KGP just wanted to confirm, after your help and suggestions, that after a month I've succeeded in getting my ASUS Rampage V5 i7-6850k Hack finally working OS Sierra 10.12.4 so far through your wonderful guide. This has been a massive achievement given that it was my first ever hackintosh attempt that I almost gave up and which probably wouldn't have come together relatively quickly without your wonderful guide.
I can now confirm that my system is stable, nvida driver is active and updated for my GTX 1080ti GPU, all the power management tweaks and patches in your guide are all working, my system disk was successfully migrated to my Samsung 960 Evo M.2 Drive through Carbon Copy Cloner, and my Thunderbolt EX 3 card successfully boots my Universal Audio Apollo 8 Quad Sound card. I am not using internal sound so have not worried about the patches and kexts for activating internal audio.
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For other readers with similar hardware builds, it's worth also mentioning some extra solutions to a few hurdles, not mentioned in your guide, which I also needed to overcome:
1. Error code 202 " The installer payload failed signature check" error encountered during the initial OS Sierra installation from the USB was resolved by repeating the OS Sierra installation, entering the Apple installer menu and enabling a WI-FI connection to update the time. (in my case the ASUS Rampage V5 Edition 10 motherboard's WIFI 802.11 Module easily connects and functions in OS Sierra once first enabling its driver in Windows 10).
Enter terminal and run the command
nt-date -u time.apple.com
Once the time was updated, the installer encountered no other problems.
2. Carbon Copy Cloner does not copy the contents of the EFI drive to the M.2 drive when cloning the OS Sierra system which I realised when I couldn't boot from the M.2 drive. This is probably obvious to experienced Hackintosh enthusiasts
. Anyway I realised I had to install clover to the M.2 Drive and copy the config file, kexts, drivers64UEFI patches, and ACPI patches to the M.2 EFI partition. I also ran all the terminal commands from your guide to check the power management and over clocking tweaks were all enabled. All good.
3. For Universal Audio Sound card users wondering about the ThunderboltEX 3 card on a hackintosh, it works fine in OS Sierra. I installed both in the following order. Any other order doesn't seem to yield good results.
I also have the Startech.com Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt Adapter to connect from the card to the UAD Apollo interface.
Windows 10 installation
A. Began my build with Windows 10 and updated to "Anniversary: update.
B. Installed the Intel Thunderbolt Driver V15.3.39.250 (BEFORE INSTALLING THE CARD TO MOTHERBOARD)
https://www.asus.com/au/Motherboard-Accessory/ThunderboltEX-3/HelpDesk_Download/
C. Installed card to motherboard, in my case to the PCIEX16/X8_3 Slot as first two slots were taken up with my Graphics cards. D. Connected thunderbolt header cable to motherboard.
E. Thunderbolt doesn't show up in Windows or OS until it is enabled in Bios. I enabled the following settings after extensive research. The following guide helped a lot
https://superuser.com/questions/869494/thunderbolt-on-pc-on-an-x99-motherboard-and-the-r9-295x2
A. BIOS/ADVANCED/Intel(R) Thunderbolt
Intel Thunderbolt Technology ON
Security Level UNIQUE ID
AIC Location Group CPU0 NB PCIE Slot
AI Location (Select appropriate slot where card is installed. In my case NB PCIE X16/X8_3
Thunderbolt PCIe Cache-line Size 32
B. Reboot and Windows 10 should now find the thunderbolt card in Device Manager.
C. I then shut down and installed the Universal Audio driver software for the Apollo 8 Quad and rebooted. Windows 10 should find the sound interface when it is turned on.
OS SIERRA installation
A. I disconnected both my Thunderbolt EX 3 and Black Magic Graphics card before installing OS Sierra. Once the system booted fine without the USB Clover flash disk I installed driver software for both cards.
B. in Bios I re enabled the Thunderbolt settings with the following changes
BIOS/ADVANCED/Intel(R) Thunderbolt
Intel Thunderbolt Technology ON
Security Level LEGACY
AIC Location Group CPU0 NB PCIE Slot
AI Location (Select appropriate slot where card is installed. In my case NB PCIE X16/X8_3
Thunderbolt PCIe Cache-line Size 128
C. The thunderbolt card and the UAD Apollo will now function in OS Sierra as long as the Apollo is connected and powered before booting the OS. While OS doesn't recognise the thunderbolt driver in About this Mac / System Report / Thunderbolt, the audio drivers for the Apollo are recognised as "Universal Audio Apollo" in About this Mac / System Report / Audio and the Software will pick up the device so all should be good to go.
So thank you KGP again for all the valuable research and personal experience that you have shared. It's no wonder that your thread is very popular given the clear and precise instructions you have given (even if you sometimes get frustrated with all our annoying questions
) . I had tried unsuccessfully to follow some other user guides and found various other contributors providing often vague, often criptic, and often convoluted info that only others in their league would have a clue to be able to learn to follow. The conclusion for me from all this is that, for a novice like myself, learning to build a powerful Hackintosh from scratch is not rocket science when we have such wonderful help by experts around us. It just requires a lot of patience and study time, and the ability to patiently read and re-read and study well researched and written guides like yours
