iATKOS | United Kingdom

I am incredibly impressed with the improvements in hackintoshing over the last two years and my machine is running better than ever. I didn't have to do the disable SIP-edit-enable SIP method to get the audio working, setting Clover was smoother than ever and picked up my windows drive as well, and now the audio jack detects whether something is plugged in. Also, it used to have screen flashes before I installed the NVidia web drivers, and now it is still smooth before those are installed. Thank you wonderful hackintoshers.

Background: Thanks to this community I was able to get my hackintosh running two years ago. A year ago I spent half a day on the upgrade to 10.12 which was more challenging than expected; I had to make several changes to the config. Just yesterday I completed a fresh install of High Sierra and submit it below for anyone with similar hardware.

• Asrock Z97 Pro4
• i5 4690k
• GTX 960

1. Backup BIOS A->B
2. Update BIOS from 2.5 to 2.6. For me, no changes to mac config required, unlike the painful upgrade from 2.3 to 2.5 I did.
3. Download High Sierra from the mac app store. You cannot find the link by searching the mac app store. Instead, you have to go to the "upgrade to Mojave" page on Apple.com, then scroll down to find the link to install High Sierra instead. It will take you to a secret place in the mac app store to download.
4. Quit the installer when it auto-launches.
5. Through Disk Utility, erase a USB drive and format as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with GUID Partition Map. Took two tries to get it done, error first time. I used a SanDisk Cruzer 16 GB.
6. sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app --volume /Volumes/WUBBA/
7. Install Clover Configurator (used 5.3.2.0)
8. Mount EFI from the USB
9. Copy over the EFI from the website: https://hackintosher.com/guides/high-sierra-install-full-guide/
10. DELETE unneeded kexts: Atheros (my board has Intel LAN, not Atheros), CodecCommander, Realtek, SmallTree
11. Open the config file in Clover Configurator and make the following changes:
    1. SMBIOS iMac15,1 which is an i5-4690
    2. ACPI: C and P states. Leave the new patches in place.
    3. Boot: nvda_drv=1
    4. darkwake=8
    5. Devices: audio inject = 1, ResetHDA checked
    6. Leave the rest the same.
12. Boot from USB.
13. Reformat target drive as Mac OS Extended (journaled) with GUID
14. Install. Reboot twice, choosing the Clover USB in the BIOS boot menu, then within Clover choosing the new HDD.
15. Reboot and it should start from the new HDD. Walk through the Apple config screens. Hooray - installed!
16. Make sure the OS is the most recent version and do that update first, since it will break the NVidia driver if not.
17. Download the appropriate NVidia driver from tonymac86.com/nvidia-drivers. In my install, the correct one was 17G65. If you download the wrong one, the NVidia installer error dialog will tell you the correct one. Reboot and NVidia should work.
18. Set up EFI files on the HDD: install Clover Configurator on the new machine, mount EFI, and copy the files over from the USB, verbatim. Now it should boot from the SSD alone. Test by removing the USB and rebooting. I had to F2 and manually choose the new HDD as primary boot device in the BIOS; after that it remembered and worked each time. If it doesn't boot, replace the USB, use it to boot the new drive, and you have the chance to fix it.
19. Enable TRIM: sudo trimforce enable, reboot

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