X299 Big Sur Support

[hkuser]

ASUS SAGE/10G 3301 BIOS with Apple Logo Splash Screen
Released 01/12/2021

Notes from Asus

• Improve system performance
• Fix SSD device compatibility

Note: With ASUS BIOS, you can save your BIOS profile on a USB Stick through the BIOS as a .CMO file and then use Bios Flashback, then restore the settings from the .CMO. One thing I noticed is sometimes with this the Above 4G doesn't get enabled so be careful as upon reboot after restoring settings you will get a black screen, and also COM Ports are never restored properly (I always have it disabled on this board). I will try to post a guide for this soon, so it makes it easier for everyone if it's interesting let me know. It's pretty easy.

Aloha izo1,

Before my inquiry, just wanted to say Happy New Year to you and and everyone on this thread whose posts have been an invaluable source in acquiring and more importantly maintaining a stable Asus Sage 10g build. I wanted to ask if you would kindly post your EFI for Big Sur. I am considering a move to Big Surf from Catalina but wanted to make sure I have the necessary qualifications to do so. Do you also have any other considerations you could share to negate unnecessary grief? Thank you again for your time and efforts!

 

[benjackson]

Hey all - happy new year. Thanks for this!

I have a weird problem. I'll try to be succinct. Any help, much appreciated!

My setup to the left, X299 Asus.

I was on Catalina, and upgraded to the latest security update the other day as it kept bugging me to do it. Once logging in, the system would freeze. I removed all LaunchAgents/Daemons and it started up - turns out it was iStat Menu, but thru no fault of that software.
I discovered that if I go to "About this Mac" it freezes. Like an old Mac OS 9 freeze. The cursor freezes.

That tells me that something is awry with the mac trying to access low level hardware things like sensors or trying to get info about the mac CPU or memory or whatever. I'm using MacPro7,1 and it's been very reliable, only thing was that error about memory misconfig which I fixed yesterday with the new RestrictEvents kext that was mentioned above. I actually thought that kext might also help this problem, but no.

Steps I've tried:
• Unplugging all peripherals
• Removing all kexts that do anything to do with sensors. I really thought I was clever here, but no effect.
• Updating all kexts and drivers in Clover.
• Updating clover. Once I went to latest clover, the system would not boot, had to go back to 5070.
• Setting up OpenCore. Surely this would work, I felt, because it's a whole new bootloader. After a day of fiddling with OpenCore I got someone else's EFI folder that was similar to my system, and it booted to installer, and fiddled with Terminal etc to get my Clover back working. Not going to attach my EFI as other than updating serial numbers and the pikera boot flag, I didn't change anything - it just works and is the same as everyone elses basically. It's definitely not anything to do with the EFI folder as the problem exists on both Clover and OpenCore - and was always working up until the latest Catalina security update.
• Tried using OpenCore instead of Clover. Nice bootloader, seemed about the same speed, but no change. Still freezing.
• Tried installing Big Sur on a different hard drive using my newly working OpenCore. All worked lovely - but it still crashed on "About this Mac". I could not believe this, as it's not only a new bootloader, but a new OS. That said, I did CCC from my other drive first, so it wasn't a fresh install.
• I then figured, the only thing left that's the same is the BIOS. I was on a fairly old BIOS from 2018, so upgraded to the latest, 3000 something. Figured this would absolutely fix it. I somehow got ONE time when About this Mac did not crash/freeze, but then it did every subsequent time, whether on Big Sur, Catalina, or using my user account or a brand new fresh one.
• Now that BIOS is updated, Clover no longer works, although I haven't tried updating to latest again. OpenCore seems to be working fine.

Things to still try - a fresh install of Big Sur. Removing internal hard drives or memory sticks or stuff like that. I haven't really investigated anything hardware related.

Any other thoughts? Could it possibly be a hardware fault maybe?

 

[izo1]

Aloha izo1,

Before my inquiry, just wanted to say Happy New Year to you and and everyone on this thread whose posts have been an invaluable source in acquiring and more importantly maintaining a stable Asus Sage 10g build. I wanted to ask if you would kindly post your EFI for Big Sur. I am considering a move to Big Surf from Catalina but wanted to make sure I have the necessary qualifications to do so. Do you also have any other considerations you could share to negate unnecessary grief? Thank you again for your time and efforts!

