<< Solved >> Sapphire Vega 56 Pulse - fails to boot with power connected to dGPU

[mcljot]

You're quite welcome! The performance of this system is really impressive -- an equivalent system from Apple would costs thousands more. As for the Vega fans, have you tried the Vega Fan and Crash solution (Method 2) from the build guide?

Yeah - and it would be totally locked down and inextensible. I had tried both Method 1 and Method 2 previously, but not since I got the machine to boot this evening. That's high on the list of things to do. Do you reckon it's normal that the fans would be off during low-usage operation? I would have thought they'd default to 100%.

My Fenvi WiFi + BT adaptor is probably going to take a couple more weeks to arrive from China, and I need to get a couple of SATA SSD drives. I also need to get a USB2.0 header splitter, so I can connect both the NZXT AIO cooler and the Fenvi BT module to the motherboard at the same time.

At the moment I've got Mojave on the 1TB M.2 NVMe and I'm not sure whether to install Fedora or Windows on the 250GB M.2 NVMe. Are you dual booting?

 

[pastrychef]

In your /EFI/CLOVER/drivers64UEFI/ folder, I suggest removing the NvmExpressDxe-64.efi and replacing VBoxHfs-64.efi with HFSPlus.efi. Your motherboard has full support for NVMe booting and you don't need that driver. HFSPlus.efi is from macOS and better than the VBoxHfs-64.efi.

Also, personally, I'd leave those kexts exactly where they are and don't bother moving them to /Library/Extensions/. You've already experienced how much of a PITA it is to try and get access to them when something goes wrong. People far smarter and more experienced than myself recommend /Library/Extensions/ but I've never had any problems with keeping kexts in /EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other/.

 

[CaseySJ]

Yeah - and it would be totally locked down and inextensible. I had tried both Method 1 and Method 2 previously, but not since I got the machine to boot this evening. That's high on the list of things to do. Do you reckon it's normal that the fans would be off during low-usage operation? I would have thought they'd default to 100%.

As long as the fans do come on when GPU activity rises, then it might be okay. I would monitor GPU temps regularly, but I think GPU fans should be running constantly and only varying in RPM. But numerous vendors are advertising full "fan stop" capability, so the waters are muddy on this one...

At the moment I've got Mojave on the 1TB M.2 NVMe and I'm not sure whether to install Fedora or Windows on the 250GB M.2 NVMe. Are you dual booting?

I've got Windows and Ubuntu Linux installed under Parallels Desktop 14, which is sufficient for my purposes. I have a separate dedicated Windows desktop, so all bases are covered...

 

[mcljot]

In your /EFI/CLOVER/drivers64UEFI/ folder, I suggest removing the NvmExpressDxe-64.efi and replacing VBoxHfs-64.efi with HFSPlus.efi. Your motherboard has full support for NVMe booting and you don't need that driver. HFSPlus.efi is from macOS and better than the VBoxHfs-64.efi.

Also, personally, I'd leave those kexts exactly where they are and don't bother moving them to /Library/Extensions/. You've already experienced how much of a PITA it is to try and get access to them when something goes wrong. People far smarter and more experienced than myself recommend /Library/Extensions/ but I've never had any problems with keeping kexts in /EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other/.

Great advice, thank you! I'll leave the kexts where they are. What is the purported advantage of having them in /Library/Extensions?

 

[pastrychef]

Great advice, thank you! I'll leave the kexts where they are. What is the purported advantage of having them in /Library/Extensions?

It gets loaded in kextcache.

 

[mcljot]

You're quite welcome! The performance of this system is really impressive -- an equivalent system from Apple would costs thousands more. As for the Vega fans, have you tried the Vega Fan and Crash solution (Method 2) from the build guide?

I assume I include the fix from Method 2 in addition to the iGPU device that I've configured in Clover/Devices, but just wanted to double check?

 

[pastrychef]

I assume I include the fix from Method 2 in addition to the iGPU device that I've configured in Clover/Devices, but just wanted to double check?

There's no need for you to do that. VGTab doesn't work for your card anyway. You will just be adding useless stuff to your config.plist.

 

[mcljot]

Ah, I didn't think that that particular method was anything to do with VGTab?

 

[pastrychef]

Ah, I didn't think that that particular method was anything to do with VGTab?

It does exactly the same thing as VGTab. Doing it via that method just allows you to remove the VGTab created kext.

In your particular case, it's useless. Don't add it.

 

[mcljot]

There's no need for you to do that. VGTab doesn't work for your card anyway. You will just be adding useless stuff to your config.plist.

Cool, thanks. Looks like my Vega is doing what it does for most other people. No fans for 2 - 3 minutes, and then ramping up to full fans.