[Guide] Razer Blade 15 (2018) Detailed Install Guide High Sierra 10.13.6 (17G2208-17G5019)

[Mr.Crab]

Hey.. figured out what was wrong that wasn’t making it boot before and am in the middle of installation right now. Once I have it running I’ll update it with your EFI.. Btw, are you still using 15,1 for moved to 15,2 to get the External display working?

edit: just checked that you’re still using 15,1 hmmm did the external display work for you on it ?

It works just fine when dGPU is not disabled. I mean, when I’m using external display I have laptop plugged in, so it’s ok.

 

[veterantroller]

It works just fine when dGPU is not disabled. I mean, when I’m using external display I have laptop plugged in, so it’s ok.

For some reason.. I am not able to get 4k 60Hz from my USB C to HDMI cable. I first thought it could be due to my cable but the same cable works fine with 4k 60HZ on my Windows side (confirmed its the Intel Graphics card that's powering it). Not sure how to troubleshoot this one..

 

[veterantroller]

That's what I was thinking.

Going through efi drivers I noticed some things:
- FwRuntimeServices.efi as far as I can tell is only for OC, so I removed it
- OpenRuntime.efi was missing

So after that my system still boots but there are notices/errors when clover loads:

OCS: No schema for ProtectCsmResion at 7 index!
OCS: No schema for ShrinkMemoryMap at 9 index!

I couldn't find out if that is important or how to fix it. It might be because OcQuirks is still work in progress but I don't know. So I reverted back to aptiomemoryfix but no change.

Next thing was going back to EmuVariableUefi and removing SSDT-PMC. That also worked and I didn't notice anything different and the gpu is still running.

Also tried nv_disable=1 which didn't seem to do anything.

So I looked through clover config and found NvidiaSingle. There almost no documentation on it other than this thread and it doesn't sound like it's needed, so I removed it.

Just as a sanity check I reverted back to my old clover folder and my dgpu was indeed disabled. At this point my guess is that there is something in your clover config that prevents the gpu from being disabled or there is something in my old config that allows it to be. Can't tell which it is. I'll continue looking through my config but I'll post this now and attach my old (working) config.

Edit: So the thing that was missing was AutoMerge in clover. Now the gpu is disabled but no more video through usb-c for some reason. At least there is progress haha.

Edit2: Okay so I got it working. What did the trick was going back to the 15,2 smbios. Now disabling my dgpu also works with -wegnoegpu and SSDT-dGPU-Off. Using the 15,2 definition fixes the usb-c video issue so that might be worth a try for you OC guys. Now I don't know if the issue was that I didn't regenerate my serial number and even using your 15,1 definition it was still showing up as a 13" laptop. I might try to regenerate serial numbers and give 15,1 another go but so far things seem to be working as is.

The errors I mentioned before regarding OCQuirks were there because I used the latest version with your plist file and those keys seem to be deprecated.

Edit3: Also had to add slide=0 back in because I was getting the "Couldn't allocate runtime area" error. I'll post my clover folder when I finish testing.

Edit4: I think the framebuffer patches are needed after all. If you don't use them the igpu shows up with about 1,5gb of vram and with the framebuffer patches it's got 2560mb. Not sure what else is different but I'd imagine it's got better support in things like final cut. So it is indeed doing something to correctly identify the igpu and should be included in the config.

I am at this stage as well in my build in OC... were you able to fix the issue where USB-C video does not work in 15,1 setup? - I am willing to go back to 15,2 If I can fix the video out because it is not running 4k 60Hz for some reason (confirmed cable works in Windows on intel)... Can you show how did you patch the frame buffer for UHD630? maybe increasing to 2500mb help fix the glitching external display at 4k 60hz.

 

[takki]

I am at this stage as well in my build in OC... were you able to fix the issue where USB-C video does not work in 15,1 setup? - I am willing to go back to 15,2 If I can fix the video out because it is not running 4k 60Hz for some reason (confirmed cable works in Windows on intel)... Can you show how did you patch the frame buffer for UHD630? maybe increasing to 2500mb help fix the glitching external display at 4k 60hz.

I'm just using 15,2 for the time being. I don't experience any problems as far as I can tell other than about this mac showing me a 13" laptop. 15,1 would be better probably but no video out is a dealbreaker for me.

4K 60hz will not work even on 15,2 I'm afraid. Probably for the same reason why @Mr.Crab and me can't use 1080p@144hz / 1440p@144hz. Not sure if this is fixable. I could be wrong but it seems like some kind of bandwidth issue. I haven't looked into this recently though.

