Interestingly, my 6 year old Hackintosh rig is still going strong and so I decided to upgrade it from macOS X Mojave to macOS 11 Big Sur. Since OpenCore is pretty well documented by now, I wanted to give it a try and replace Clover (which seems to use OpenCore as well by now).
However, the transition from Clover to OpenCore wasn’t smooth at all. OpenCore has quite a steep learning curve and I spent almost an entire, foggy November Sunday to get it all up and running.
The relevant system components in my Hackintosh are:
- Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD5H (BIOS rev. F10c)
- Intel Haswell Core(TM) i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz
- Intel HD Graphics Intel 4600
- Onboard ALC Audio
- Custom flashed PCI Intel Gigabit CT NIC (so, not using onboard NIC)
Super helpful were:
- Dortanias OpenCore troubleshooting guide to navigate around preboot issues and kernel panics.
- CorpNewt’s USBMap
- Fewtarius’ CPUFriendFriend generator fork for the CPUFriend.kext (a Lilu plug-in) to enable the CPU’s Low Frequency Mode (LFM)
- CorpNewt’s MountEFI
- The OpenCore configuration sanity checker
A few additional notes:
- BIOS Settings as per recommendation for Haswell, see OpenCore docs.
- The Haswell DSDT provided by Dortanina resulted in a KP, use the ones provided in the link below.
- Use the CPUFriendFriend generator link above to create the data for the CPUFriendDataProvider. However, I’m not sure if the CPUFriend.kext actually makes a difference. I can see the CPU frequency dropping below 1 GHz in Intel’s Power Gadget though (see screenshot below) and I think the CPU fan is running a little quieter. Can be omitted when in doubt.
- Everything related to sleep/wake is working as expected.
- I didn’t include any kext binaries, make sure to always download the latest versions.
Check out my Github repository: github.com/trick77/opencore-ga-z97x-ud5h
Appreciate the guidance here! I found after switching “Windows 8 Features” to “Windows 8” and then setting “CSM Support” to “Never” the bios fails to start up (and i have to restore settings from backup)
Can you share what values you used for those settings? Thanks!
John, my settings are “Windows 8” and “Never”.
When you say minimal ssdt, how did you obtain one? Build it yourself?
I have a sky lake system. How did you go about creating your ssdt? I’m wondering if I should make my own and if so, what’s the easiest way to do it? Guide?
I’m pretty sure this is covered in the guide, it may involve a different OS like Linux though.
Did you use the stock SSDTs from Dortania, or modify/customize them for your system?
Those Haswell Desktop SSDTs always kernel panicked.
did you follow a certain guide to build your own SSDTs? I’ve modeled my systems after you and never had to make SSDTs.
I just used a minimal SSDT. Everything else -> instant KP.
Sorry for all the questions. Do you recall where you found the minimal ssdt you used?
can you post your config file sans unique id info?
i have the exact same set up.
im dumb, its in the git. please delete me