Asus P8P67 PRO

华硕ASUS 2021-02-15

ASUS P8P67 PRO/EVO Hackintosh

Guide about installing macOS Big Sur on ASUS P8P67 PRO/EVO (REV3.0) based PC

Info

This Hackintosh was build with help of Qraxin/Asus-P8P67-OpenCore-EFI repository as base.

macOS: Big Sur 11.1
bootloader: OpenCore 0.6.5

BIOS

Use version 3602 (get ROM for PRO/EVO Board from BIOS folder)

Check for correct BIOS settings:

EZ-Mode
- System Performance
  - Asus Optimized

Advanced Mode
- Advanced
  - SATA
    - Mode Selection: AHCI
    - S.M.A.R.T.: Enabled
  - USB
    - Legacy: Enabled
    - Legacy USB 3.0: Enabled
    - EHCI Hand-off: Disabled
  - Onboard Devices
    - Renesas USB 3.0: Disabled
    - Bluetooth: Disabled
    - VIA 1394: Disabled
    - Marvell Storage: AHCI
    - Serial Port: Disabled
- Boot
  - PCI ROM: Legacy ROM
  - Option ROM: Force BIOS

Hardware

This Hackintosh was created on an ASUS P8P67 PRO Mainboard with an Intel Core i7 2600K Processor and 16GB RipjawsX DDR3 RAM. It is running now on an ASUS P8P67 EVO Mainboard. MSI GeForce GTX 760 and Asus Radeon RX 570 graphic cards have been working with different display setups.

Graphics

Asus Radeon RX 570 was used with two 4K Monitors on DP and HDMI (DVI has problems).
MSI GeForce GTX 760 was used with two Displays on DVI, no 4K on HDMI possible (v1.4a).

WiFi

To get WiFi running, an ASUS PCE-AC55BT B1 PCI-E card is used as adapter with a BroadCom BCM4352 BCM94352Z NGFF M.2 card as chip.

Bluetooth

The onboard Bluetooth is disabled. The Bluetooth of the Broadcom BCM94352Z causes unwanted wake from sleep, therefore a SSDT-GPRW patch is used. Alternatively a Plugable Bluetooth 4 USB Adapter can be used (works ootb).

SATA

For eSATA/SATA and RAID a DIGITUS DS-30104-1 PCI-E card is used as the MARVELL 88SE9230 chip works with the CtlnaAHCIPort.kext.

USB

USB2 works ootb but a port mapping was created in the attempt of avoiding unwanted wake from sleep which is caused by the internal USB-connector of the BT-card. As the most promising solution (setting the USB-connector type to internal/255) is not working (BT isn’t recognized anymore), the current solution is a SSDT-GPRW patch which disables wake by usb completely.

USB3

For USB3 an Inateck KT4006 PCI-E card is used which works ootb. The internal Renesas USB3 chip can be activated using GenericUSBXHCI.kext, but it causes a problem on shutdown (unwanted restart).

Install macOS

1. Create OpenCore Drive

a) Preparation

Format USB-Drive with GUID and APFS (Link)
- Find the correct disk number of USB-Drive:
```
diskutil list
```
- Replace {#} with corresponding disk number and {Volume} with desired Name:
```
diskutil apfs createContainer /dev/disk{#}
diskutil apfs addVolume disk{#} APFS {Volume}
```
Download latest OpenCore: acidanthera/opencorepkg
- Chose debug for installation and config or release for final use

b) Install/Update OpenCore

Follow this guide OpenCore-Install-Guide
- Basically the files mentioned in file-swaps need to be copied/updated
  - Copy OpenCanopy.efi to EFI/OC/Drivers for GUI picker
  - Copy VBoxHfs.efi to EFI/OC/Drivers for HFS+ support
- Repeat this step when switching from debug to release version

c) Post Install

Copy all ACPI patches from/to EFI/OC/ACPI/
Copy config.plist from/to EFI/OC/config.plist
Copy all kexts from/to EFI/OC/Kexts/

2. Create macOS Installer Drive

To create a working macOS Installer boot drive, you will need the following:

An empty USB3 flash drive (minimum 32GB)
A device already running macOS with App Store access

a) Download macOS Installer

Open the Mac App Store on a device running macOS
Download Install macOS Big Sur application
Close Installer when it opens automatically

b) Create Installer Stick

Follow this guide: macOS Big Sur 11: bootbaren USB-Stick erstellen

Create installer stick with this command:

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Big\ Sur.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Big\ Sur/ --nointeraction

c) Patch Installer Stick

Enable installation on unsupported hardware:

Download and unpack: barrykn/big-sur-micropatcher

Execute in Terminal

~/Downloads/big-sur-micropatcher-main/micropatcher.sh

3. Install macOS

Connect macOS Installer and OpenCore Drive to your target machine
Boot from OpenCore Drive (F8 on BIOS post -> [UEFI] OpenCore Drive)
Select macOS Installer (Install macOS Big Sur)
Begin installation on APFS formatted HDD/SSD
On several reboots select target Big Sur drive

4. Install Clover in EFI partition of macOS HDD

After successfully install repeat steps 1b – 1c but with EFI on Macintosh HD as target
- Switch OpenCore from debug to release version (file-swaps)
- To disable all logging apply following config-changes

5. Post Install

System-Tools

Install the following from Tools folder:
- Intel Power Gadget to test CPU frequency and speed stepping
- OpenCore Configurator (OCC) to modify/update config.plist
- Hackintool to check for loaded kexts and system settings

Marvell RAID Utility

Install Marvell RAID Utility (MSU) from Driver folder
Open MarvellTray App from Programs and login with macOS user credentials

Update macOS

Make a full backup with time machine or similar
Check the official update-guide: OpenCore-Post-Install/update
Download updates for all installed kexts
Update OpenCore Drive for testing purpose
- Use updated kexts and drivers in post install
Boot from OpenCore Drive
If system boots
- Start macOS Update
- (Select Install macOS ... partition on reboot)
- After the update select Macintosh HD partition
If system boots
- Mount EFI partition of Macintosh HD
- Replace EFI from OpenCore Drive
- Don’t forget Microsoft folder (windows bootloader)
If system doesn’t boot on one of these steps
- Try to fix the problem or revert to the latest backup

Troubleshooting

Tips and tricks to solve already known problems

Sanity Checker

The OpenCore configuration can be validated by uploading the config.plist to https://opencore.slowgeek.com/ in order to perform a sanity check. It helps to find problems in the configuration and to optimize the setup.

