the NUC is still powered down, start MacOS and reboot. After this the device will work (Ethernet card, Thunderbolt 2 Belkin Dock etc..). The idea of getting an eGPU Thunderbolt enclosure is starting to look very interesting now, if only the proper initialisation of the Thunderbolt chip(s) could be done before the OS actually boots.
 
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kungpoo said:
In conclusion to my thermal paste questions above, I would not recommend using Liquid Metal in the Skull Canyon. Intel has confirmed that there are aluminium components under the heatsink and the gallium in the paste will obliterate any that it touches. Apologies for the disruption to the thread, happy hackintoshing :) Cheers
Click to expand...

E.g. Arctic Silver is safe. Assuming that all liquid metal based pasted contain gallium is a bit overkill.
 
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