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[Success] ASUS ROG Strix Z490-G + i7-10700K + RX 580 + OC [now runs 12.3.1]

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Dec 15, 2010
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57
Motherboard
ASUS ROG Z490-G Gaming
CPU
i7-10700K
Graphics
RX 5700 XT
Mac
  1. MacBook Pro
  2. Mac mini
Classic Mac
  1. iMac
Mobile Phone
  1. iOS
UMS Typhoon-I 20L Mega Neko Scuderia, aka Yuudachi
Core i7-10700K - ASUS ROG Strix Z490-G Gaming - 32GB DDR4-3200 - RX 580
UPDATED 23/04/22 @ 1352 BST

New Components

Components Carried Over

Subsequent Upgrades

References
  • Jergoo's ROG Strix Z490-I guide
  • scope666's ROG Strix Z490-E guide
  • OpenCore, Lilu, WhateverGreen, AppleALC, VirtualSMC from Acidanthera
  • Dortania's OpenCore guide, and the myriad resources therein


Rationale
My previous hack had evolved from a 16GB GTX 960 to a 32GB RX 580, and got renamed from Tsumugi to Haruna to reflect the increasing amount of Corsair hardware in and around her. Despite increasing flakiness and refusal to play ball with Clover updates (probably SIP related, coupled with unneeded duplication of real and emulated NVRAM), she served me well with media encodes. But the approaching migration to Apple silicon and a 40th birthday triggered what will probably be my last hurrah for a hackintosh, so I looked for a feasible platform refresh. The brand new Z490 and Comet Lake provided just that, but disappointingly omits PCIE 4.0 futureproofing. Boo. Still, I can hopefully squeeze at least a good five years out of this platform at the very least before I'm stuck on a legacy version.

Haruna will be donated to my dad to see out her days until she can't be economically supported. He currently runs an X58 hack, the twin sister of my first hack, which I'll either sell or repurpose into a file server.

The Build
I won't bore you with everything; we've all glued computers together before, otherwise we wouldn't be here. Here's some highlights:
  • The Crystal 280X is 280 in name only; you may get one 140mm fan in there, if you're lucky. With this hardware configuration (a pretty chunky mATX board), there was no hope of getting a 280mm radiator in the roof or the front (the radiator being ever so slightly too long to front-mount). So the Corsair H115i RGB Platinum I originally wanted was RMAed in favour of an H100i. This too didn't fit in the roof (too thick, colliding with the board, so went up front behind the two LL120s.
  • The LL120s run off the PWM headers of the cooler (effectively turning it into an H100i SE in black), with RGB running off the case's Lighting Node Pro and fan hub. This opens up possibilities to add more LL fans in future.
  • The ML120s are connected, by a 2-way splitter, to the CPU_OPT header. They are mounted in the roof of the case as exhausts. Their RGB is provided by the cooler's headers. The setup gives a definitive negative pressure balance (higher pressure and airflow out than in, despite a dust filter providing baffling), and a tendency to be a bit noisy at full chat, but she acquits herself very well in stress tests - the hottest component being the dGPU and even that doesn't break 80C.
  • The Z490-G has two USB 2.0 headers. I have three devices needing one (H100i, HX1000i, Lighting Node). The NZXT internal hub is a chunky godsend; more minimalist solutions are available, but this works. A brief moment where the Node chain went nuts and the front fans went dark was mercifully short-lived. The H100i is plugged directly into the mainboard, being mission-critical. The hub provides for the other two devices.

The Install
The installer was put together before the hardware arrived from the references above. I did back off on some of the "custom" SSDTs and use OpenCore's vanilla offerings for the sake of compatibility and expedience; further customisation is likely. The installer saw a few revisions, originally building for an iMac19,* SMBIOS before OpenCore 0.6.1 bowed and introduced the 20,* SMBIOS, so this went in, along with in-service kext updates. I generated board serial numbers and UUIDs using the tools in Tortania's guide, adding my board MAC address as ROM when I knew it.

