Hackintosh Build Guide for OSX Catalina

November 11, 2019 in

macOS, tech-guides

tldr; Hackintosh Guide for Catalina on my 2014 custom built PC

Prerequisites

16GB USB Drive
OSX Catalina from the App Store
🤞 Lots of patience

My System Specs

All my parts are finally in, time to get building!

Hard to believe this build was from January 2014 and is still running great.

NZXT Tempest 210 case
GIGABYTE GA-Z87X-D3H motherboard
Intel Core i5-4670K Haswell 3.4GHz
Intel HD Graphics 4600 1536 MB
16GB 1600mhz DDR3 memory
Corsair CX500 Power Supply
(2)256 SSD and 1TB HD

Hackintoshes are very picky on hardware so make sure you choose wisely.
Tonymacx86 Buyers Guide is a great resource to choose from guaranteed working builds.

Step One: Make a Catalina Bootable USB (the mac approved way)

Great video explaining the process from Mark with Tech

You will need to have a copy of Catalina from the App store.
Format USB Drive to MacOS Extended(Journaled). Set Scheme to GUID Partition Map and name it USB.
Open Terminal and run:


sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Catalina.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --nointeraction --downloadassets --volume /Volumes/USB/

☕ this process takes a while (like really long maybe 15-30 mins) so get a coffee refill

Step Two: Clover Configuration on your USB

Clover configuration is a two part process. You’ll have to do it once on the USB Drive and then again on the install drive post-install.

Get Clover and your kexts(drivers for mac)

Minimum

Extras for my build

clover

Most of these are zip files so extract them and look for the file extension .kext.

USB Drive Config

Had some issues with clover on my MacBoook Pro so I followed this guide to disable SIP

FIX: Click the Apple symbol in the Menu bar.
Click Restart…
Hold down Command-R to reboot into Recovery Mode.
Click Utilities.
Select Terminal.
Type `csrutil disable`.
Press Return or Enter on your keyboard.
Click the Apple symbol in the Menu bar.
Click Restart…

make sure you re-able SIP after you are done by running csrutil enable reversing the process above

Make sure your USB Drive is inserted.
run the clover_version_rev.pkg that you downloaded.
On the Destination Select tab, click on the option Change Install Location.
Select the USB Flash Drive.
Now on the Installation Type Tab Click on the Customize option.
- defaults were ok in my build

Copying Files to EFI partition on Hackintosh macOS Catalina USB Installer

efi

Open up the EFI partition (location: /Volumes/EFI/), and navigate to “EFI”, then to “CLOVER”. Then, navigate to the “kexts” folder, then to “Other”.

You should be in the directory /Volumes/EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other/. In here, you’ll want to drop in the required Kexts as well as any other Kexts you need for your system.

Step Three: Install macOS Catalina from new bootable USB

Boot from your new USB Drive (on USB2 port).
From the clover menu, enter option o and enter -lilubetaall on the Boot Args option and then Return
Boot from macOS Intall option
and when it boots up, Go to Disk Utilty and format your SSD to use APFS.
Install macOS Catalina.

During installation process the macOS will reboot several times.
remember to select boot from Catalina if its not already selected

Step Four: Post-Install

Now you will need to do the Clover EFI steps again but this time to your new Catalina SSD. Follow same steps as in Step 2 but choose Catalina SSD rather than the USB Drive.