[SUCCESS] Perfect Sierra build Asus Z170 Premium

[dashingncool]

Specifications

• Asus Z170 Premium
• Skylake i-6600K
• Nvidia GTX 960
• Samsung 850 EVO 256 GB x 2
• Samsung NVMe 950 Pro 256 x 1
• G.Skill 32 GB 3000 MHz RAM 8 x 4
• Samsung UHD monitor 4K@60Hz x 2

Let me start by answering these questions first.

What is working?

• Graphics 4K @60 Hz
• Audio
• Bluetooth
• NVMe
• 1 Ethernet port
• WiFi including 5GHz (Out of box) (this was the best part)
• USB 3.1, 3.0, 2.0 (Out of box)
• All the front ports Audio, USB 3.0 x 2 (Out of box)
• AirPlay, AirDrop, iCloud, Continuity, Handoff, Facetime, iMessages, Appstore
• What else....

What is not working?

• There is only one small intermittent glitch with the 4K @ 60Hz. Sometimes, the computer boots into a black screen (no kernel panic). Just the monitors lose display port signal and they go to sleep mode. The fix: well, I just turn the settings to Display Port 1.1 in my monitor's settings before the system starts to boot. Once it boots, I just turn the setting back to DP version 1.2 in the monitor settings.
• I couldn't get iMac 17,1 SMBIOS to work . It gives me a black screen.
• 1 Ethernet port. AppleIGB was giving kernel panics. But I am using only one port anyways, so I don't care about this one.

Attached Files

1. Files to replace in EFI.zip : this contains the files from my EFI. It has a patched DSDT, patched kernel kexts for IOAPIC and USB, kexts, config and the 64BitUEFI drivers.

Steps

1. Please see my previous post for El Capitan because it will make things very easy for you.
2. Follow the official tonymacx guide for Sierra Public beta word to word step by step and get the USB ready with clover and the FakeSMC kext.
3. Mount the EFI of USB using EFI Mounter v3.
4. See the attached zip file which has my EFI files. Replace the contents of your EFI with it.
5. This is all you need to get started with the installation.
6. Plug the USB in the USB 2.0 port (the green and red ports in the back).
7. Turn on the computer and go to BIOS.
8. Enter Advanced settings and load optimized defaults.
9. Change the Secure Boot to Other OS
10. Disable IOAPIC under PCH System Configuration.
11. Set the Boot device under Boot tab to your USB EFI. Don't change the boot device by pressing F8. It always gave me the low memory error. Set the USB as first boot device in the boot order.
12. This will get you started with installation.
13. Once the installation is finished, WiFi should be working out of the box.
14. Get the latest clover from sourceforge and install it like you did when creating the USB. I did not use MultiBeast because I wanted to understand how stuff works
15. Mount the EFI USB using EFI Mounter V3 and copy all the contents on your desktop. UNMOUNT IT AND REMOVE THE USB
16. Mount the EFI of your HDD and replace the contents with the ones you copied on your desktop.
17. This is all you need for a bare minimum setup of Sierra. Check if you can boot without the USB.

Now lets get other stuff fixed. Get the KCPM Utility 6 first to manage kexts.

Display-NVidia
Get the latest web driver from NVidia's website. Install it and reboot.

Audio
I tried to use ALC1150 from toleda for Sierra but it did not work. So I installed the good old VoodooHDA. Download, install and reboot and the audio should be up.

Ethernet
The motherboard has 2 ethernet ports. I tried to use AppleIGB.kext but it gave me kernel panics again and again. So I used AppleIntelE1000E.kext . Install using the KCPM and rebuild the cache. Reboot and you have 1 ethernet port without kernel panic. I didn't bother about the other port

Bluetooth
Get the Bluetooth kext from here and install using KCPM. Rebuild the cache, reboot and voila you have bluetooth.

NVMe
I used Rehabman's NVMe patch from github. The instructions are very simple and available in the read me. Once you have the new kext created, install it using the KCMP. DON'T REBOOT. First delete the IONVMeFamily.kext (see the read me too) from /System/Library/Extensions. Rebuild cache and reboot.

Appstore Fix
This was a new problem. Appstore won't let me login. This was easy to fix.

1. Remove all the network cards from system preferences. Then go to /Library/Preferences/System Configuration and delete the network plist.
2. Reboot.
3. Add the Ethernet card first in the system preferences. Make sure you add the Ethernet card as En0.
4. Add WiFi and thats it.

Important:
I spent nights trying to solve the low memory error. It sometimes worked and suddenly it would give me the error again. What fixed this was setting the boot device order and putting USB on top instead of changing the boot device on the fly as I mentioned in the steps above. This is weird, I know. But it worked. I tried atleast 10 times to make sure that this was the cause/fix and it worked.

