Catalina 10.15.5 Opencore 0.5.9 - X99-UD4/5820k/32Gb
Hi, everyone. After 6 years and two upgrades (Chameleon/Yosemite and Clover/High Sierra), never having gotten fully satisfied with my hack and almost regretting to have invested on a X99 platform, I gave Opencore a shot! I really wanted to keep up with macOS and learn a little more to hopefully tweak things to my liking.
I couldn't be happier. What a great work by everyone at the Acidantera/Dortania team (https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Desktop-Guide/misc/credit.html), you guys rock!
My build:
CPU: Haswell-E Intel i7 5820K
GPU: Gigabyte AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT
RAM: Crucial Ballistix 32Gb DDR4 2400MHz (xmp off, I get a panic on boot if on, had it working with clover)
Motherboard: Gigabyte X99-UD4 (rev 1.0)
SSD: Samsung Evo Plus 970 m.2 (no NVme on this board) + Sandisk 240Gb Sata Drive for Windows.
Cooler: Corsair H80 + 2x Noctua NF-F12-PWM fans (handles OC easily)
Audio Codec: Realtek ALC1150
Ethernet Card: Intel
Wifi/BT Card: BT USB dongle, no Wifi
BIOS revision: 24c
Guides: https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Desktop-Guide/
What's working: Opencore, Dual Boot, USB (most of it), Power Management, overclock, ethernet, audio, emulated NVRAM, iServices, DRM... pretty much everything I need.
What isn't working: X.M.P., Continuity/Handoff (no Wi-Fi), Sleep/Wake, some USB 3.0 ports.
Not yet tested/Unnecessary: FileVault, every audio port, Boot chime.
Guide:
I followed the OpenCore-Desktop-Guide above to the T, coming from my High Sierra drive with Clover. First, I downloaded the latest version from gibMacos, created the usb with createinstallmedia and started gathering the files for the EFI partition. As suggested on the guide, I created both SSDT-EC and SSDT-PLUG manually, needed for Haswell-E. Take the time to read https://dortania.github.io/Getting-Started-With-ACPI/ and learn it, is very simple and it pays off.
EFI partition tree on the USB install media
UPDATE: I noticed CPU Power Management was working but Turbo Boost was performing poorly under load. Geekbench was giving me 19000 in Multi-core score and After Effects render was 4x longer. So, after some googling and research here and InsanelyMac I can only say: man... PM is really difficult and I still have a lot to learn. I had to install PmDrvr.kext https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/317747-haswell-e-powermanagement-yet-another-option/ to get similar results to my High Sierra/Clover Install. Probably not the right thing to do, but I couldn't make CPUFriend to work (documentation is really confusing and I'm not even sure if X99 is supported) and the guide recommendations (xcpm quirks, CPU Spoofing) were insufficient. These patches are still on, though. Results: Power usage is very similar, idling at 1.2GHz and 10-12W and better performance under load, at 4GHz with overclock and topping 55W. It's definitely more stable than the last install, no panics, freezes or sudden reboots so far.
Geekbench in High Sierra with Clover, NullCPUPowerManagement.kext and VoodooTSCSync.kext
Geekbench in Catalina with OpenCore and PmDrvr.kext (Even better, though temporary?)
Bios settings (Note: I don't have Above 4G decoding and CFG-Lock is unlocked on this board, also enabled the 4ghz upgrade) :
- Disabled - Fast Boot, Secure Boot, VT-d, CSM
-Enabled: VT-x, Hyper-Threading, Execute Disable Bit, EHCI/XHCI Hand-off, OS type: Windows 8.1/10 UEFI Mode.
Config.plist setup, installation and post-install:
Follow the guide closely. As recommended I went with SMBIOS: iMacPro1,1. In my case, CFG-Lock is unlocked on my board and I have no support for NVRAM, so I configured the quirks for it accordingly. The Sanity Checker helps, but don't rely on it. If you don't boot to the install, you might have to tinker with the config.plist it a little bit. I kept getting panics stuck on [EB|#LOG:EXITBS:START]. but luckily the guide was updated with the recommendation to disable DevirtualizeMmio in that case, and it did it for me. I later enabled it and whitelisted the good sectors, as explained here: https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Desktop-Guide/extras/kaslr-fix.html#using-devirtualisemmio. The General Troubleshooting section is awesome.
The Post-Install is also covered there. For me, internet, audio, iServices, DRM and Power Management were up and running. I mapped the USB but my board has a row of Renesas controlled ports that I never got to work properly. I might give another go in the future.
That's it!
If any of you have any tips to make it even better, please let me know. If I run into any trouble in the next few days, I'll update this post. I'd be happy to help anyone with questions as well! Happy hacking!
UPDATE (09/12/20): I've updated to 0.6.1 and 10.5.6 following the official guide recommendations, and everything seems to work fine so far.