Gigabyte B550I Aorus Pro AX, 5900X, RX 6900 XT

[atanvarno]

Most of the stuff here are transplanted from my previous build; ASRock's mobo died (probably too many hard-power-offs), I had this board on hand and here you go. I was planning this board for another build but I have to say I'm pretty pleased with it.

Currently running OpenCore 0.7.5 and Big Sur 11.6.1. I will attempt upgrade to Monterey after Apple publishes .2 and will have to see how will Ethernet behave. For the rest I have no worries.

Up-to-date EFI, as usual for my builds.

• Gigabyte B550I Aorus Pro AX motherboard (rev 1.0)
• AMD Ryzen 9 5900X CPU
• XPG Levante 240 AIO
• AMD RX 6900 XT graphics card
• Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4 3200MHz CL16
• ADATA XPG 8200 Pro 1TB NVMe SSD
• Samsung 860 EVO 500 GB 2.5in SSD
• Corsair SF750 Platinum SFX PSU
• Noctua NF-A12x25 case fan (placed two of these on the AIO instead of crap that were there)
• Sliger S620 SFF case

 

[atanvarno]

The board uses Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 card. It's an amazing card but will never work properly in macOS. (OpenIntelWireless will never be proper solution).

Thus I moved over the combo below, which offers natively supported WiFi 5 / Bluetooth 4 and worked pretty well for me over the last year or so.

• 1750Mbps Dual Band WiFi 2.4GHz/5GHz / Bluetooth 4.0 Broadcom BCM94360CD card
• Mini PCIe riser with adapter for M.2 Key A/E

Combined with this riser cable, the card/adapter combo from above can be moved outside the motherboard I/O shroud, instead of existing card.

It took me some time to carefully open the I/O shroud on the card – you need to remove the backplate and unscrew several screws to lift the shroud. No need to completely remove, the existing card can be pulled out if you lift the shroud less than 1cm up.
I routed the riser cable out and over the whole length of the shroud then outside the case through one of the water-cooling openings at the back.

 

[atanvarno]

Board has Realtek 2.5GbE LAN chip which is covered with LucyRTL8125Ethernet.kext

There are reports this may not work properly in Monterey, will see when I get to it.

 

[atanvarno]

I am using BIOS version F12. It came with the board and I don't see much reason to upgrade except to use newer AMD CPU AGESA. That would be nice...but sleep / wake works perfectly now thus I am hesitant to upgrade since I've seen multiple reports of that breaking on newer BIOSes.

• Fast Boot: Disabled
• CSM: Disabled
• Above 4G Decoding: Enabled
• Resizable Bar Support: Enabled
• PCIe slot speed: Auto
• XMP Profile activated, uses 3200MHz speed, 1.35V

 

[atanvarno]

I was able (after months of trying) to purchase AMD RX 6900 XT directly from AMD.com, for the MSRP price. At the moment, the build is running without WhateverGreen and also without any additional stuff – pure native.

And performance is amazing. For both CPU and GPU.

 

[atanvarno]

It's interesting to see the naming of the GPU device.

% ./gfxutil -f GFX0
DevicePath not found!

% ./gfxutil -f VGA
09:00.0 1002:73bf /PCI0@0/GPP8@3,1/SWUS@0/SWDS@0/VGA@0
= PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x3,0x1)/Pci(0x0,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0)

Not sure if this is what trips-up WhateverGreen, but...When I attempted to just include WEG in config.plist, boot process locks-up soon after Apple logo appears. I will need to run DEBUG builds to figure out what is happening, no time to do it now.

The consequence of not having WEG is that DRM is working half-assed. This is my coding machine so streaming DRM does not concern me. Netflix works in Safari, iTunes too, playing videos is hw-accelerated. But Plex player locks-up entire machine and TV+ streaming shows green screen.

 

[atanvarno]

Finally, USB ports.

I did not map anything here. I simply used USB-reset SSDT generated by SSDTTime in Windows and that's it. Added USBX SSDT to give proper power properties to ports.

All ports work just fine. There is no consequence on sleep/wake. I can't wake up the computer by tapping Bluetooth keyboard or mouse but I don't care. Press the power button on the case and it springs back to life – this is all I need.

I will probably map the ports at some point, I want to try Apfelnico's approach through all-in-SSDT-no-kext. Once there's less work to do.

 

[atanvarno]

Thus in conclusion — this build works amazingly well for my needs.

I have 3600MHz memory sticks coming in which I plan to try and see how performance changes.

I also want to try running USB-C to DisplayPort cable, to see would be enable 4K 144Hz refresh rate, since macOS is crap regarding DSC in Display Port 1.4. Currently running 95Hz but without HDR or 60Hz HDR.

Other than that, no more changes planned.

 

[Aluveitie]

I will probably map the ports at some point, I want to try Apfelnico's approach through all-in-SSDT-no-kext. Once there's less work to do.

