Z690 Chipset Motherboards and Alder Lake CPU

[NCMacGuy]

I've yet to try that fix but wanted to report another issue I've had with the Z690i board and on other chipsets I've used that may be related. When I reset the NVRAM I lose visibility of the EFI boot partition in Monterey, the board bios can only see Windows (which is installed on a separate stand alone drive). I have a copy of Easy UEFI that when loaded from Windows will find and remark that partition and allow me to boot.

I'm just wondering if anyone else has seen that behavior and or has any suggestions beside what I'm doing to deal with it. I have yet to try CaseySJ's trick noted above as that may be another way to sort this.

@Leesureone

It has been many months since being in the same predicament without the macOS EFI being displayed in OC Picker or BIOS. This was with other boards and other versions of macOS. As I recall I had to short the Reset CMOS pins on the board to get the macOS EFI to reappear in BIOS or OC Picker. Not very convenient!

The other thing that didn't seem to work well was to turn off the power to the board for 10+ seconds.

 

[Leesureone]

Like you said, for me EasyUEFI is the solution. That's whay I do NVRAM reset from picker only when is nothing else to do. I don't know if is right, but when I need to reset NVRAM, I delete variables in Hackintool and reboot.

That’s a grest tip using Hackintool, I’ll make sure to give that a try.

 

[Leesureone]

@Leesureone

It has been many months since being in the same predicament without the macOS EFI being displayed in OC Picker or BIOS. This was with other boards and other versions of macOS. As I recall I had to short the Reset CMOS pins on the board to get the macOS EFI to reappear in BIOS or OC Picker. Not very convenient!

The other thing that didn't seem to work well was to turn off the power to the board for 10+ seconds.

Shorting the CMOS should work but like you mention not exactly convenient. Question off the subject, I saw your post about hitting 80 degrees benchmarking your machine, which I thought for the i9 seemed about right. What are your typical ideal temperatures? I’m going to be upgrading my CPU, AIO and case and will have a comparable system so I’m curious.

 

[NCMacGuy]

I saw your post about hitting 80 degrees benchmarking your machine, which I thought for the i9 seemed about right. What are your typical ideal temperatures? I’m going to be upgrading my CPU, AIO and case and will have a comparable system so I’m curious.

@Leesureone

Under heavy load the i9 at 80° seems typical for me without modifying BIOS power settings, and other reports I have seen. I very rarely use a hackintosh this way.

If you meant "typical idle temperatures," or what I observe doing simple tasks like web browsing or email, the temps run in the 20°-40° range with occasional spikes. Here's Intel Power Gadget graphs for that type of usage.

 

[Leesureone]

@Leesureone Under heavy load the i9 at 80° seems typical for me without modifying BIOS power settings, and other reports I have seen. I very rarely use a hackintosh this way. If you meant "typical idle temperatures," or what I observe doing simple tasks like web browsing or email, the temps run in the 20°-40° range with occasional spikes. Here's Intel Power Gadget graphs for that type of usage. View attachment 540293

Yes, I meant idle but spell check changed it. Thanks, very nice.

 

[StefanAM]

Yes, I meant idle but spell check changed it. Thanks, very nice.

Gigabyte overclock guide (https://www.gigabyte.com/FileUpload/Global/KeyFeature/1976/innergigabyteimages/Z690-OC-GUIDE.pdf):

 

[ckrueger99]

That’s a grest tip using Hackintool, I’ll make sure to give that a try.

It would be nice if you or @StefanAM could write up a guide on how to do this in Hackintool. Seems important for Alder Lake, with certain MBs, at least.

 

[StefanAM]

It would be nice if you or @StefanAM could write up a guide on how to do this in Hackintool. Seems important for Alder Lake, with certain MBs, at least.

Open Hackintool, go to NVRAM tab, select each variable and click minus (-) sign until you clear all.

 

[guindillas]

Great thread here, recently finished an Alder Lake i5 ITX build using an Asus Z690i Gaming Wifi board. When I was attempting to load Monterey for the first time on a virgin SSD I'd get to the install screen but all that would show was a grey screen and the mouse cursor. Blank screen otherwise. I thought at the time it was a USB related issue as I hadn't been able to map the ports yet. It turns out there are other users who have had the same problem as noted here, credit @gandem and @CaseySJ . #154

I've yet to try that fix but wanted to report another issue I've had with the Z690i board and on other chipsets I've used that may be related. When I reset the NVRAM I lose visibility of the EFI boot partition in Monterey, the board bios can only see Windows (which is installed on a separate stand alone drive). I have a copy of Easy UEFI that when loaded from Windows will find and remark that partition and allow me to boot.

I'm just wondering if anyone else has seen that behavior and or has any suggestions beside what I'm doing to deal with it. I have yet to try CaseySJ's trick noted above as that may be another way to sort this.

You can activate the UEFI partition with the Shell, from Opencore, or I recomend to create an USB with EFIshell, and execute the comands: bcfg boot dump

Locate the partition, fs0, fs1, etc, and the efi folder:

bcfg boot add 3 fs0:\BOOT\Boot.efi "Opencore"

 

[Leesureone]

You can activate the UEFI partition with the Shell, from Opencore, or I recomend to create an USB with EFIshell, and execute the comands: bcfg boot dump

Locate the partition, fs0, fs1, etc, and the efi folder:

bcfg boot add 3 fs0:\BOOT\Boot.efi "Opencore"

I have to try that! Great Tip!!