So for YOLO I decided to get a new rig going to step up from my Z390 Taichi and wanted to share progress and steps to get where I am at. Hope to make this a full guide in the end so anyone can reproduce if they want. Namely I did this because the USB subsystem became to unpredictable on my last hack so I decided to make a new monstrocity because I have been tinkering making hack macs since in 2005 I took the Dev Kit bits and started hacking onto P4 machines in a college lab. I like challenges and normally start with unsupported to slowly work on getting something usable. I don't recommend this build yet until its a bit more stable and I have time to work through every last thing. Its totally usable now hence why I am writing this now.
Build components [changing over time]:
Intel 11700k Rocket Lake -S CPU [Now worth it since you can get it for a bit over 300 USD at time of writing in the discount + sale + bundles pricing]
Gigabyte Z590 Vision D [ $$$ but I wanted to play with native thunderbolt and the new ALC codec that hangs off the USB subsystem]
g.Skill 3466 DDR4 32 GB kit [re-used]
XFX Radeon VII [ re-used & will swap with 6800 XT which is supported starting in 11.4]
2 TB Samsung 970 NVME SSD [ re-used ]
Aquantia 10 GBe NIC [Asus & re-used ]
Airport Extreme 802.11 AC Wave 2 in PCIe [Re-used and will replace with onboard Intel AX + BT 5.0 setup when I have time built into the new mainboard]
What Works:
Boot, basic power states on CPU, GPU, USB, Storage, 10 GBe add-in, onboard 2.5 gbe nics, Apple wifi, audio, updates
Good for daily production use. No crashes, no kernel panics, feels nice but still some work to do.
What is still a WIP:
Final USB port mapping [ right now still running usbport limit patch using std USBAll kext ]
Full Thunderbolt 4
Onboard wifi + bt replacing Apple wifi
Full sleep, wake, fine grained power state [aka not treating 11th gen as older gen CPU]
iGPU [may never come]
non-cpuid patched [may never come]
Getting all the built-in security stuff going to make it think its more of a generic full mac [Full Disk Encryption, Apple Secure Boot, etc, etc]
clean up and final tuning of ACPI tables, cosmetic things, and cleaning up verbose errors. [if Intel never supports RocketLake-S natively this may never be fully done]
Steps:
You will need the following:
Use the Olarila Big Sur 11.2 Raw image and slip on the solid 11th gen/500 series EFI folder bits onto the EFI boot partition for the disk [no need to re-invent the wheel here for install]
You will want the following on the side for post install: [Feel free to stick with Olarila stuff if you want to, I just like to tweak and build up to a clean solution for the learning experience, and I like using OpenCore to boot my other OSs too]
Latest OpenCore (0.6.8 at this time), OC configurator, LILU, VirtualSMC, IntelMausi, USBInjectAll, Whatevergreen, itlwm, Intel Bluetooth
Keep a browser tab open with the OpenCore Install Guide
See the "CPUID for Rocket Lake Processors" in the Olarila page? Yah you are going to need that.
Use the raw image and EFI folder bits from Olarila to install 11.2 and get into the install for the first time making sure to do your BIOS changes like a Z490. Yah stuff isn't great yet but we can fix most of that to get missing stuff specific to this hardware and get closer and closer to a decent hack together for daily work. Dont be suprised if the first boot results in a reboot, the second time will work.
Now that your in lets make this a psudo z490 based system with tweaks for our unsupported hardware. Have the OpenCore guide open? good! I suggest at this point having the following windows open: this page, the OpenCore Install Guide on the Configs -> Commet Lake Intel Desktop Config page, Open Core Configurator that supports your OC release, and the folder for your files
get a sample plist from Open Core Config for 0.6.8 (in this example) and clear out all the placeholders in the Open Core Config utility.
ACPI section: Since we are going with minimum edits right now of the system boot ACPI tables we want the following pre-compiled ssdts linked off of the comet lake ACPI guide: SSDT-PLUG, SSDT-EC-USBX, SSDT-AWAC [skip SSDT-RHUB since we dont need it], No quirks checked. [your delete and patch should be clear].
Booter: Nothing under Mimo and Patch sections, Quirks are: AvoidRuntimeDefrag, Devirtualizemmimo, Enablesafemodeslide, Protectuefiservices, providecustomslide, max slide is default of 0, rebuildapplememorymap, syncruntimepermissions [everything else unchecked].
DeviceProperties: Clear this out We dont need to set an codec for this mainboard (its just a USB attached ALC device), IGPU isnt supported for this generation, and there isnt much else to do atm.
Kernel: Ok there is a lot to do here... lets start simple...
Add - All those kexts we grabbed you want to set up and add [from VirtualSMC I ahve VirtualSMC, SMCProcessor, and SMCSuperIO]. Right now I have all the Intel wifi and bluetooth stuff added but not enabled because I don't have the time to get those working and my old wifi card pulled out [stupid needing to sleep and wake up for work]
block & Force - nothing
Patch...
set IDENTIFIER to com.apple.driver.AppleEthernetAquantiaAqtion with a FIND of "0F84C002 0000" and REPLACE of "660F1F44 0000" This is the fix for the Aquantia 10 GB NIC not being detected due to a detection logic issue Apple changed in a update to big sur. Dont have one of these cards? No need to have it then.
fake the 2.5gbe controller to use built in kext? set IDENTIFIER to com.apple.driver.AppleIntelI210Ethernet with a FIND of "F2150000" & REPLACE of "F3150000"
Emulate section: Lets go ahead and use Olarila's recomendation values of cpuid1Data: "EB060900 00000000 00000000 00000000" & CPUid1Mask "FFFFFFFF 00000000 00000000 00000000" leave this other section blank/unchecked.
