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[GUIDE]MSI Z170A Gaming M7, GTX970, Sierra Update (Including 17.1)

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Apr 15, 2013
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Motherboard
MSI Z170A Gaming M7
CPU
Intel Core I7 6700K
Graphics
MSI GTX 1070 Gaming X 8G
UPDATING YOUR CUSTOMAC TO SIERRA 10.12
Known Issues
Audio is really quiet - Fixed with Codec Commander
Audio is really quiet after waking from sleep - Tried a few fixes but none work, workaround is to just reboot or don't use sleep.
Power Button does not shut down/sleep the machine

Prerequisites:

1) A working Version of Mac OS on your machine

Before you begin
You should have a working Mac OS installation on your machine. I used El Capitan 10.11.6 which I cleaned installed using this amazing guide up to Step 4 then stop before you run MultiBeast.

Do not install any other Kexts or run any scripts on your El Cap install. The only exception to this is you can run MultiBeast and install the Atheros kext for your NIC if you don't have another machine with internet access. (I did this on my machine and it caused no issues)

Once you've got Mac OS El Cap running theres a few things we need to do in order to boot the Sierra update. This all needs to be done from inside El Capitan before you start the upgrade process.

1) Grab and Install the latest version of Clover (I'm using r3763)
1a) During the installation select Customize, untick the option Drivers64UEFI > OsXAptioFixDrv-64 and tick the option Drivers64UEFI > OsXAptioFix2Drv-64. Leave everything else as is.
2) Grab EFI Mounter v3 and mount the EFI partition of your Mac HDD.
3) Open the folders EFI > Clover
4) Rename the config.plist file to config.old
5) Replace the config.plist file with the one from this guide (config.plist-UEFI-Imac14,2.zip)
6) Open EFI > Clover > Kexts > Others
7) Inside this folder place a copy of AtherosE2200Ethernet.kext and FakeSMC.kext
6) Reboot your CustoMac

Now when you go to About This Mac > System Report it should show you as having an iMac 14,2.

Upgrading
Next we will run the update to Sierra 10.12.

1) Open the App Store
2) Search for Sierra
3) Click on macOS Sierra and select Download
4) Agree to all popups

Your download will now begin, go grab a coffee cause its a fairly large file.

5) When its finished run it an let it install, when prompted to reboot click OK
6) At the clover screen select Install macOS From "your drive name" then press space
7) Select (by scrolling to them with the arrow keys and using space to select) Force Injected Kexts, Verbose Mode and No Caches then go down to Boot With Select options and press Enter
*Note I had to repeat step 7 3 times before my machine actually booted into the update
8) Wait for the update to finish and reboot your CustoMac

Congratulations, you now have a working Sierra 10.12 install on your CustoMac.

Post Install
There are quite a few steps required to get your CustoMac working in a full state but nothing here is too hard. I will break them up into separate sections for ease.

Disabling SIP on your CustoMac (Do this first!)
It is required to disable SIP for a few steps later so I suggest you do it first.

1) Grab EFI Mounter v3 and mount the EFI partition of your Mac HDD
2) Open the folders EFI > Clover
3) Open config.plist in a text editor
4) Locate the section RT Variables and look for the section that says "csr-active-config 0x0"
5) Change "csr-active-config 0x0" to read "csr-active-config 0x67"
6) Save and reboot

The rest of this guide can be done without rebooting after each step

Installing/Enabling the Nvidia Web Driver
Follow this guide (no point repeating things that already exist)

Enabling Sound
This is where things got a little tricky but luckily Toleda helped me out and I got my sound working.

1) Grab EFI Mounter v3 and mount the EFI partition of your Mac HDD.
2) Grab Toledas Audio Install Script from his Github page (audio_cloverALC-120.command.zip)
3) Extract and run it, it will open in terminal
4) Leave everything it suggests as defaults and just agree to everything, it will patch a few files then report Process Completed Successfully.
5) Next grab a copy of Codec Commander from here (RehabMan-CodecCommander-2016-0721)
6) Extract it
7) Navigate to EFI > Clover > Kexts
8) Create a new folder called 10.12
9) Drag a copy of CodecCommander.kext into the 10.12 folder

These next steps are not strictly for sound but are necessary so you may as well do them now while your here

10) Open the Other folder
11) Cut all the kexts from this folder
12) Go back to the 10.12 folder and paste the kexts

Enabling the iMac 17,1 Skylake System Definition
This is the final step on your custom journey, its not necessarily required but its good to have your CustoMac showing as a Skylake system instead of a Haswell one.

