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- Jan 14, 2018
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Nick Elsey's High Sierra mATX:
ASRock Z270 TAICHI - i7-7700k - GeForce GTX 1060
View media item 189922
ComponentsASRock Z270 TAICHI - i7-7700k - GeForce GTX 1060
View media item 189922
ASRock Z270 TAICHI LGA 1151 Motherboard with USB-C, Ethernet and onboard Wifi/Bluetooth
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157754
Intel Core i7-7700K Kaby Lake Quad-Core 4.2 GHz LGA 1151
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MXSI216/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117726
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1060 DirectX 12 GV-N1060G1 GAMING-6GD Graphics Card
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N0P24HI/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125881
Note: Later replaced with a Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 580 8GB GDDR5 - see end of this post.
Curcial Ballistix Sport LT 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 2400
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AG9EZ6E/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820156086
Hydro Series H60 (CW-9060007-WW) CPU Cooler
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A0HZMGA/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
https://www.newegg.com/global/au/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181030
Samsung 960 EVO M.2 250GB NVMe PCI-Express 3.0 x4 Internal SSD
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LYFKX41/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA3FA5DT8532
RMx Series RM650X PSU
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015YEIBJ8/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139143
Corsair Carbide Series 330R Case
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00R0ZHWC2/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811139023
TP-Link Archer T9E AC1900 Wireless Dual Band PCI Express Adapter
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TQEX7AQ/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833704241
Already Owned
- Couple of Hitachi SATA 2 Tb drives
- Keyboard
- Mouse
- Monitor
Comments
This was a rebuild of the same hardware from my first Hackintosh build. I have a Mid-2012 Mac Pro workstation (fully loaded at the time), but it was getting a bit old and slow, so thought I'd give this as go.
This build was a bit more problematic than the first attempt, due to some issues with High Sierra 10.13.4 - but all were resolved (see below).
Installation Notes
UEFI Settings
I used the the following as my starting point.
- To access UEFI Setup, press and hold Delete on a USB Keyboard while the system is booting up
- Press F6 to get into Advanced Mode
- Advanced > Chipset Configuration > VT-d: Set to Disabled
- Advanced > USB Configuration > XHCI Hand-off: Set to Enabled
- Boot > CSM: Set to Disabled
- First call out is that you need to format the USB Stick as GUID Partition Map since we're going to be booting in UEFI Boot Mode (see the troubleshooting notes).
View media item 189923 - In Unibeast, don't select any graphics options
- Created a /postinstall folder on the Install macOS High Sierra volume of the USB drive and copied EFI Mounter (download from https://www.tonymacx86.com/resources/efi-mounter-v3.280/
- Reviewed the recommendations in this articleand specifically did the following:
- Updated apfs.efi to version 748.57.19
- Edited /Volumes/EFI/EFI/CLOVER/Config.plist and applied the fix for USB 3.0 drives (not sure if this step was necessary)
- Installed FakeSMC.kext in /Volumes/EFI/EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other.
- Applied the work around for 10.13.4 not finding Unibeast installer as per this article
Important -
- For this phase, you must insert the USB stick into one of the USB 3 ports on the rear of the machine. If you use the extension ports on the front of the case (i.e. connected to the motherboard via the USB 3 header), macOS installer was unable to find the USB drive after the first reboot.
- During this phase I also removed the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card and used on the onboard DisplayPort connection
- Unable to find the Unibeast installer after booting from the USB stick
- macOS installer fails part way through loading with the prohibited symbol
During the installation of macOS, it said that a software update to 12.7.2 was required. I let it proceed - no issues here.
At the end of this phase, I had macOS running. At this stage, the following things were not yet working:
- Audio drivers
- iMessage
- Front USB ports
MultiBeast Settings
After successfully installing and booting into High Sierra 10.13.4, I configured the MultiBeast settings as follows:
- Drivers- selected the following:
- Audio > Realtek ALCxxx > ALC1220
- Audio > Realtek ALCxxx > 100 / 200 / 300 Series Audio Support
- Misc > Select Fake SMC Plugins
- Misc > Select Fake SMC HWMonitor Application
- Network > Intel > IntelMausiethernet v2.3.0
- USB > Increate Max Port Limit 200 Series
- Bootloaders- selected the following:
- Clover 2.4 UEFI BOOT MODE + Emulated NVRAM
- Customize- selected the following:
- Graphics Configuration:
- NVIDIA WEB drivers boot flag
- NVIDIA Graphics fix up
- System Definitions:
- iMac > iMac 18,3
- Graphics Configuration:
Graphics Card and NVIDIA Driver Install
NVIDAA Web Drivers are required to get the fully acceleration from the graphics card.
- Installed NVIDIA Web Driver 387.10.10.10.30.103 for High Sierra 10.13.4
- Shutdown the machine
- Installed the graphics card
- Powered up (and prayed). Worked. Yay!
Final Installation Tasks
- Installed KextBeast
- Installed AppleALC.kext via KextBeast
- Installed Clover Configurator and used it to get audioworking
- Mount EFI partition
- Open /Clover/Config.plist
- Changed the following settings:
- Devices > 1. Audio / Inject: Set to 11
- ACPI > Patches > Added change HDAS to HDEF
- Saved Config.plist rebooted and confirmed audio working OK
- Copied EFI Mounter to my /Applications folder
- Fixed iMessage as per this guide
- Run Clover Configurator and leave on the SMBIOS screen
- Open Terminal.app and run uuidgen.
- Paste the output in the SmUUID field in Clover Configurator (next to the Serial Number).
- Copy the value in the Serial Number field
- Go to the RtVariables screen on the left
- Paste your serial number into the MLB field, and then add 2 random characters or digits to the end
- Enter a value for the ROM field - I'm using Ethernet so I selected UseMacAddr0 from the drop-down.
- File > Save config.plist and Quit Clover Configurator.
- Rebooted and confirmed iMessage worked OK
- Samsung 960 EVO M.2 disk
- SATA disks
- NVIDA Graphics
- USB 3.0 ports
- Audio
- Onboard Ethernet
- WiFi
- Bluetooth
- iMessage
Benchmarks from Geekbench 4
- CPU Single-Core Score: 5,800
- CPU Multi-Core Score: 20,928
- GPU Compute (OpenCL): 100,914
Update - June 2019
In preparation for an upgrade of this machine to Mojave, I replaced the NVIDIA GTX 1060 graphics card with a Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 580 8GB GDDR5 (Amazon, Newegg). Mojave requires a metal compatible GPU (which the 1060 is not) and there are no NVIDIA drivers available for Mojave yet. I've been using this card without issue in my 2012 MacPro for a while, and I managed to find a reasonably priced used one on eBay.
No issues to report with the installation - the power cable is the same, so it was a straight swap. Once booted back into macOS, I went into the NVIDIA control panel (in System Preferences), uninstalled the NVIDIA driver and rebooted. All good. Here's the Geekbench scores for the RX-580:
- OpenCL Score: 138,513
- Metal: 139,905
Second M.2 SSD
I also recently installed a second M.2 disk - the Samsung 970 Pro NVME M.2 (part MZ-V7P512BW). I used this as a secondary disk, so I can't confirm that this will work as a boot disk.
Be careful not to buy the Samsung 970 Evo Plus drive - this does not work in macOS (causes random panics).
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