His method is nice if the port definitions are in a separate SSDT which can be blocked. But on AMD those are in the DSDT which means you have to re-define all of the USB controllers.
In that case I find a USB map kext much simpler.

I have 3600MHz memory sticks coming in which I plan to try and see how performance changes.

I also want to try running USB-C to DisplayPort cable, to see would be enable 4K 144Hz refresh rate, since macOS is crap regarding DSC in Display Port 1.4. Currently running 95Hz but without HDR or 60Hz HDR.

Try the Ryzen DRAM calculator, I could get my 3600 from CL 18 to CL 16 (and tighten all other timings) just entering the values the tool calculated.

I don't think USB-C will make a difference here, since it is using the same DisplayPort 1.4 just on an alt mode.

 

[atanvarno]

His method is nice if the port definitions are in a separate SSDT which can be blocked. But on AMD those are in the DSDT which means you have to re-define all of the USB controllers.
In that case I find a USB map kext much simpler.

Yes, I'm aware of that. I actually found someone's EFI where just that is done.

A while back, while learning how to edit SSDTs, I stumbled upon Maldon's post on InsanelyMac where he says that overriding entire DSDT is the best way for stability if you know what you are doing. That's a big if right there but he correctly points out that Apple's ACPI are really compact, having only what's needed for particular machine. Thus clearing out stuff present in general PC ACPI is worthwhile but requires a lot of knowledge.

Making kext is now pretty simple for me, using USBToolbox. Thus I already have it done but want to try doing the ACPI only way. I'll certainly need some SSDT renaming to kill-off existing map from DSDT.

Try the Ryzen DRAM calculator, I could get my 3600 from CL 18 to CL 16 (and tighten all other timings) just entering the values the tool calculated.

How long did it take you to do this..? I get a feeling it might take a while to test stability. I would hate it to crash while I'm on the verge of winning AoE II match.

I don't think USB-C will make a difference here, since it is using the same DisplayPort 1.4 just on an alt mode.

Daaamn...that's probably correct but...the cable is coming hence will try anyway.

 

[Aluveitie]

It took like half an hour or so.
Extract memory settings with Taiphoon burner, import it in DRAM calculator, setting some settings, make a screenshot of the recommended settings and send it to my iPad.
Then entering them in the BIOS, pray it boots and then run a memory heavy benchmark.

Overriding the complete DSDT is risky since you'd have to do it after every BIOS update. I catched ASRock once moving the SMBus in some BIOS updates on the X570 ITX/TB3.

 

[atanvarno]

The consequence of not having WEG is that DRM is working half-assed. This is my coding machine so streaming DRM does not concern me. Netflix works in Safari, iTunes too, playing videos is hw-accelerated. But Plex player locks-up entire machine and TV+ streaming shows green screen.

Added WEG 1.5.5, with boot argument agdpmod=pikera and all is good now.

 

[atanvarno]

Updated to OpenCore 0.7.7 and all the latest kexts.

Then updated to Monterey 12.2 (as you do, from System Preferences) - went all automatic, without asking me anything. Worked perfect. Ethernet works, had to try this given some chatter about possible issues. I am using 1.1 of LucyRTL kext.

DSC over DisplayPort is still broken in macOS 12.2 thus no 144Hz refresh rates.

 

[felixity]

@atanvarno - do you still have this setup? Any chance you are on a newer firmware?

I have the same mobo, same CPU, G.Skill 32GB 3600 RAM, 6600XT (but stock Intel wifi).
I am on the latest bios F20D, perhaps there has been a lot of changes in the bios. I tried building my own EFI but no matter what I do I am stuck at boot.
I tried your OC 0.97 from your Github but even that wouldn't boot, tried disabling your wifi and bluetooth kext still stuck.

 

[atanvarno]

@atanvarno - do you still have this setup? Any chance you are on a newer firmware?

I have the same mobo, same CPU, G.Skill 32GB 3600 RAM, 6600XT (but stock Intel wifi).
I am on the latest bios F20D, perhaps there has been a lot of changes in the bios. I tried building my own EFI but no matter what I do I am stuck at boot.
I tried your OC 0.97 from your Github but even that wouldn't boot, tried disabling your wifi and bluetooth kext still stuck.

No man, I gave up on Hackintosh with Sonoma.

Buy any M4 Mac mini and use with external SSD. It will last you a decade. Keep the PC for games.

 

[leesurone]

@atanvarno - do you still have this setup? Any chance you are on a newer firmware?

I have the same mobo, same CPU, G.Skill 32GB 3600 RAM, 6600XT (but stock Intel wifi).
I am on the latest bios F20D, perhaps there has been a lot of changes in the bios. I tried building my own EFI but no matter what I do I am stuck at boot.
I tried your OC 0.97 from your Github but even that wouldn't boot, tried disabling your wifi and bluetooth kext still stuck.

Try downgrading the bios using Q-Flash back to before the sinkclose fix was addressed.