Update 1 - Display Fix & SMBIOS fixed!
I am now using SMBIOS 17,1 with 4K@6Hz. I used the AGDPFix by tonymacx. It fixed both the SMBIOS and black screen problem. I also tried Pike's on the fly clover patch but it doesn't work in Sierra (also mentioned by tonymacx in one of his guides on fixing display issues). The catch is that, you need to run this utility every time OS updates. I will keep an eye on the on the fly patch and will update this guide if something changes. Also, find my EFI with updated SMBios.

Update 2 - Updating Sierra
Two things will break on update for sure.
1. NVME kext - you will notice kernel panic. Because we need to remove the IONVMEKext again.
2. Display will go blank after updating NvidiaWeb because we need to run AGDPFix.

For #1, launch OS X recovery from Clover. Then launch terminal. List all the disks using "diskutil list". Next, unmount the Macintosh volume (because this is currently read only). In my case I ran "umount /Volumes/Macintosh". Mount the volume again with write flag. mount -t hfs -w /dev/disk1s1 /Volumes/Macintosh. Then Go to /Volumes/Macintosh/System/Library/Extensions and delete IONVMEFamily.kext.

After doing this, you will be able to atleast login with Default Display drivers instead of Nvidia. DON'T Reboot after logging in.

For #2, first update the Nvidia Web driver. DON'T Restart YET. If you do, then you ll mess up your display.
Next run AGDPFix utility. It will prompt to restart as well. (So in the end, you must see two pop ups asking you to restart. If not, then you surely missed something). Click on either restart and done!

Update 3 - 10.12.4
EFI updated with the latest clover.

Enjoy your Sierra!

 

[jdizzle]

Specifications
NVMe
I used Rehabman's NVMe patch from github. The instructions are very simple and available in the read me. Once you have the new kext created, install it using the KCMP. DON'T REBOOT. First delete the IONVMeFamily.kext (see the read me too) from /System/Library/Extensions. Rebuild cache and reboot.

So did you install to the SSD and then clone everything to the NVME once installed (to use as a boot drive)? I can't see any kext or patches within your EFI folder that point to how you got your NVME working?

 

[dashingncool]

So did you install to the SSD and then clone everything to the NVME once installed (to use as a boot drive)? I can't see any kext or patches within your EFI folder that point to how you got your NVME working?

Yes, Thats what I did. I read somewhere (probably of Rehabman's github page) that for sierra, its not possible to get Sierra installed directly on the NVMe. So I installed it on my SSD and then cloned it over to NVMe.

 

[jdizzle]

I managed to get it installed directly on to the NVMe, I'll be changing this thread to help others once my build is complete.

 

[itsmikerofl]

Been using the Z170-Premium for a bit now - I used to have everything working until I swapped my 980 Ti for the GTX 1080, (which has no support at this the time of posting).

A couple questions regarding your setup:

1. Have you got 10.11x/10.12 working with the Inte HD 530 iGPU? I'm struggling with it, personally, (check my post history for the threads), since I can't use my GTX 1080 in macOS as of right now.
2. (Not as important) How does the OS deal with anything plugged into the Thunderbolt 3 USB-C port?

I'm trying to focus on getting full acceleration working in 10.11.6 before I even start on 10.12, seeing as my only drive is a 400GB Inte 750 SSD.

 

[dashingncool]

Been using the Z170-Premium for a bit now - I used to have everything working until I swapped my 980 Ti for the GTX 1080, (which has no support at this the time of posting).

A couple questions regarding your setup:

1. Have you got 10.11x/10.12 working with the Inte HD 530 iGPU? I'm struggling with it, personally, (check my post history for the threads), since I can't use my GTX 1080 in macOS as of right now.
2. (Not as important) How does the OS deal with anything plugged into the Thunderbolt 3 USB-C port?

I'm trying to focus on getting full acceleration working in 10.11.6 before I even start on 10.12, seeing as my only drive is a 400GB Inte 750 SSD.

I am not sure about the GPU because it just worked oob for me. I removed the Nvidia before installing and it worked smoothly. It was not the case in El Capitan.

For USB type C, I just check with my USB 3.0 drive which has type c connector and its working. I did not anything for this as well.

 

[dashingncool]

I managed to get it installed directly on to the NVMe, I'll be changing this thread to help others once my build is complete.

Sure. I am currently trying to patch the DSDT because the one that I have in EFI is from Deluxe board. Any ideas?

 

[jdizzle]

Unfortunately not, my board is the gigabyte Z170mx gaming 5 so I don't think it'd help you.

 

[ccannon0]

How is sleep/wake on your rig? I have z170-wifi and it won't sleep anymore after going from imac17.1 to imac14.2

 

[jdizzle]

If you're asking me, I haven't used sleep as i use it for work and it stays on until the end of the day. Today I realised I get reboot on shutdown if my monitors are on because they are connected USB3 hubs and must be pushing some sort of signal back to the system forcing it to wake. In addition, if the machine is off, the monitor On button will act as the machine On switch also. Wonder if Dell had that pegged as a "feature".

Can check sleep in two days if you like?