Please note that performing this step will require that you repeat it every time a new update is released as the files which are patched get replaced during system upgrades.

YOU CAN SAFELY IGNORE THIS STEP IF YOU DON'T WANT THE EXTRA HASSLE, IT WILL HAVE NO NEGATIVE IMPACT ON YOUR CUSTOMAC!!!

!) Grab a copy a AGDPfix from here (AGDPfix.v1.3.zip)
2) Run it and agree
3) It will seems as though it has crashed but it hasn't, just wait about a minute until it says it has finished
4) If needed mount your EFI partition (you've done it enough times now)
5) Grab Clover Configurator Vibrant (note Clover Configurators EFI mounting is broken under Sierra)
6) Run Clover Configurator then click the open button (its at the bottom and looks like a file with an arrow pointing right)
7) Navigate to EFI > Clover and select config.plist then click Open
8) Select the SMBIOS tab
9) Click the magic wand button
10) Select Imac then from the top drop down list select iMac 17,1
11) Click both shake buttons a few times to generate a serial number
12) Save (its at the bottom next to open) and ignore any warning about the changes being unrecoverable


FINALLY REBOOT AND YOU SHOULD NOW HAVE A 100% WORKING SIERRA CUSTOMAC INSTALL

Last Thing, Reenabling SIP

To finish we will enable SIP to custom mode so it still allows your patched kexts to work.

1) Mount the EFI partition
2) Open the folders EFI > Clover
3) Open config.plist in a text editor
4) Locate the section RT Variables and look for the section that says "csr-active-config 0x67"
5) Change "csr-active-config 0x67" to read "csr-active-config 0x3"
6) Save and reboot

And that's it folks.
 
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Nice guide. But are you sure that the power button isn't working? Because just pressing actually is supposed to do nothing.
But is Clover Configurator's EFI partition mounting really broken? Maybe I've been doing something wrong, but it has worked very well for me on Sierra.
Also, I have an MSI Z170 GAMING M5, but can't boot with CSR 0x3. I get an OsxAptioFixDrv error and OsxAptioFix2Drv doesn't work at all.
 
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Nice guide. But are you sure that the power button isn't working? Because just pressing actually is supposed to do nothing.
But is Clover Configurator's EFI partition mounting really broken? Maybe I've been doing something wrong, but it has worked very well for me on Sierra.
Also, I have an MSI Z170 GAMING M5, but can't boot with CSR 0x3. I get an OsxAptioFixDrv error and OsxAptioFix2Drv doesn't work at all.

Interesting about the power button, thanks.

As for your boot issue, I've spoken to people with MSI Z97 GAMING boards who swear you don't need to change the boot driver but on my M7 if i don't change it I just get the prohibited sign at boot. I really can't offer any more insight than that though.
 
Sorry for my extreme ignorance but what do you mean by "change the boot driver"? I get the same hang that Twixes is describing and when I try to install El Cap I get the prohibited sign. I have tried changing my csr as per other threads and I have tried the different osxaptiofixes. Thanks in advance!
 
can any one help me I'm on MacOS 10.12.4 and get this error when trying to install
audio_cloverALC-120.command.zip

error:
File: audio_cloverALC-120.command_v1.0d

Release Mode

Password:

EFI partition is mounted

System Integrity Protection status: disabled.


OK to patch

Error: no IOReg/HDEF; BIOS/audio/disabled or ACPI problem

No system files were changed

To save a Copy of this Terminal session: Terminal/Shell/Export Text As ...

logout

Saving session...

...copying shared history...

...saving history...truncating history files...

...completed.


[Process completed]

No audio codec detected
 
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Error: no IOReg/HDEF; BIOS/audio/disabled or ACPI problem

Missing HDAS to HDEF rename patch
Install MultiBeast > Drivers > Audio > Realtek ALCxxx > 100 Series Audio
 
Missing HDAS to HDEF rename patch
Install MultiBeast > Drivers > Audio > Realtek ALCxxx > 100 Series Audio
thanks i got it working in the end. but thanks any way for the answer
 
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