Z690 Chipset Motherboards and Alder Lake CPU

[etorix]

gotta be the i9, it just makes more sense to me, if Apple ever do put out another intel mac.. long shot i know but hey you never know, its surely going to be based on this architecture so should properly support P + E cores with proper sharing of workload for given task.

Nope. If Apple does introduce one last Intel-based Mac, all bets are on an updated Mac Pro with Xeon W-3300 CPU—these are based on Ice Lake. Alder Lake-based Xeons ("Sapphire Rapids") are expected soon, but yet be released, and the first parts are always the server versions, with workstation parts coming later (end 2022? too late for Apple anyway).
Sapphire Rapids only uses P-cores. Another declination with (lots of) E-cores only is planned for 2024 ("Sierra Forest"). Hybrid architecture CPUs are NOT welcome in the data centre.

Apple has no incentive whatsoever to use Alder Lake: It runs way too hot for their compact designs. With the release of the Mac Studio, I even think Apple has very little incentive to update the big Mac Pro with an Intel CPU and that we have seen the last Intel Mac already.
The 27" iMac has been silently discontinued. Left are the (Coffee Lake) Intel Mac mini, which will probably be discontinued in the near future, and the (Cascade Lake) Mac Pro. Announcing an Apple Silicon Mac Pro at the next WWDC would complete the transition exactly two years after it was announced—I expect that this opportunity will NOT be missed.

 

[sonny362]

@imXeno, welcome!
I have the same m/b and some times ago got the same troubles after BIOS upgrading. Some BIOS settings lost at flashing time, and I had to roll back to previous version.
What BIOS release are you using now?

 

[bonfilio124]

Hello,

I've run out of ideas so I decided to open an account here and ask for help. I am trying to build a Monterey Hackintosh using my existing hardware:
- Motherboard: MSI Z690-A PRO DDR4 (Intel I225-V, Realtek ALC897)
- CPU: Intel i9-12900K (all cores active, HT enabled)
- GPU: MSI Radeon RX 6900 XT Gaming Z Trio
- RAM: G.Skill Trident Z Neo 32 GB 3600Mhz CL14 x2
- SSD: Samsung 980 Pro 2TB
- PSU: Corsair HX1200

Everything seemed to be going fine until I started to do some post-installation stuff. When the system boots it works blazingly fast... but just for a minute or two after booting, then it gets completely unresponsive (launching Safari lags, loading preference panes lags, closing windows takes way too long, etc.), even a small task like extracting a .xip archive (Xcode) takes forever to complete (compared to an Intel MacBook Pro 13" from 2020) and trying to open Safari while the archive is extracting results in a 15-second wait time. I can observe this kind of behavior every time the system boots.

Does anyone have an idea what is going on? Right now I ditched my old EFI folder in favor of using "generic Alder Lake EFI folder v.9" by @etorix, did all the customizations he talked about, and the problem still persists. I'm not seeing this kind of problem on Windows (dual boot), so it's rather a macOS-specific issue and not a general hardware failure.

Thanks in advance.

I had the exact same issues. Everything starts fast, shortly after boot slows and eventually hard reboots. Did you have reboots at all?

This isn't going to help much but what solved it for me was switching motherboards. I had an ASRock Extreme Wifi 6, eventually replaced it with the same board you have, ddr4 MSI Pro A, which still exhibited the problem. Updated bios, did memory tests, etc etc. At this point I made major purchases and swapped out my 5700XT for a 6900XT, my 64GB of OLOY (3200XMP, always kept it in stock mode though) for 128GB of and bought a Gigabyte AERO G as it was featured in Casey?s golden build. Works flawlessly.

I went back and test both new and old memory and along with the old 5700xt and the new 6900xt, everything worked fine with the AERO G. Swapping the pieces back into the 2 other boards caused problems.

I'm not saying the boards aren't good Hackintosh boards because I've seen a few other people using them, but I couldn't make them work with the existing EFIs that are floating around. My DSDT/iasl-fu is not as strong as it was when I was using Asus Prime based hacks.

 

[guindillas]

I had the exact same issues. Everything starts fast, shortly after boot slows and eventually hard reboots. Did you have reboots at all?

This isn't going to help much but what solved it for me was switching motherboards. I had an ASRock Extreme Wifi 6, eventually replaced it with the same board you have, ddr4 MSI Pro A, which still exhibited the problem. Updated bios, did memory tests, etc etc. At this point I made major purchases and swapped out my 5700XT for a 6900XT, my 64GB of OLOY (3200XMP, always kept it in stock mode though) for 128GB of and bought a Gigabyte AERO G as it was featured in Casey?s golden build. Works flawlessly.

I went back and test both new and old memory and along with the old 5700xt and the new 6900xt, everything worked fine with the AERO G. Swapping the pieces back into the 2 other boards caused problems.

I'm not saying the boards aren't good Hackintosh boards because I've seen a few other people using them, but I couldn't make them work with the existing EFIs that are floating around. My DSDT/iasl-fu is not as strong as it was when I was using Asus Prime based hacks.

Three MB?¿?

I am using ASrock Z690 Extreme, for 3 months and all is OK.

@Casey's has to make a mayor purchase of Gigabyte Aero G for all

 

[CaseySJ]

Three MB?¿?

I am using ASrock Z690 Extreme, for 3 months and all is OK.

@Casey's has to make a mayor purchase of Gigabyte Aero G for all

With all this talk of Gigabyte Aero G, let me say that on Asus Z690 boards such as ProArt Creator, we get full Thunderbolt Bus with Big Sur (not with Monterey) on built-in Maple Ridge controller with no firmware modifications.

 

[trs96]

we get full Thunderbolt Bus with Big Sur (not with Monterey)

Do you think that will change once the Mac Studio arrives with an updated version of Monterey that supports TH4 ?

 

[etorix]

Apple Silicon drivers for the embedded Thunderbolt controller of the M1 series cannot be expected to contribute anything towards Maple Ridge support on Intel platform.

 

[imXeno]

Welcome @imXeno ! Note that your motherboard has a user build here, where you may get help more directly.
My guess would be that there's a TRIM issue with the Samsung 980 Pro; if so, the solution would be to get a drive which has better support under macOS.

I reinstalled macOS on a Samsung 750 Evo (SATA SSD) and the problem is gone. Thanks!

@imXeno, welcome!
I have the same m/b and some times ago got the same troubles after BIOS upgrading. Some BIOS settings lost at flashing time, and I had to roll back to previous version.
What BIOS release are you using now?

I'm now on 7D25v12.

 

[guindillas]

With all this talk of Gigabyte Aero G, let me say that on Asus Z690 boards such as ProArt Creator, we get full Thunderbolt Bus with Big Sur (not with Monterey) on built-in Maple Ridge controller with no firmware modifications.

Problem with Gigabyte Z690 Aero G, is there is no supply in EU (about rev. 1 DDR4).
And ProArt is double prize.

I haven't tried Thunderbolt, but could be the same os Asrock.
I don't need Thunderbolt for the moment.

ASrock has: 1 x Thunderbolt AIC Connector (5-pin) (Supports ASRock Thunderbolt 4 AIC Card)

The same 5 pin as the Aero G.

 

[ori69]

Do you think that will change once the Mac Studio arrives with an updated version of Monterey that supports TH4 ?

Mac Studio has a standard version of Monterey Macos 12.3 (Build 21E230). So I do not suppose something changed.