VFIO-friendly X570 motherboard that will work with Hackintoshes

[MSMSMSM]

Ever since my last post, it has become really clear that considering all my options, the most viable route for me would be to upgrade from my Ryzen 1800X to a Core i9 11900K.

That, of course, necessitates a motherboard change. That, of course, means I have to buy a new one and you know what that means… it needs to avoid the problems my current motherboard has given me. Some of them are…

• Bad IOMMU groups (even with patching the kernel to separate each device into its own group)
• Lack of multiple M.2 NVME expansion slots (I bought an expansion card to mitigate this and my hackintosh threw a fit so now it’s just collecting dust)
• Buggy firmware (I remember trying to boot into Qubes and having to rename the BOOT/EFI/[filename].efi to BOOT/EFI/BOOT64.efi for the BIOS to catch it, also random freezes and hangs when booting between multiple drives and platforms)
• USB-C connector doesn’t cooperate with macOS (this isn’t strictly a motherboard issue, maybe I didn’t figure it out correctly so it probably doesn’t count)
• Dead SATA ports (it’s pretty much stayed in one place for its entire lifecycle and for some reason some ports are dead)

I already own an RX480 so Dortania’s observations on Xe graphics aren’t as big of a deal for me. As this is a sidegrade, it’s just going to replace my CPU and motherboard, everything else remains the same and works with my hackintosh.

I’m looking for a board that can be used to bare-metal hackintosh and also be VFIO-friendly/have good IOMMU groups in case I wish to experiment or try new things down the line.

The following motherboards have been documented to work with Hackintoshes:

• Gigabyte Z590 Vision (G/D) [source]
• Gigabyte Z590 Aorus Elite AX [source]
• Asus Prime Z590 [source]
• MSI Z590 Gaming Carbon WiFi [source]
• ASUS ROG MAXIMUS XIII HERO [source]

That covers the hackintosh part… now about the VFIO friendlines

Any help would be really appreciated! Thanks!

Note: Despite 10th gen’s relative stability to 11th gen when it comes to Hackintoshing, for some reason the processors are priced the same and the boards are more expensive in my local region

[Dratatoo]

Edit: Sorry if my post doesn’t fit your requirements. But please hear me out.

IMO, I think it will be annoying to satisfy both OSX bare metal and VFIO requirements on consumer hardware - basically you are fighting on two fronts.

I had a much better experience with virtualizing Mac OS X and using a passthrough GPU. The reason is, I can satisfy most of OS X / Mac OS 11 requirements much better with virtual hardware (network, CPU, HDD) and masking the ones which are showstopper.

The added bonus is, with my host system (Proxmox) that I can create snapshots and roll back easily should workarounds or updates fail. Plus I can spin up hdds, cd images or Linux containers that interact with Mac OS VM. Proxmox is a Hypervisor so you can set your VM(s) to start automatically after boot. This is something I do on my workstation, and its no different than switching on / off a regular PC/Mac and it fells pretty much “bare-metal” - the only different thing is that I have to hit the power button after shutdown of Maxc OS / Windows.

For VFIO, I had very good experience with MSI boards - although I only used mainboards for the 8xxx gen and 9xxx gen CPUs. They middle-tier (A Pro series for example for Intel) are pretty standard with sensible VFIO groups, components and settings. The onboard components and VRMs are solid and reliable. But I still would get USB-PCIe cards, because not every board allows to pass through of the onboard controller, if that is your thing (the 370 series for example can’t, the 390 series can).

Edit: Here is a guide for installing Mac OS 12 as VM on Proxmox. Maybe this can be for use for other host OSes as well:
https://www.nicksherlock.com/2021/10/installing-macos-12-monterey-on-proxmox-7/