No problem, we can thank all the other people helping and still going at it
I will post the latest Big Sur EFI end of the week, pending some minor tweaks. I am still not full time on Big Sur because of software issues with Adobe (especially After Effects) which stops me from working, but it has been stable under Big Sur other than that.

I would say, you can update directly from Catalina to Big Sur without issues, but you need to have the latest EFI for that.

I would also advise that you keep a backup clone of your main drive.

I use CloneZilla with a USB stick (keep in mind both drives HAVE to be exact size, or the target drive has to be bigger). Ie some SSDs are 1024MB vs 1000MB. If this is the case for your target drive, use Carbon Copy Cloner (latest version). For example, the 970 Pro 1TB NVME that I have is 1024MB and an 860 EVO SSD is 1000MB so I can't use Carbon Copy Cloner. Example if you have a 970 Evo Plus it is 1000MB and I can clone to the 860 EVO SSD because its also 1000MB. CloneZilla just makes things super easy. But also remember you have to use a wired keyboard for CloneZilla since there is no Bluetooth support (I asked the devs to add BT keyboard support since it runs on Linux and they did but it still doesn't work).

I would also advise having an internal hard drive for Time Machine (2TB+, they are cheap) just in case you ever need to restore the OS from a Time Machine backup (which is possible and I have done it in the past on a Hackintosh because I lost my main clone drive). So 1x Time Machine backup for hourly backups and then 1x main clone drive that you can keep safe. For the clone drive I do that backup right before I do major OS updates, ie .2 or .3, but sometimes I skip it. But I think its essential to do a clone backup right before a new OS > OS, ie Catalina > Big Sur because the changes are so big it may cause issues so you have to reclone back.

So steps:

1) Clone your main OS with CloneZilla or Carbon Copy Cloner to a fresh SSD of the same size
2) Unplug your cloned target drive
3) Update your EFI with the one I will post later in the week (also make sure Catalina boots fine)
4) Direct update from Catalina to Big Sur from the OS

Keep in mind that Big Sur during updates (It will reboot multiple times) will not auto select the Preboot drive like Catalina used to do, so you may have to manually select your "Macintosh HD" drive from OpenCore. You have to do this multiple times so keep watching your monitor.

But other than that, upgrading from Catalina > Big Sur has been smooth for me. Just make sure you have a 1:1 cloned working backup of your main OS drive "just in case"....better off spending $80 for a 1TB SSD for backup than losing hours reinstalling everything. My macOS is very customized and I'd hate to lose all the settings and time.

Here are the USB Sticks I have available handy for troubleshooting/updating procedures:

1) OpenCore Boot USB (for testing and then moving to main SSD EFI) and also booting into Recovery Mode where you can restore from a Time Machine backup if necessary
2) FAT32 MBR formatted stick for updating BIOS with BIOS FlashBack
3) CloneZilla USB stick
4) Auxilary USB stick for storing files such as BIOS .cmo files and and other backups of OpenCore.

I also store my EFI backups on Dropbox and I date them in order so I can always go back a generation if needed or if I lose USB sticks I can recreate the EFI boot USB on another Mac.
You can put a $80-$90 1TB SATA SSD inside of a USB3 enclosure for your Clones. I was using this but it seems discontinued. SSD wise, just make sure it's exactly the same size as your main OS drive.

 

[benjackson]

Any other thoughts? Could it possibly be a hardware fault maybe?

So my own post made me try other things non-software, given I feel I'd logically tried all software possibilities. If I unplug the 2nd graphics card I have in there, in slot 1, (5700 sapphire GPU) it stops crashing on "About This Mac". I'm running the Vega 56 in Slot 2. Going to try swapping them. So there's something going on with that. If I just use the 5700 it still crashes.

(also tried hard drives, memory swaps etc, no effect)

I wonder if it's a GPU fault or if something with multiple setups or the AGDP mod is messing with it. I have a complicated monitor set up - 3 of them, 1 of them is a 5K that requires 2 DP cables, and the other is an old ASUS that achieves 4K via MST. Then another Benq SST 4K. So the pikera boot flag is required which messes with AGDP to enable all these odd monitors. Never had a problem before (once I made it work, which took me weeks) with this monitor/GPU setup, so not sure what changed from the security update (as well as Big Sur).