Default Boot Option

A default boot entry can be set with ctrl + enter if the option is allowed in OpenCore (Link)

Mount EFI and open config.plist with OCC
Go to Misc -> Security and set AllowSetDefault = YES
In OpenCanopy boot picker set default with ctrl + enter

Add Boot Entry

As the P8P67 bios offers no option to simply add new boot entries, EasyUEFI from a parallel windows installation is used to create OpenCore boot entry

Follow this guide Manually install Clover for UEFI booting and configure boot priority with EasyUEFI in Windows and use EFI/BOOT/BOOTx64.efi as file path

Reset NVRAM

NVRAM can be reset from OpenCanopy boot picker if auxiliary-entries are displayed in OpenCore (Link)

Mount EFI and open config.plist with OCC
Go to Misc -> Boot and set HideAuxiliary = NO
On reboot select Reset NVRAM from tools

Boot Resolution

The display resolution during boot is very low, full display resolution (4K) is only reached on the last boot stage

Default options TextRenderer set to BuiltinGraphics and Resolution set to Max (macos-decluttering) deliver worst results (1024×768 fallback)
Custom options TextRenderer set to SystemGraphics and Resolution set to 3840x2160 deliver “better” results (1280×960 or similar)
Setting UIScale to 02 (HiDPI-Mode) only increases the icon size
Switching the BIOS settings from Legacy ROM to UEFI ROM has no improvement as suggested here, there or over there
- ? Warning ? ASUS RX570 doesn’t work with UEFI ROM settings (black screen -> needs CMOS-reset), although latest official firmware has UEFI-support
- GeForce GTX 760 works with UEFI ROM BIOS-settings, but doesn’t improve resolution during boot. The latest official firmware also has UEFI-support
The problem might be related with CSM or GOP for graphic cards

AHCI Ports

Information copied from SATA Drives Not Shown in DiskUtility

Make sure SATA Mode is AHCI in bios
Certain SATA controllers may not be officially supported by macOS, for these cases you’ll want to grab CtlnaAHCIPort.kext
- For very legacy SATA controllers, AHCIPortInjector.kext may be more suitable

Resources

Useful information, tips and tutorials used to create this Hackintosh

ACPI Patches

Several SSDT patches are used to fix following problems

SSDT-EC-USBX.aml fixes embedded controller and USB
SSDT-GPRW.aml prevents instant wake from sleep (BT/USB)
SSDT-PM.aml fixes power management and cpu speed stepping
SSDT-SBUS-MCHC.aml fixes AppleSMBus support

USB Mapping

An USB port-mapping was created using this guide: USB Anschlüsse Patchen
The following exported files can be found in USB folder:

SSDT-EC-USBX.aml/dsl patch files for EC and USBX
SSDT-UIAC.aml/dsl patch file for
USBPorts.kext

Power Management

As iMac12,2 is the closest SMBIOS to P8P67 mainboards (link), it is used to generate SSDT for power-management. As SSDT-PLUG is only compatible with Intel’s Haswell and newer CPUs (link), Sandy Bridge needs to follow the ssdtPRgen method.

OCC Paths
- Drop ACPI: ACPI -> Delete
- SMBIOS: PlatformInfo -> SMBIOS -> Button Up/Down
- Boot-Args: NVRAM -> UUID -> 7C4...F82 -> boot-args
Select SMBIOS iMac12,2 (CPU: Sandy Bridge i7 2600)
- Add -no_compat_check boot-flag
- Drop CpuPm and Cpu0Ist tables
- Reboot with new SMBIOS
Use ssdtPRGen.sh from Tools folder to generate SSDTs
- Ignore warning about improperly ‘cpu-type’ (0x0703 instead of 0x0603)
- Output folder: ~/Library/ssdtPRGen/
- Rename SSDT.aml to SSDT-PM.aml
- Add to EFI/OC/ACPI and config.plist
Change SMBIOS to iMac18,3 (GPU: Radeon Pro 570)
- Set ProzessorType to 1795 (decimal for 0x0703)
- Remove -no_compat_check boot-flag
- Remove drop of CpuPm and Cpu0Ist tables
- Reboot with new SMBIOS

OpenCore Configuration

For adding your SSDTs, Kexts and Firmware Drivers to create snapshots of your populated EFI folder (link) use corpnewt/ProperTree

Add ACPI patches

To manually add ACPI patches do the following

Copy {name}.aml into EFI/OC/ACPI
Open config.plist in OCC
Add new entry in ACPI -> Add
- Add {name}.aml as Path
- Add a meaningful Comment
- Select Enabled

Add kexts

To manually add kexts do the following

Copy {name}.kext into EFI/OC/Kexts
Open config.plist in OCC
Add new entry in Kernel -> Add
- Add x86_64 as Arch
- Add {name}.kext as BundlePath
- Add a meaningful Comment
- If kext isn’t codeless add {name} as ExecutablePath
- Add Contents/Info.plist as PlistPath
- (Optional: set MinKernel and MaxKernel)
- Select Enabled