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pastrychef's Asus ROG Strix Z370-G Gaming (WI-FI AC) build w/ i9-9900K + AMD 6600 XT

I have mostly finished putting together my successful Hackintosh based on PastryChef’s build and offer a few notes and a photo:

• I used Asus ROG Strix Z370-G as he did.
• Intel Core i7-8700 Coffee Lake 6-Core 3.2 GHz (4.6 GHz Turbo) LGA 1151 (300 Series) 65W.
• 32 GB CRUCIAL RAM as 4x 8 2133MHz unbuffered and non-ECC DDR4 DIMM
• SeaSonic Platinum Series SS-400FL2 Active PFC F3 400W ATX12V Fanless 80 PLUS Platinum Certified (I will be upgrading this later to a 600 watt similar model to support video cards 500 w. power demands.)
• Case fan: Noctua NF-A12x25 120mm Fan
• CPU fan : Noctua NH-U9S, Premium CPU Cooler with NF-A9 92mm Fan (Brown)
• GPU: Sapphire Radeon NITRO+ RX 580 8GB Graphics Card running over HDMI
• Fractal Design Core 1000 Black MATX Mini Tower.
• 3 500GB Samsung EVO 850 Sata drives.

My intention was to replace my old, huge CoolerMaster ATX full size Hackintosh with a smaller, more up-to-date rig. At the same time I moved from El Capitan to Mojave 10.4.3. My install went normally (a few issues but that is normal for Hackintoshing.) It was ESSENTIAL to uSE PASTRYCHEF’S MOJAVE EFI FOLDER. I could not get a reliable boot with the EFI that uniBeast/multibeast had created. I replaced it using the EFI Pastrychef created. This was a lifesaver.

After I put in the Pastrychef EFI, everything just worked. I am running wired ethernet to my LAN so I don’t need a wifi card. Next, I will add a Samsung 970 EVO 500GB NVMe M.2 SSD as my boot drive and a Seasonic 600 watt power supply.

My cable management is not perfect, but I can't get crazy...

I run carbon Copy Cloner to periodically clone my entire boot SSD drive to a backup SSD. Carbon Copy Cloner includes the EFI segment and creates a bootable backup. This has been extremely useful in Hackintoshing, since if anything goes wrong I can just “revert” to a previous week in time, and recreate a working boot drive easily. If you are hackintoshing spending $40 on CCC can save you days of headache.

I will think about upgrading to a 4K monitor soon.

This is a VERY quiet machine, intended as a desktop workstation (photoshop, etc.) Right now the loudest noise is the Noctua NF-A12x25 120mm Fan. It’s hooked to chassis_fan_1 on the motherboard and is spinning at about 1300 rpm. I need to figure out how to slow it down to 800. I tried that in the BIOS but no go so far.

Total cost (various sources) is less than $700. When I put in similar specs for an Imac on the Apple Store it's $3699.

Try connecting your NF-A12x25 to the Optional CPU fan header on the motherboard to see if it helps. That's where I have mine connected and it's whisper quiet.
 
  • Try updating BIOS to something newer. I think BIOS 1412 is a good choice. Early versions of BIOS had issues with RAM.
  • Keep all BIOS settings stock and only make the changes as shown in post #1. XMP can also be enabled in addition to the settings in post#1. Try with CSM on and off.
  • Get rid of EmuVaribleUEFI. You must run the uninstaller to get rid of it.
  • Use the High Sierra EFI folder from post #1.

I don't understand what you mean when you say: "(d) Every time I open the HD Efi partition, an extra EFI folder (w/ only the apple/extensions folder in it) has been added to your EFI (high Sierra) folder"

Make sure you copy the EFI folder to the EFI partition of the main system drive.
Make sure that you set your main system drive to be first in boot order in BIOS.

Awesome! I will give those ideas/suggestions a try immediately after I catch some much needed zzzzzzzzzz's ... 5 straight days running around getting parts, trying to organize a copy of High Sierra (which I wasn't able to do), building, installing and troubleshooting ... on very little sleep ... who has time for a regular job given how time/labor intensive these builds are ..lol ... will post pictures when done. ;)
 
quick question ... how do I know if my designated boot-up HD has mackernel ... getting a message it doesn't?

I don't know what you mean. Please post a picture. I've never seen this.
 
I don't know what you mean. Please post a picture. I've never seen this.
it's happening after i attach another hd--to transfer files (a nice brainless activity, I thought, while I am fried and before I try to implement your suggestions)--and then try to boot. the usb booter is attached, but the cloover boot screen doesn't come up, but something else that shows all drives, and when i choose sierra, the message comes back ... 'no mach kernel' ... sorry can't take a screen capture when in this situation. wondering if that's indicative of the reason for my previous post
 
ok ... last question before I first work through your suggestions (sorry) ...
pls take a look at the attached screen shot ...
could it be that the install never finished? Why is the macos install data there?
Is there a way that I can check if the install was completed?
maybe that's what the problem is ...
 

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ok ... last question before I first work through your suggestions (sorry) ...
pls take a look at the attached screen shot ...
could it be that the install never finished? Why is the macos install data there?
Is there a way that I can check if the install was completed?
maybe that's what the problem is ...

This is also something I've never seen. Try installing macOS again. Keep in mind that the system will reboot and continue installation. On reboots, select the "Install" partition until it no longer shows up on the Clover boot menu. This is also true for future macOS updates.

Don't over think this. It's very easy.

Create USB installer.
Copy my EFI folder to USB installer.
Install macOS.
Copy my EFI folder to your system drive.
Done.

You don't have to install anything else. The only thing that's different from install on a real Mac is that you have to copy the EFI folders to the USB installer and to your system drive.
 
This is also something I've never seen. Try installing macOS again. Keep in mind that the system will reboot and continue installation. On reboots, select the "Install" partition until it no longer shows up on the Clover boot menu. This is also true for future macOS updates.

Don't over think this. It's very easy.

Create USB installer.
Copy my EFI folder to USB installer.
Install macOS.
Copy my EFI folder to your system drive.
Done.

You don't have to install anything else. The only thing that's different from install on a real Mac is that you have to copy the EFI folders to the USB installer and to your system drive.

gottcha ... the instruction "On reboots, select the "Install" partition until it no longer shows up on the Clover boot menu" is key. thank you ...

after automatic restarts, i'm always choosing the usb stick, and it keeps giving me --- so far -- installation partition choices, but ...

how many restarts are there (just for orientation purposes) ... i'm now on number 4; 15 mins, 34 mins, 34 mins and 34 again ... don't remember mac installs having that many restarts, nor exact 34 min repeaters ... feels like somethings off
 
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