How to build a 24 Core Threadripper Hackintosh (Complete Guide)
So what happens when you have Apple Enthusiast friends, and a 24 core Threadripper lying around… Well, a Threadripper hackintosh of course! This video is a full how to guide, and also a showcase of a tool myself and my Apple Enthusiast friend wrote to make building a Ryzen Hackintosh super simple. I’m gonna start off with the manual process though.
Most of the work in building a hackintosh is building your bootable USB stick. Happily, there are some amazing tools by the likes of CorpNewt – who is not only in our Discord server, but runs the massive Hackintosh Discord too. There are links to all the tools in the description by the way.
So first, download everything you’ll need, that includes “gibMacOS”, “GenSMBIOS” and the “config.plist” file that CorpNewt modified for our project – or you can use his “AMDVanillaPatches” tool to get the latest file.
Once you’ve got all that, make sure “gibMacOS” is on your C drive – while I couldn’t see any reason for it not to work on any other drive in the code, it wouldn’t work on my system, so just extract it to a folder in your Downloads and it’ll be good. Run the “gibMacOS.bat” file, when it gives you options to download MacOS, press 1 then enter, then let it download it all. Once it’s downloaded, you can close that window.
Once that’s done, you can create your bootable USB stick, you do this by running the “MakeInstall.bat” file in the same gibMacOS folder. Make sure the USB stick you want to use is plugged in before you run it, then press whatever number it lists next to your drive, in my case it’s a Corsair Voyager Slider so I’m pressing 5 – no letters after, just 5. It will ask you to confirm you want to wipe the drive, type “y” then enter. Once that’s done it will ask you for the “path to RecoveryHDMetaDmg.pkg” which you can find in the same folder, inside the macOS Downloads folder, public release, your version of macOS. Copy and paste the folder location from the top of the window into the console – with quotation marks!! – and type “\RecoveryHDMetaDmg.pkg”. If you are confused, see the written article in the description that will include the full link so you can see what I mean.
Assuming you extracted to Downloads: [“C:\Users\[YOU]\Downloads\gibMacOS-master\macOS Downloads\publicrelease\[MacOS Version]\RecoveryHDMetaDmg.pkg”]
Once that’s complete, you can now close the console window, and continue prepping.
Next, you need to pick what “Kexts” you are going to use. “Kexts” are “Kernel extensions” – think of them like drivers on Windows. These let you use certain hardware or software features, including using NVIDIA graphics cards, although I’m not going down that rabbit hole today – I’ve got an RX 580 in here which is pretty much supported out the box from Apple themselves.
The bare minimum Kexts you’ll need are either “FakeSMC” or “VirtualSMC” – the USB stick will already have FakeSMC on there, so you can just use that – but if you want your ethernet to work, find out what chipset your motherboard uses – mine uses an Intel 211 NIC – and download the kext for that, along with the NullCPUPowerManagement kext and if you want sound at all, the AppleALC and lilu kexts – lilu is a kext loader, so lets you use otherwise unsupported kexts and is necessary for some other kexts. If you have GPU issues, you can also use the “whatevergreen” kext, but I haven’t here.
You’ll need to copy these kexts to your USB drive, which will be called “CLOVER” now. You’ll want to navigate to CLOVER/EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other and paste them there. While you are looking at the drive, navigate back to Clover/EFI/Clover, and open drivers-Off and drivers64UEFI, and copy “aptioMemoryFix-64.efi” and “HFSPlus.efi” into Clover/EFI/Clover/drivers64UEFI.
The final step before installing is sorting the config.plist file. In CorpNewt’s own words, it’s kinda like 90% of the soul of a modern hackintosh. It controls quite a lot, which is why I’ve included a link to CorpNewt’s guide to an Intel Coffee lake config file so you can get an idea of what it does. If you just want to get started with the file I used, the minimum you need to do is generate the SMBIOS.
So, you’ll want to extract GenSMBIOS to a folder in your downloads too, along with copying the config.plist file you should already have onto your USB drive, under Clover/EFI/Clover – replacing the file that is in there already. Once it’s replaced, run the “GenSMBIOS.bat” file, press 1 then enter, let it download, then 2 and paste the location of the file you just replaced – so “DRIVE LETTER:\CLOVER\EFI\CLOVER\config.plist” – and press enter, then press 3 and enter, then you are done and ready to go install!
Now the tricky bit is over, there are a few other things that might catch you out here – I’m using an M.2 SSD which has been previously used in a Windows machine, which means it isn’t formatted right – so when you boot from your USB stick, click on the “Boot from USB”, then once it loads up, click “Disk Utility”, then your drive and press “Erase”, give your drive a name, mine is MacHD, make sure it’s using GUID partition tables, and MacOS Extended (Journaled) file system, then press ok, let it format, then close out and press “reinstall MacOS”. You pretty much just let it go from there, it’ll restart, and you’ll want to press boot from MacOS – not USB – and let it continue installing.
It’ll reboot again, just click the same “MacOS” option in the middle, then set up your new Mac! You do have to download Clover Configurator, open it in Finder and right click and open as it won’t open from the taskbar, the click “Mount EFI” and click the Mount Partition option at the bottom right. Open finder and navigate to your CLOVER USB stick, and copy the EFI folder. Open the “EFI” folder you’ve just mounted, and delete the existing EFI folder that is in there, then paste in the one from your USB stick, then you can unmount the partition and you are completely done – all sorted!
GibMacOS: https://github.com/corpnewt/gibMacOS
GenSMBIOS: https://github.com/corpnewt/GenSMBIOS
AMDVanillaPatches: https://github.com/corpnewt/AMDVanillaPatches
CorpNewt’s guide to config.plist: https://hackintosh.gitbook.io/-r-hackintosh-vanilla-desktop-guide/config.plist-per-hardware/coffee-lake
Kexts: https://hackintosher.com/downloads/kexts/Our Config.plist file: https://github.com/andymanic/RyzenHackintoshMediaBuilder/AMDVanillaConfig/config.plist
Our Config.plist file: https://github.com/andymanic/RyzenHackintoshMediaBuilder/blob/master/AMDVanillaConfig/config.plist