Perhaps a SMBIOS change from MacPro7,1 is in order as well?? I'm kinda documenting my efforts here just in case someone else has a similar issue. I tried searching for "About this mac" freeze and i couldn't find anything.

 

[benjackson]

Going to try swapping them. So there's something going on with that. If I just use the 5700 it still crashes.

This worked. Simply swapping the 2 graphics card slots, fixed the issue, at least with opening "About this Mac". Hope this is helpful to someone someday

 

[Loloflatsix]

Simply swapping the 2 graphics card slots,

Good to know :
- so the native & most compatible macOS GPU in your case the RX VEGA 56 must be on the upper first PCI 16_1 slot instead of the RX 5700 ( bootable only with agpmod=pikera) which must be below on the PCI 16_2 or PCI 16_3

 

[djlild7hina]

Good to know :
- so the native & most compatible macOS GPU in your case the RX VEGA 56 must be on the upper first PCI 16_1 slot instead of the RX 5700 ( bootable only with agpmod=pikera) which must be below on the PCI 16_2 or PCI 16_3

Typically Slot 1 (or whatever slot the first graphics card is in) is defined as GFX0 with WEG. Maybe using a SSDT to define the Vega 56 as GFX0 would be the same affect as swapping the cards? (This is just a guess)

 

[Loloflatsix]

Typically Slot 1 (or whatever slot the first graphics card is in) is defined as GFX0 with WEG. Maybe using a SSDT to define the Vega 56 as GFX0 would be the same affect as swapping the cards? (This is just a guess)

Yes : more useful instead of swapping the GPUs for a better look for example.

 

[benjackson]

Yeah which is why I had the Vega in what the mac seems to be recognizing as Slot 1, but in "sys info" it's showing it in Slot-2 now, which I would have thought not what it wanted. It wants the 5700 in Slot-1??! But yeah, the Vega is now in the physical top slot instead of the 5700. So you're bang on. Thanks for this insight! Makes more sense, and yes I could have fiddled with the SSDT.

What I do find weird is that all has been working fine for quite a while now, years in fact, since whenever I bought the 5700 to help with Davinci resolve rendering speeds. It was only since updating Catalina with the latest security update did it break everything. Would never have thought the security update would have changed anything that would have required a new SSDT. Additionally, my original Clover SSDT was customized for this machine, and what I'm using now in OpenCore is far more generic as I didn't alter anything at all (just downloaded someone else's that seems to have everything functional because my build is almost identical, just to try it out and play around). But all seems very stable now.

SO there you go!

 

[djlild7hina]

Yeah which is why I had the Vega in what the mac seems to be recognizing as Slot 1, but in "sys info" it's showing it in Slot-2 now, which I would have thought not what it wanted. It wants the 5700 in Slot-1??! But yeah, the Vega is now in the physical top slot instead of the 5700. So you're bang on. Thanks for this insight! Makes more sense, and yes I could have fiddled with the SSDT.

What I do find weird is that all has been working fine for quite a while now, years in fact, since whenever I bought the 5700 to help with Davinci resolve rendering speeds. It was only since updating Catalina with the latest security update did it break everything. Would never have thought the security update would have changed anything that would have required a new SSDT. Additionally, my original Clover SSDT was customized for this machine, and what I'm using now in OpenCore is far more generic as I didn't alter anything at all (just downloaded someone else's that seems to have everything functional because my build is almost identical, just to try it out and play around). But all seems very stable now.

SO there you go!

Congrats on moving to OpenCore! Make sure you follow this to wipe out Clover leftovers.
OpenCore-Install-Guide/clover-conversion at master · dortania/OpenCore-Install-Guide · GitHub

Depending on how old the EFI you're using, you may need to adjust some things in order for Big Sur support. It also depends on which BIOS version you're on with 3201 and newer seem to be better since ASUS broke the MSR lock functionality in between. Also your previous Clover SSDT may need to be adjusted for OpenCore so that could've been an issue as well.