AMD 5950x lying around… can I run Mojave build on it?

[trevor1030]

Hi all was looking to make another Hackintosh but figured I’d ask if I could use my am4 5950x setup to run 10.14.6 Mojave? If anyone has done, any recommendations?

 

[Jamesbond007]

Hi all was looking to make another Hackintosh but figured I’d ask if I could use my am4 5950x setup to run 10.14.6 Mojave? If anyone has done, any recommendations?

I don't think you can run Mojave with a 5950X. A later version of MacOS like Monterey or Ventura might be possible.

But what do I know? Go ahead and try it if you want. It will be great if you succeed.

 

[Edhawk]

Yes, you can run macOS Mojave on an AMD system using a Ryzen 9 5950X. You can even run High Sierra, as the AMD Vanilla kernel patches support macOS back as far as High Sierra up to and including the latest release of Sonoma, on any AMD Ryzen system.

Follow the Dortania guide for a Ryzen CPU/motherboard.

Make sure you edit the Kernel patches to correspond with the number of cores in your CPU (16-cores).

Ryzen and Threadripper(17h and 19h) | OpenCore Install Guide

You don't say which motherboard you are going to use, but if it is a B550 or A520 you need to take note of the additional SSDT-CPUR.aml required for these boards. You also need to be aware other motherboards (X470, X570 & B450) require changes to some essential Quirks in the config.plist.

You don't say which GPU you would be using, so again make sure it is compatible with macOS Mojave, if that is the OS you want to use. Your Nvidia dGPU is not compatible beyond High Sierra.

Make sure you set the bios correctly, or include any necessary boot arguments if you can't find the relevant entries in your system bios.

 

[Jamesbond007]

Yes, you can run macOS Mojave on an AMD system using a Ryzen 9 5950X. You can even run High Sierra, as the AMD Vanilla kernel patches support macOS back as far as High Sierra up to and including the latest release of Sonoma, on any AMD Ryzen system.

Follow the Dortania guide for a Ryzen CPU/motherboard.

Make sure you edit the Kernel patches to correspond with the number of cores in your CPU (16-cores).

Still possible on High Sierra / Mojave on these later Ryzen CPUs?

I did make a try quite some time ago to run High Sierra on a Ryzen 5 1600X (still using the old Clover at that time) and High Sierra did run, but I abandoned it soon after as there were too many restrictions (e.g. inability to use VMware Fusion).

 

[Edhawk]

Yes you can use the newer AMD CPU’s, as the OpenCore AMD kernel patches work in High Sierra, Mojave and Catalina. As long as you remember to provide the correct NVRAM > APFS > MinDate & MinVersion entries and use a compatible SMBIOS in the config.plist.

I don’t use VM software so have no idea if VMware Fusion would be compatible with High Sierra, the latest VM releases are unlikely to work in an OS that is now getting on for 6 years old. Most recent software requires you run Catalina or newer.

I’ll be honest and say I see no reason for anyone to run High Sierra, unless they are using a Pascal or Maxwell Nvidia GPU and don’t want to use the OCLP root patches. Even then I would say it was past time to upgrade to a macOS compatible AMD GPU.

Mojave I suppose is more understandable if you still require 32-bit apps for your work processes. But again these apps are also getting long in the tooth and should probably be upgraded to a 64-bit app that will run on Catalina or newer versions of macOS.

 

[Jamesbond007]

Yes you can use the newer AMD CPU’s, as the OpenCore AMD kernel patches work in High Sierra, Mojave and Catalina. As long as you remember to provide the correct NVRAM > APFS > MinDate & MinVersion entries and use a compatible SMBIOS in the config.plist.

I don’t use VM software so have no idea if VMware Fusion would be compatible with High Sierra, the latest VM releases are unlikely to work in an OS that is now getting on for 6 years old. Most recent software requires you run Catalina or newer.

I’ll be honest and say I see no reason for anyone to run High Sierra, unless they are using a Pascal or Maxwell Nvidia GPU and don’t want to use the OCLP root patches. Even then I would say it was past time to upgrade to a macOS compatible AMD GPU.

Thank you for your information and opinion.

Current versions of VMware Fusion does not run on High Sierra any more. But I use Fusion 11.5.3 (purchased some time ago, the last version to support High Sierra), which runs great on High Sierra. Of course it will not run on AMD CPUs since the Intel version of VMware Fusion requires Intel specific instructions (it was/is designed to run on Intel Macs and now Apple Silicon Macs).

I have no intention of updating VMware Fusion myself as the later versions have performance issues (due to Apple's insistence for VMware to use Apple's hypervisor, which I consider incomplete and have missing features), and the new features in the current versions are mostly geared to support Windows 11, which I do not want to use and will avoid if possible.

Therefore I will be honest and say that I will still keep a High Sierra (and Sierra) installation on my machine whenever possible. Unlike most of you, I don't need to run "the latest and greatest" MacOS. I do have a Monterey and Ventura installation on my Z390 machine, but that machine is currently in storage and I think it will be a long time before I can find the time to deal with them.