 

[veterantroller]

I'm just using 15,2 for the time being. I don't experience any problems as far as I can tell other than about this mac showing me a 13" laptop. 15,1 would be better probably but no video out is a dealbreaker for me.

4K 60hz will not work even on 15,2 I'm afraid. Probably for the same reason why @Mr.Crab and me can't use 1080p@144hz / 1440p@144hz. Not sure if this is fixable. I could be wrong but it seems like some kind of bandwidth issue. I haven't looked into this recently though.

4k 60hz not working on Catalina is an extreme bummer..wow I guess I wasted 20 bucks getting a USB C to HDMI and moving from High Sierra for nothing.. I was actually in mid-way moving to Clover thinking that could have helped me but I guess its futile now.

 

[takki]

4k 60hz not working on Catalina is an extreme bummer..wow I guess I wasted 20 bucks getting a USB C to HDMI and moving from High Sierra for nothing.. I was actually in mid-way moving to Clover thinking that could have helped me but I guess its futile now.

4k@30hz might work, but again, I don't have a 4k monitor. This is just what I picked up, best way is to just try it. I did some googling just now and we might be able to push resolutions and refresh rates if we increase DVMT prealloc to 128mb. Right now it tops out at 64mb so further bios modding would be required. See this issue on github.

Edit: Just tried the sleep trick mentioned in that issue and it works lol. At least for higher refresh rates.

1. Choose a resolution that usually gets you a black screen (1440p@144hz for me)
2. Click Apple Logo -> Sleep
3. Wait for the sleep indicator to turn white
4. Wake the Laptop back up (guide says to push the power button, that's what I did)

You'll have to do it again after rebooting but better than nothing.

 

[veterantroller]

4k@30hz might work, but again, I don't have a 4k monitor. This is just what I picked up, best way is to just try it. I did some googling just now and we might be able to push resolutions and refresh rates if we increase DVMT prealloc to 128mb. Right now it tops out at 64mb so further bios modding would be required. See this issue on github.

Edit: Just tried the sleep trick mentioned in that issue and it works lol. At least for higher refresh rates.

1. Choose a resolution that usually gets you a black screen (1440p@144hz for me)
2. Click Apple Logo -> Sleep
3. Wait for the sleep indicator to turn white
4. Wake the Laptop back up (guide says to push the power button, that's what I did)

You'll have to do it again after rebooting but better than nothing.

what the actual f.. that worked for me too hahahaha man you saved my day! this is so weird why it works like that.

hmmm.. now it only seems like audio over HDMI is missing. That's functional for you right?

 

[takki]

what the actual f.. that worked for me too hahahaha man you saved my day! this is so weird why it works like that.

hmmm.. now it only seems like audio over HDMI is missing. That's functional for you right?

Super weird yeah are you on 15,1 or 15,2?

Audio over usbc (I'm using usbc to display port) never worked for me no.

 

[veterantroller]

Super weird yeah are you on 15,1 or 15,2?

Audio over usbc (I'm using usbc to display port) never worked for me no.

I’m currently on 15,2 .. I was not able to get the display out working at all on 15,1.
Oh well.. can’t achieve all in 1 day I guess.. next tasks would be to rebuild the install USB for OpenCore Catalina.. because my stupid self formatted it for Clover and then continue troubleshooting why 60hz works only after the sleep is done + Audio.

 

[Mr.Crab]

4k@30hz might work, but again, I don't have a 4k monitor. This is just what I picked up, best way is to just try it. I did some googling just now and we might be able to push resolutions and refresh rates if we increase DVMT prealloc to 128mb. Right now it tops out at 64mb so further bios modding would be required. See this issue on github.

Edit: Just tried the sleep trick mentioned in that issue and it works lol. At least for higher refresh rates.

1. Choose a resolution that usually gets you a black screen (1440p@144hz for me)
2. Click Apple Logo -> Sleep
3. Wait for the sleep indicator to turn white
4. Wake the Laptop back up (guide says to push the power button, that's what I did)

You'll have to do it again after rebooting but better than nothing.

This trick doesn’t work for me unfortunately, the display is not working at all after sleep, even if I replug usb-c. Sad.
Thought it was because of 15,1 maybe, but it was't, same on 15,2. Btw, while I was on 15,2 I've compared performance via intel power gadget graphs while doing geekbench5 cpu test - max power and utilization are the same but, max frequency is not, on 15,1 it hits 4.1 ghz while on 15,2 it hits 3,2 ghz at most. One more interesting fact, brightness control for build-in display is way better on 15,2 than it is on 15,1.