So about a month ago I decided to upgrade my hackintosh from El Capitan to Sierra.
Bad idea. It didn’t upgrade despite guides saying it should work seamlessly. That led to me grabbing the installation disk for macOS Sierra and loading Multibeast on it again.
Cloning my SSD to a backup HDD and wiping it clean, I followed the instructions off TonyMacX86 to start fresh on Sierra.
Before I continue, the specs for my Hackintosh is below, in case you want to attempt a similar build:
CPU: Intel Core i7 4770K
Motherboard: Asus Z97-E (UEFI Boot)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance DDR3 32GB (4x8GB)
GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 960 2GB
OS Drive: Adata SP550 240GB SATA III
Cloned: Adata SP900 512GB SATA III
Monitor 1: AOC 2693 2560x1080 (DP)
Monitor 2: Dell ST2421L 1920x1080 (HDMI)
Booting from USB is straightforward as always, and the installation process went smoothly. Click through the steps and wait for a reboot.
Once on the desktop, run Multibeast and install drivers:
Boot: UEFI Boot
SMBIOS: Mac Pro 6,1
Audio: Realtek ALC892
Optional:
USB drivers
HWMon
Now here’s where shit happens. Because I’m using a Mac Pro SMBIOS, macOS by default disables video out on GPU0 to use as a dedicated compute card and uses GPU1 as video out. I only have 1 GPU, which is seen as GPU0. So IF you reboot now, (don’t do it), you’ll get a blank screen but responsive system. Sound also doesn’t work immediately (even after a reboot) due to a minor configuration glitch easily fixed in System Prefs > Sound > “Line Out”.
To figure out the issue with the dual GPU with one active for video out, install a remote desktop tool like Chrome Remote or something and THEN reboot. Obviously you can sign in despite not seeing anything but when you’re logged in, connect via Chrome and use the AGDP Fix tool to manually patch the GPU configuration to allow video out on GPU0.
Or go edit SSDTs and change the device ID to GPU1 or something. There’s a step by step guide that explains well enough but I couldn’t figure out for the life of me since I don’t have a similar config to his.
Once those glaring issues are out of the way, I went ahead to fix iMessage, which obviously shouldn’t work on a hackintosh until you fix some things in the background.
Thankfully for my situation, it was just a UUID and board serial number issue. Fix those two numbers via Clover Configurator, reboot, and iMessage works.
Only problem now is that sometimes CUDA rendering in Premiere craps out but that happens on Windows too, so I suspect it’s either Nvidia or Adobe’s fault, or both.
Only thing I’ve changed since installation is my OS drive. I’ve cloned it over back to my Adata SP900 512GB SATA drive after wiping El Cap off of it.
Links to help/software
Sierra Install Guide
Aside from that, I’ve got nothing else to share. Time sync issues when booting back into Windows will be addressed in a future post.
Literally can’t believe it took an entire day to install a system. Better than the 3 days it took for El Cap.