Harry Su

Tinker • Barista • AutoCAD novice • Former IT Worker

My Hackintosh Build (OpenCore) Part 2

by · July 16, 2021

Introduction

Because macOS 12 (Monterey) is coming soon and I will be running it on my main Mac on day one, I feel it is time to upgrade the macOS on my hackintosh from 10.15 (Catalina) to 11 (Big Sur). Getting Big Sur up and running was a more troublesome experience than Catalina for me. For novice who are interested, I definitely recommend Catalina over Big Sur on first attempt.

The main issue was USB, and it broke my Big Sur installer. The installer would load the utilities menu but would not respond to keyboard and mouse. OpenCore developers have documented the issue and the fix. After implementing the fix, I was able to install Big Sur.

Airplay was one feature that was working fine in Catalina but not in Big Sur. The cause turned out to be lack of Wifi in my setup so I purchased Fenvi FV-T919, a popular choice in the hackintosh community, from Newegg (also available from Amazon). It was plug and play with no additional driver (or kext) needed. Airplay worked in Big Sur with Fenvi installed and Wifi enabled.

Hardware Components

I replaced SanDisk SSD with one that has larger capacity from Crucial and added Fenvi FV-T919 for Airplay and Wifi. Fenvi can also handle Bluetooth if you connect the card to an USB header on the motherboard. I already had USB ports mapped in OpenCore and Asus USB-BT400 was working fine so I did not bother.

  • Intel Core i5-10400 CPU
  • Gigabyte Z490M Gaming X motherboard
  • Gigabyte Radeon RX480 4GB Gaming GPU
  • Crucial MX500 1TB 2.5″ SSD
  • G.Skill Ripjaws V 16GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 RAM
  • Asus USB-BT400 Bluetooth 4.0 USB adapter
  • Fenvi FV-T919 Wifi 802.11ac PCI-E adapter
  • Cooler Master MasterBox NR400 case
  • Cooler Master Hyper 212 CPU cooler
  • Corsair HX650 PSU
  • Apple Wireless Keyboard (4th generation)
  • Apple Magic Trackpad

The rest remained the same as my initial setup.

Setup & Benchmarks

My hackintosh is running OpenCore 0.7.1 and macOS 11.4 as of this writing.

About This Mac

I removed CPUFriend kext (for power management) from my EFI folder when I discovered that it was not necessary for my setup in the first place. I added two new kexts (USBInjectAll & USBMap) and a new aml (SSDT-USBX) in order to fix USB issue in Big Sur.

[Update: 10/7/2021] The system has been upgraded to OpenCore 0.7.4 without any issue. I discovered that I do not need USBInjectAll kext because of USBMap kext and removed it in the process. The new EFI folder layout below reflects this change.

EFI Folder Layout

The Cinebench and Geekbench scores were similar to those on Catalina.

Cinebench R23 Scores
Geekbench 5.4.1 CPU Scores

What Works

Everything that was working in Catalina is working fine in Big Sur as well, after implementing USB fix and adding Fenvi FV-T919 Wifi card. With the addition of Fenvi FV-T919, Wifi is working too.

  • Airplay (Fenvi FV-T919)
  • Audio
  • Bluetooth (Asus USB-BT400)
  • Ethernet
  • Sleep and wake
  • USB (USB mapping)
  • Wifi (Fenvi FV-T919)

[Update: 7/23/20121] The system has been updated to macOS 11.5 without any issue. Did not have to unplug and re-plug Asus USB-BT400 like Catalina to get Bluetooth working again. It could be because of USB fix. A welcomed improvement.

What Does Not Work (and Other Oddities)

I could not sign out of iCloud on Catalina. The operation would just hang. I installed Big Sur on a new SSD so I could fall back to Catalina if necessary. I was still able to sign into iCloud on Big Sur nonetheless.

Disabling Wifi stops AirPlay even when Ethernet is available. There is definitely a dependency relationship between Wifi and AirPlay in Big Sur that was not present in Catalina.

What Is Next

Upgrade to an 8-core or 10-core CPU if the price is right. The same for RAM.

Try various software development on this setup.

Test Steam and a few games since Gigabyte Radeon RX480 is still a decent GPU.

This post is composed in Firefox on my hackintosh.