Intel i7-4790K and MSI Z97 PC Mate

Intro

I successfully installed MacOS Catalina onto my system today (Jan 20th 2020), and everything that I care about works. This is my attempt at documenting the process/build for my future self and for anyone out there that might find this useful.

Overall, the process was really easy and relatively painless. I basically followed the vanilla guide recommended by Reddit (see https://hackintosh.gitbook.io/-r-hackintosh-vanilla-desktop-guide/) for the most part and filled in very minor gaps in the guide with some youtube videos and googling.

The relevant hardware:

• Intel core i7-4790K (Haswell refresh, Devil's Canyon)

• MSI Z97 PC Mate motherboard

  • Realtek RTL8111G gigabit ethernet

  • Realtek ALC887 sound

  • USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports

• MSI GT 710 1GD3H LP GPU

• Sata SSD

Everything that I care about, except the wifi, works. This includes graphics, sound, iMessage, basic stuff, shutdown, and sleep/wake (!).

Summary of steps

1. Following the vanilla guide, install clover v2.5k_r5103 from https://github.com/Dids/clover-builder/releases/tag/v2.5k_r5103

2. Download Clover Configurator from http://mackie100projects.altervista.org/download-clover-configurator/

3. Download the kexts from the recommended site in the vanilla guide https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21APjCyRpzoAKp4xs&id=FE4038DA929BFB23%21455036&cid=FE4038DA929BFB23:

   1. AppleALC-1.4.6-DevBuild-01182020_074011 (for audio. check the vanilla guide for supported codecs. ALC887 is one of them)

   2. Lilu-1.4.1-DevBuild-01092020_023504

   3. RealtekRTL8111-2.3.0d7-Release-08152019_025102

   4. USBInjectAll-0.7.1-Release-11092018_230553 (used this at first, but can be replaced with usbmapping later)

   5. VirtualSMC-1.1.0-DevBuild-01052020_083017

   6. WhateverGreen-1.3.6-DevBuild-01132020_010357

   7. RehabMan-VoodooTSCSync-2018-1020 (this is optional for some people. I used this post-install because I had issues with waking up from sleep correctly. Source: https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/hackintosh-lags-after-wake-from-sleep.276096/)

4. Use the config.plist for Haswell from https://hackintosh.gitbook.io/-r-hackintosh-vanilla-desktop-guide/

5. Change Smbios to iMac14,2. Some people recommended 14,2 as opposed to 15,1 because 14,2 had a similar CPU and an Nvidia graphics card.

6. In clover, enable "fixDisplay" in the ACPI tab (this is optional. I did this to correct an issue waking up from sleep)

7. Adjust Bios settings according to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA9AotXqkqA

8. Follow the general instructions from the youtube video above to install macOS and copy over the Clover EFI and misc files from the usb drive to the main drive. Specifically, boot from usb, go into the macOS installer, set up the SSD by erasing and then creating macOS journaled partition with GUID partition, and then installing macOS onto this partition. Keep in mind that during the entire installation the computer will reboot twice; if needed, after the reboots, choose the SSD instead of the USB in the clover menu. Once we're in the MacOS system, download and install Clover and the configurator to the desktop. In Clover, instead of installing to the usb installer like before, install Clover to the internal drive with the same patches/options as Step 1. The last step is to use the configurator to mount both the internal EFI partition and usb EFI partition. With both of them open, copy the entire EFI folder from the usb partition into the internal partition; this is essentially copying over all the kexts, config.plist, and miscellaneous items that allowed us to successfully boot the system into our internal Clover installation. At this point the computer should be able to boot without the usb stick (see the misc section if the motherboard is too old to support this method).

9. Enable trim (see misc section for tips). Mount the EFI and open the config.plist with clover configurator. In the kernel patches section, add the enable trim patch.

Everything booted up correctly and worked out the box. I had to include the extra voodoo kext and patch to fix an issue waking up from sleep. i.e., the computer would sleep properly, but after waking up, the graphics and mouse were really sluggish. The source link above has a key phrase to search for in terminal to verify the specific problem.

I also mapped my usb drives and used the generated usb kext instead of usbinjectall. Mapping tutorials can be found in the misc section. The motherboard plus case had less than 15 devices so I was able to map all the desired ports. 4 rear usb 2.0 and 2 on top of the case. 2 usb 3.0 in the rear and 2 on top. That's 6 + 4*2 (usb 3.0 counts as two) = 14. Note to self, the usb mapping tool found some "PR" devices too; not sure what those were.

In case some people are interested, here are the geekbench results:

Edit ~2/2/20: this build was able to natively (!) update from 10.15.1 to 10.15.2 (I think). The computer will reboot after initializing the update. There will be extra icons in Clover. Choose the newer ones; I think they may have the word "update" somewhere.