My 2020 Hackintosh OpenCore Configuration

I posted my new hackintosh’s hardware spec a month or so ago and since then, I have been running OpenCore 0.5.4 with a config I made myself. Unfortunately, that config used MemoryAllocation.efi, which I wanted to get rid of, due to concerns voiced by the author of that specific firmware driver. Finally, a month later, I found the time to clean up my OpenCore configuration.

Since I created my config, OpenCore was updated to 0.5.5 which changed a few things in the structure of the config.plist file. I really didn’t feel like recreating it from scratch, especially since I had encountered a lot of Couldn't allocate runtime area errors, so I went with a tried and tested solution from AudioGod, modified slightly for my needs. Here are some things you need to do:

AudioGod’s OpenCore 0.5.5 full OpenCore configuration can be downloaded from InsanelyMac — just scroll down until you find Alternative EFI – OpenCore No DSDT and Done the way OpenCore intended it, click the Reveal hidden contents button, and download the AG OC DSDT Free Z390 Master EFI.zip.

You need to update your BIOS version to F11c.

If you haven’t unlocked your BIOS, then also download and do the part of the guide labeled as CFG Unlock (MSR) F11c BIOS Profile – The Easy Way.

The next step will be editing the config.plist file.

config.plist

AudioGod’s default config.plist is almost ready but it does require adding or editing a few things to make it work. Firstly, make absolutely sure that you added your unique generated serial number, UUID, and MLB to the file. You will find those three things under PlatformInfo → Generic → MLB / SystemSerialNumber / SystemUUID. If you don’t know how to generated those, please refer to the OpenCore Vanilla Desktop Guide.

I also removed the AppleALC.kext section found under Kernel → Add, since I have the internal audio in BIOS turned off and prefer to use an external sound card.

Since I use a 4K monitor, I also changed UIScale from the default value of 1 to 2, which is needed for HiDPI monitors.

Since my system did not want to boot after doing all that, I had to make one more adjustment in my BIOS settings. I lowered the iGPU’s memory (there are two options, I forget what they’re called exactly) from 64 MB to 32 MB and the total allocated memory from 256 MB to 128 MB. Lastly, I replaced the boot argument shikigva=80 with shikigva=144, under NVRAM → Add → boot-args.

After doing all that, the system booted up like a charm.

Your last step should be to download the OpenCore Reference Manual and go through every option to understand what it’s responsible for. You might find something specific to your system which needs changing.

Good luck!