Sierra and contemporary chipsets

[Jamesbond007]

Hmm, this makes things interesting. Researching things before jumping into the forums I checked Everymac to see if I could find any 8th generation Intel CPU Macs which originally came with Sierra pre-installed. As best as I can tell, every system had High Sierra. Based on that it was my guess that any Hackintosh using an i5 8600, for example, wouldn't allow anything earlier than 10.13.

Am I correct that the board you're using that can run Sierra is the Z370 Aorus Ultra Gaming you have listed in your profile? I've put software installation on the back burner because hardware seems to be the critical first step when building a Hackintosh, so I'm not entirely clear on how one would get Sierra running on the newer chipset. Is this where hardware profiles come into play?

I try not to get "into the weeds" on forums, but elaborating on my intentions might be helpful: As I mentioned, I do have a late 2013 27" i7-4771 iMac which runs Adobe Creative Suite 6 just fine. A gnat did find its way under the display glass, but otherwise everything else is in great shape. Within the last year I upgraded the original 3tb Fusion Drive to a 500gb Crucial SSD.

One could say there is little reason to replace it. However, we all know Apple systems are known for being difficult and expensive to repair. The idea that catastrophe could strike is always on my mind. Putting something together with user replaceable parts is very enticing. Duel booting with Sierra and one of the current macOS versions is even better. Not paying Adobe's ridiculous subscription fees is just the icing on the cake. (My feelings about Adobe's pricing scheme is another subject and everyone has their opinion. That's a subject for another forum. If it becomes clear my endeavors aren't tenable I'll just have to be happy with what I have. That being said, I'm refraining from discussing the pros and cons of Adobe CC.)

My first system (Z390 Designare / i7 9700 KF) (9th generation) and second system (Z370 Aorus Ultra Gaming / i7 8700) (8th generation) can both run MacOS Sierra 10.12.6. I have VMware Fusion 11.0.3 installed in the Sierra partition on my first system and it works fine as far as I can tell. On both systems Sierra labels the CPU "Unknown" but as far as I can tell the OS works perfectly. Both systems are able to boot Sierra / High Sierra / Mojave / Catalina and I have all 4 OS on both systems. I use iMacPro1,1 on the first system and iMac18,3 on the second system.

And of course my third and fourth systems, whose hardware are officially supported by Sierra, also can run it.

When Apple released the Intel Macs based on 8th generation hardware in 2018, High Sierra / Mojave was the current OS and Sierra had been relegated to "Security Support". So it was no surprise that there were no Macs based on 8th generation hardware that had Sierra preinstalled, but that does not mean Sierra cannot run on 8th generation hardware. It is well known in PC hardware circles that the 8th and 7th generation (Kaby Lake) hardware are quite similar, so since Sierra 10.12.6 was officially supported on 7th generation hardware it was not strange at all that it can also run on 8th generation hardware.

However, I must point out that I did not attempt to install MacOS Sierra 10.12.6 on both systems. I used a previous installation of Sierra 10.12.6 and adjusted the drivers and config.plist in Clover to allow it to boot on both systems. I have no idea if you can directly install Sierra on systems based on 8th and 9th generation hardware.

As for Adobe CC, well, I see no reason either to pay for the "ridiculous" subscription fees when the older versions still work fine for me. But as you say that is a topic for another forum.