[Success] Alienware Aurora R6 with 10.12.6

[Hat-Trick]

This is more of a PSA than a review as I don't have the time to do a full write-up in the user builds section.

In short, an i7-7700K (factory water-cooled and OC Lvl2 @ 4.7Ghz) Alienware Aurora R6 was VERY EASY to setup and get everything working. I'm no Pro, and it took a few hours for me. Someone who knows what they are doing could probably do it in a hour or two.

My setup is an Aurora R6, Core i7-7700K Kaby Lake CPU, 16GB DDR4 RAM, SATA SSD (will be trying NVMe soon), nVidia 1080 8GB video card. The system has built-in USB 3.0 AND USB 3.1, both of which are found automatically using Unibeast for setup.
Also working immediately was the built-in gigabit Ethernet, bluetooth, and the Intel 630 video (but without acceleration). Ran Multibeast but chose only basic options.

Audio turned out to work with the ALC898 codec (line out AND digital optical out). App Store and iTunes works, as does Messages. Sleep/wake even works without me having to do anything to make it work! Had a problem with GPUSensors causing a panic at boot with the nVidia 1080 so I removed the kext and now it boots fine.

All-in-all, very easy. It's like the hardware was put together to work as a hack!

 

[Hat-Trick]

Update: A week later, still working great! Ran Geekbench 4 and got Single Core: 5945 and Multi-Core: 20674.

 

[sdot80]

I'm trying to install on an R5 just a quick question what guild did you follow if you don't mind me asking? By the way congrats!!

 

[Hat-Trick]

I'm trying to install on an R5 just a quick question what guild did you follow if you don't mind me asking? By the way congrats!!

This one, but very loosely, just as a basic guide. I filtered out the things I knew did not apply.

Your R5 is a different beast, not Kaby Lake. Can't say how well this guide I used will work for you.

 

[legsak1mbo]

I have the R6 and have successfully managed to get macOS installed. However, when I start tweaking with Multibeast things start to go wrong.

I looked at the guide that you linked to and tried some of the steps there but that didn't seem to help. I get the same kernel panic on Intel graphics as is mentioned there but the Aurora doesn't offer the bios settings mentioned.

Did you get the 1080 working? I'm not having much luck with that either.

Any pointers that you can offer would be much appreciated.

 

[Hat-Trick]

I have the R6 and have successfully managed to get macOS installed. However, when I start tweaking with Multibeast things start to go wrong.

I looked at the guide that you linked to and tried some of the steps there but that didn't seem to help. I get the same kernel panic on Intel graphics as is mentioned there but the Aurora doesn't offer the bios settings mentioned.

Did you get the 1080 working? I'm not having much luck with that either.

Any pointers that you can offer would be much appreciated.

Yes, the 1080 works perfectly with the nVidia webdrivers. It's been a while, but I remember having issues with the Intel video.

Which CPU are you using and you have a nVidia 1080 card also? I can post my config.plist for you to look through if you wish.

My system is working perfectly to this day. The only issue I *might* have is when using it after waking from sleep. It seems a bit sluggish, like there is some sort of constant interrupt happening. I reboot and it's fine.

I also had an issue when downloading large files (>1GB). The transfer would just stop saying network timeout, yet I could still ping out with no issues. I haven't followed up on that.

But over all, I'm looking forward to trying High Sierra with an m.2 NVMe SSD as soon as it comes out and there is a good guide.

 

[legsak1mbo]

Yes, the 1080 works perfectly with the nVidia webdrivers. It's been a while, but I remember having issues with the Intel video.

Which CPU are you using and you have a nVidia 1080 card also? I can post my config.plist for you to look through if you wish.

Thanks for the quick reply!

Yep, I have the 1080. CPU is i7 7700k - in fact I think that the system's exactly the same as yours (in fact your post was what inspired me to try this).

Your config.plist would be much appreciated, thank you.

 

[Hat-Trick]

Thanks for the quick reply!

Yep, I have the 1080. CPU is i7 7700k - in fact I think that the system's exactly the same as yours (in fact your post was what inspired me to try this).

Your config.plist would be much appreciated, thank you.

Attached is the config.plist. I also added a bit more info to my original post.

 

[Hat-Trick]

I remembered I took some notes during my setup and see that to get the Intel video working, I set the deviceID=0x1234 and RevID=0004. Other notes I have is for Ethernet to use E2200 2.1.0. And to use the ALC898 for sound, I had to remove a kext patch for AppleHDA (8a19d411 --> 00000000) to make the audio device show.

Don't forget to remove GPUSensors (in my original post). That causes a boot panic if you have an nVidia card with webdrivers.
You'll have to look up how to do that, I forget.

That's all the notes I had.

 

[legsak1mbo]

This is great - thanks! I'm just trying it now...