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[SUCCESS] Monterey on Atermiter X79 + E5-2620v2 + AMD RX6600 | OpenCore 0.8.6

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Joined
Nov 13, 2022
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5
Motherboard
Essenc X79G v1.3
CPU
E5-2620 v2
Graphics
RX 6600
Mobile Phone
  1. iOS
Screen Shot 2022-11-19 at 17.38.12.png


Screen Shot 2022-11-19 at 17.58.20.png
Screen Shot 2022-11-19 at 23.41.02.png


Complete details of my build:

  • CPU: Xeon E5-2620 v2 | 6 cores 12 threads | 2.1Ghz turbo 2.6Ghz.
  • GPU: Sapphire PULSE | AMD RX6600 8GB.
  • RAM: 16GB 1066 MHz ECC DDR3 (4x4GB).
  • Motherboard: Atermiter/Essenc X79G v1.3.
  • BIOS revision: X79G00E - Aptio Setup Utility Version 2.15.1236.
  • Ethernet Card: Realtek RTL8111.
  • BT Card: CSR 4.0 Bluetooth USB card (Qualcomm/Cambridge Silicon Radio CSR8510).
  • NVME: ADATA Falcon 256GB | Monterey.
  • SSD: Kingston A400 128GB | Windows 11 Parallells virtual machine.
  • HD1: Seagate ST1000LM035-1RK172 1TB | Multimedia, software, etc.
  • HD2: Samsung ST320LM001 HN-M320MBB 320GB | Google Drive and OneDrive cache.
  • HD1: Hitachi HTS545025B9A300 250GB | Backups.
  • Audio Codec: Azalia HD Audio / C600/X79 series chipset High Definition Audio Controller.
  • Audio Interface: Teyun Q24 | 24bit/192KHz.
  • Speakers: Genius SP-HF500A | 14W.
  • PSU: Aureox ARXGU-80PBZ-550W | 80 Plus Bronze | 550 Watts.
  • Case: Sentey F10 Rainbow.
  • Monitor1: Coradir 20WHE | 1080p HDMI.
  • Monitor2: Viewsonic VG1921 | 1440*900 VGA.


Regarding the motherboard: There are a lot of different version of these chinese boards under the brands Essenc, Atermier, Jingsha, and Machinist, some identical, and some with differences.
The particular on I got running is this one (popular on Aliexpress)

motherboard.png


This build is kind of an upgrade over this one I posted on ****** running Catalina.
After trying, with no luck, lots of times to build an OpenCore setup for my PC using Dortania's guide, I felt really frustrated. You can Find at my profile several posts asking for help in this sub, where lots of you tried to help. Sadly I couldn't make any suggestion work.This is not a problem of the guides per se. It is logical to think the guides cannot cover EVERY weird PC build. So the issue has more to do with my particular hardware configuration than with the suggestions from the guide.

That said, I finally got help in this particular thread. But the story doesn't stop there. Actually, the OpenCore configuration I got from there didn't work for me.
Going through that thread, I found this post and asked the poster anerik70 for help.

I sent him my OpenCore configuration, and he provided me an updated one which at first didn't work. But he then pointed me to try disabling hardware video acceleration for the installation process.

That solution suggestion actually worked.

So, for installing Monterey and Ventura you should add this to boot-args:

XML:
-amd_no_dgpu_accel

That argument will make the installer to boot in VESA mode. It will work just fine and install macOS. I suggest to go through the whole fist stage of the installation with that argument in place. That is, while the installer runs from the USB drive. Only remove it once the OS is installed and the setup process starts from the hard drive.
Once the OS is installed, and the setup process boots from the hard drive (having removed the argument that disabled GPU acceleration), it is possible that the setup crashes. It happened to me and I just manually powered off the PC, and started it again. It booted, and setup continued fine this time.

That should be all about how I got Monterey installed and flawlessly running.



What's working, and what isn't working:

GPU: AMD RX6600 is fully supported by Apple. Check this for further information on the support for the RX6600 on macOS. You should add this in boot-args:

Code:
agdpmod=pikera

Hardware sensors: One thing to take into consideration are the hardware sensors, if you like to monitor stuff using apps like iStatica or iStat Menus. VirtualSMC seems to lack support for the sensors on this system. After looking for a solution I got to a fork of FakeSMC that has the perfect support for this hardware: FakeSMC3 from CloverHackyColor. I find it very stable and provides a lot more sensors to monitor temperatures.
But I cannot guarantee its stability and performance since a lot of people on the community say VirtualSMC is superior. This just works for me, guys. Feel free to try what is best for you.

Sleep: I completely disabled sleep, since I don't need it on this desktop setup, and I don't completely understand how sleep works. So to get it working means a lot of work for something I don't need. Not gonna happen. Sorry.

Audio: The your layout ID for the on-board audio card is 5. I suggest to check here. You should use this in boot-args:

Code:
alcid=5

Facetime and Messages: both work fine. I didn't need to do anything. Fired the apps, set them up, and everything just works.

Bluetooth: Here it becomes a bit tricky. It seems that Apple dropped support for some bluetooth devices with Monterey. My USB dongle "CSR 4.0 Bluetooth USB card (Qualcomm/Cambridge Silicon Radio CSR8510)" is a cheapo one, but worked out of the box on Catalina. To get it working on Monterey I had to use BrcmPatchRAM from the acidenthera team.
You have to do add these four kexts:

  • BrcmPatchRAM3.kext: This kext communicates with supported Broadcom Bluetooth USB devices (as configured in its Info.plist), and detects if they require a firmware update. If a firmware update is required, the matching firmware data will be uploaded to the device and the device will be reset.
  • BrcmFirmwareData.kext: is a shared resource which holds all the configured firmwares for different Broadcom Bluetooth USB devices that will be injected to the device.
  • BrcmBluetoothInjector.kext: Is a codeless kernel extension which injects the BT hardware data using a plist. Starting with macOS 10.1 it is needed by BrcmPatchRAM3.kext because due to framework changes BrcmPatchRAM3.kext alone is incompatible with macOS.
  • BlueToolFixup.kext: Required for macOS 12 or newer, as in macOS 12 Apple has changed parts of the Bluetooth stack from kernel-space to user-space as detailed in here and here. Requires Lilu 1.5.4+.
After the device firmware is uploaded, the device control is handed over to Apple's BroadcomBluetoothHostControllerUSBTransport. This means that for all intents and purposes your device will be native on macOS and support all functionalities fully.



Conclusions:
I've been using this build for a few weeks. Honestly, there is nothing I cannot do with it. I tried from simple things like watching videos, browsing the web, and use MS Office apps, up to editing videos on Final Cut Pro X. No issues whatsoever. I even played a few games on Steam, like Shadow of the Tomb Rider, and things run rock solid.

I hope you guys like this build. And I'm more than happy to help anyone trying to get one like mine working.



EFI folders:
I made three different EFI configurations as described below:


EFI VirtualSMC-INSTALLATION: This is for booting the installer. It has video acceleration disabled.
EFI VirtualSMC: This one is very stable and safe to use to boot into the Monterey right after it's been installed. Includes BrcmPatchRAM.
EFI FakeSMC3: This one replaces VirtualSMC with FakeSMC3. Includes BrcmPatchRAM.

You can test them if want. But, please, take into consideration that if your CPU, motherboard, or GPU, are different, then it might not work if you don't adapt it. The SMBIOS info like serials, UUID, etc are safe. But please change them as someone else might be using them already.
 
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