Scheme: fuzzymatch enabled, I like to set my arch to x86_64 and cache to Auto.
Quirks: ApplexCPMCfgLock, DisableioMapper, Disablelinkeditjettison, panicnokextdump, powertimeoutkernelpanic, apfstrimtimeout "-1", XhciPortLimit. Everything else unchecked. [I have VT-D enabled in BIOS hence IOMapper entry]
MISC: I like prettiness. So I set picker to external, atribute 17, variant modern, show picker. You can get the Resource folder stuff from HERE
Personally I leave the debug and security stuff to defaults until I get to those or need them. I just for now make sure securebootmodel is default and vault is optional.
NVRAM: You can remove the alcid=1 part in the defaults since we dont use a codec selection. You can also fix the kb lang if you want to local or just leave it blank. I do like going into "4D1EDE05-38C7-4A6A-9CC6-4BCCA8B38C14" and setting my UIScale to 02 for HighDPI support for my 4k panels. No need for a rtc-blacklist entry.
PaltformInfo: Ok here we get to something that some may disagree. I use a iMac20,1 base rather then a MacPro or iMacPro base. Yes the architecture is a bit different but the 20,1 is the closest we have to what this platform actually is. Z590 is a modification of the z490 with a lot of changes that have been waiting (PCIe 4.0, better DMI, etc). The CPU also is a back-ported 10nm architecture back to 14nm (thats where those extra 2 cores went from the i9, literally no extra space on the package). You can make a more generic platform but to my mind this is close enough for daily work though I am sure for some devices treating the z590 like the z490 might cause issues but for this mainboard and CPU config it seems to be good enough. I set Automatic, UpdateDataHub, UpdateNVRAM, UpdateSMBIOS, and the update mode to create. Do the usual generation of the SN, UUID, and Product name how ever you want to do this and test those SNs to make sure they arent in use by a real mac. [dont be a jerk]
UEFI:
APFS - Enable Jumpstart, HideVerbose, set your Mins to 0
AppleInput - Will work on this latter when I get to FSD aka FileVault
Audio - One day I will get that wonderful chime back but for now I am skipping
Drivers - I have AudioDXE.efi in there and ready, OpenCanopy, OpenHfsPlus, and OpenRuntime. Connect drivers checked
Input - Defaults work good enough for me.
Output - BuiltinGraphics, Resolution "Max", ProvideConsoleGop
ProtocolOverides - FirmwareVolume
ReservedMemory - blank
Quirks at the bottom - RequestBootVarRouting checked
Whew that was a lot. Again not perfect and people may prefer other ways or just use the generic Olarila ACPI and config.plist. It works just change and generate a new platforminfo section. Again I like doing things a bit differently to learn more about my system and learn more about OpenCore and read the good detailed explanations on the OpenCore guide.
Build your new EFI partition off of your BigSur Drive.
Remember you want your EFI folder in the EFI volume... dont just move your BOOT and OC stuff into the root of the EFI drive.
BOOT should just contain your BOOTx64.efi
OC Folder is going to have the config.plist we just made. ACPI is going to have your SDTs for AWACS, EC-USBX, & PLUG. Drivers is going to have your AudioDxe, OpenCanopy, OpenHfsPlus, and OpenRuntime efi files. All of your kexts go in Kexts. Those Resources files you got earlier all go in their equivilent folder under your /EFI/EFI/OC/Resources folder. Tools go to Tools.
Sanity check time. double check your KEXTS, Drivers, ACPI areas in your config using OpenCore Configurator. Feel free to clear everything out of the Add entries again and hit Scan/Browse to see the right files and paths pull in updated. Something missing or looking wrong? Double check your folder and file structure in the EFI path.
Save, reboot, cross your fingers, and boot from your new EFI partition on your Mac OS SSD.
But what about...
audio? Realtek USB 2.0 Audio IS the new audio device for the onboard audio controller for this mainboard. It's now hanging off of the USB Bus. No AppleALC or codecs needed. I just need to poke it a bit and I am sure a few renames will make it super easy to use but thats for another day for me. Right now its just detected as a generic but super usable USB Audio device.
onboard wireleess? thats on my to-do list but the kexts are there that support it. I just need to do a half day working on it and document the results here. Hay its a work in progress.
USB mapping? Everyone has different devices attached. I need to go through this myself but I will document my findings and what connects to what soon enough. All the ports are working right now but not optimal. You can go through this yourself using THIS INFO
Thunderbolt? After I am done port mapping I will work on this. Should be do-able.
Sleep? Yes I will be going to sleep soon enough. But I did all of this including the tare down, setup new care, and re-do everything in 2 hours. I will have another slow day eventually and will get to this.
File Vault & Security? Ditto for the above. This is a lower priority thing for me.
Boot Chime? This is the final thing I do on my systems. Makes me feel like I am finally done. Shouldnt be to hard to do once I finish everything else.