On first boot, I applied all of the recommended settings I could find or interpret. Then I updated the BIOS to 0707 and did it all again. And then had to fight with Secure Boot after Windows was installed. From the list:

Disable
  • Fast Boot
  • Secure Boot (try as I might, I couldn't find an outright "disable" option. Deleting the keys left Windows unbootable; restoring the default keys fixed that, but left the Catalina installer unbootable. The solution was to set the secure boot config to Other OS
  • Serial/COM Port (not present)
  • Parallel Port (not present)
  • VT-d (can be enabled if you set DisableIoMapper to YES)
  • CSM (already disabled, but best to check)
  • Thunderbolt (not present)
  • Intel SGX (incidentally, these are needed if you ever want to use your system to watch UHD Blu-Ray. Just FYI.)
  • Intel Platform Trust (aka Intel PTT. However, with Windows 11 being a thing, I enabled it and macOS had no problem with it, surviving multiple updates and a fresh install of 12.2.1)
Enable
  • VT-x (Intel Virtualisation Technology is typically disabled; just enable it but ensure VT-d is disabled
  • Above 4G decoding
  • Hyper-Threading
  • Execute Disable Bit
  • EHCI/XHCI Hand-off
  • OS type: Windows 8.1/10 UEFI Mode (Other OS under Secure Boot)
  • DVMT Pre-Allocated(iGPU Memory): 64MB
  • SATA Mode: AHCI
This being an NVMe-based system, operating systems were going on the M.2 sticks. Windows went first. Along the way, RST was enabled and the Windows drive (M2_1) apparently became the sole drive on an RST array.

M2_2, on which MacOS lives, was installed a little later, and I was initially worried it didn't take. Windows saw both its own SSD and the new M2_2. The Catalina installer only saw one uninitialised Sabrent drive - M2_2. No M2_1. No SATA internal drive (formatted as 4TB NTFS with GPT). I would have thought these would be seen, and they are still invisible to Catalina.

Installation was textbook. No issues. Apple ID went straight in. Had a transient hiccup with authorising my computer for Music and TV, but Apple insists my computer is authorised. There was a hiccup with DRM playback, but this is resolved now. The installer was built with 10.15.6; after install I updated to 10.15.7 from Software Updates with no issues.


What Works?
Still testing, so I'm still calling her a work in progress, but we have:
  • Startup
  • Shutdown
  • Sleep
  • FaceTime (incoming video broken under Big Sur working again after 12.2.1 fresh install)
  • iMessage (I'm getting messages sent after Yuudachi's inception)
  • DRM playback (after adding shikigva=80 to boot args) (broken under Big Sur working again after upgrading WEG to 1.4.6, enabling all overrides bar the last one found here, and removing shikigva from boot args)
  • Phone calls
  • USB drives, including NTFS volumes via the Sabrent dock
  • Network
  • dGPU compute - need to run a graphics bench to see what she'll do
What Doesn't Work?
Again, this list is subject to growth as I continue to test, but:
  • The bigger ticket is internal drive detection, SATA or M.2 (boot drive excepted). OpenCore Picker sees the Windows device just fine; macOS does not. Not a huge issue - I have workarounds, and with both of the missing devices being NTFS I could only read from them in macOS My suspicions are something in BIOS - I suspect the fact that M2_1 is under RST control (seeing other posts this seems to be the culprit), but it doesn't explain the SATA drive, unless that too is under RST
  • DisplayPort on the RX580. This seems to be a thing with iMac SMBIOSes as I had a Haswell build with a 15,1 definition with the same symptom. In my case, it's no biggy - HDMI works just fine and displays 2560x1440 on my AOC, but something to note if you have an older display

Benches
  • GeekBench 4:
    • CPU:​
      • Single: 6412
      • Multi: 39023​

    • dGPU compute:
      • Metal: 136309​
      • OpenCL: 143598​
  • Cinebench R20:
    • Single: 503​
    • Multi: 4982​
    • MP Ratio: 9.91​

EFI folder is attached; remember to get your own serial numbers and MAC address. (will post current EFI once I pull it from Yuudachi and edit accordingly - it's evolved a lot since she was built :))

I'll probably be adding to this as testing, comments, discoveries and admin demand.

Best of luck, everyone.
 

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Thanks for sharing your build. I am considering the same motherboard for my last Intel hack as well.

Could you elaborate on the iMessage problem? You said it doesn't load all messages... is that when your machine is off/sleeping and wakes up? Or does it not receive some while it's up and running?
 
Thanks for sharing your build. I am considering the same motherboard for my last Intel hack as well.

Could you elaborate on the iMessage problem? You said it doesn't load all messages... is that when your machine is off/sleeping and wakes up? Or does it not receive some while it's up and running?
Seemingly both. I've received messages on Astraea (my MBP) from 2019 that Yuudachi hasn't picked up, despite turning on iCloud messages. Astraea doesn't get bog standard SMS messages on my phone, it seems, just iMessages. I've turned on iCloud messages accross the board so I'll see what this does going forward.
 
Thanks for the info. I think I can live with that behavior, since my system will be on most of the time plus I also have a Macbook and an iPhone to round out any missing SMS or other messages.

PS: I love the names of your machines :)
 
Thanks for the info. I think I can live with that behavior, since my system will be on most of the time plus I also have a Macbook and an iPhone to round out any missing SMS or other messages.

PS: I love the names of your machines :)
Thank ye :) I can take or leave iMessage - never got it working on any hack - so long as general productivity, entertainment and FaceTime work without issue, which it seems to for now. If anything does crop up, and if I discover a fix/workaround. I'll update accordingly.

As I write, I'm preparing an OpenCore installer for Haruna to get her up and running for my dad to take delivery. I'll post the EFI folder if it works, so we can have a Haswell example ready for Big Sur.
 
Does the ROG Strix Z490-G Gaming has a CFG Unlock in the BIOS? I have bought an ASUS TUF Gaming H470 PRO board and it doesn't has that option. I have only errors while booting with OC and Clover.
 
Does the ROG Strix Z490-G Gaming has a CFG Unlock in the BIOS? I have bought an ASUS TUF Gaming H470 PRO board and it doesn't has that option. I have only errors while booting with OC and Clover.
It's an ASUS board, so CFG Lock is disabled by default.
 
Thank you or your answer. Now I'm very satisfied again with my choice for Asus again.

Finally I have got my Asus TUF Gaming H470-PRO WIFI with an i9-10850K to work as well. Everything works with the help of your EFI ACPI patches and reading other setups as well.

Edit: I have created a Guide for my build as well.
 
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Thank you for sharing this.. I successfully installed a Catalina Opencore ( i9-10850k / Asus z490-g gaming wifi ) to my new system. Previously using Clover ( old pc i7-4790k / gigabyte z97mx gaming 5 ). Following for your future update once you tried installing Big Sur. =) ... By the way I have the same case corsair 280x and I successfully installed the Corsair H115i RGB Platinum on the roof attaching photo how I manage to cramp it on top... again thank you and following your thread while waiting for your process updating with Big Sur.
 

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This thread was my go-to for what i hoped was a cheeky way to get Big Sur installation runnig. Same mobo, same RX580, same cpu, same BIOS settings. Using your EFI folder I managed to install everything, only to see a stop sign upon the first proper boot. Arggh. Served me right, at least I got this far, the installer looks nice too. Now I'll need days of trying to work out what setting I messed up.

Are serial numbers and MAC address ok to change post install? Or is this importanrt for booting?

Thanks
I got Big Sur to install via app store upgrade and boot into a usable state, but it's not perfect. DRM video seems to be broken (a caution noted from Dortania's guide and probably something needing a Lilu/WEG fix), and FaceTime immediately after update transmitted correctly but greyed out incoming video. I haven't tried it again yet, will do and update this post with my results and current EFI folder.

Update - incoming FaceTime is broken and DRM is still out with my current EFI which includes some beta builds of the Acidanthera collection. Catalina worked, or at least played past the AppleTV+ logo, but here I'm lucky to get as far as a trailer. Working EFI below, hope it helps.

Ideally I like to generate and keep my serials pre-install, so I can copy the EFI folder over to the boot drive and retain continuity through installation and activation and use. Changing SMBIOSes and serial numbers can be done post-install, at least in Catalina (I had to change a Haswell build from iMac15,1 to MacPro6.1 to restore the 580's DisplayPort output), but I'd recommend deauthorising and signing out of Apple services before you do.
 

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