El Capitan on the Skylake NUC (6i3SYK, 6i3SYH, 6i5SYK, 6i5SYH)

What Works and Doesn't

Audio via headphone jack

Video via mini-DisplayPort (including 4K at 3840x2160 or 1080P retina, but NOT higher retina settings)

Video via HDMI (including 4K at 3840x2160 or 1080P retina, but NOT higher retina settings)

m.2 SSDs including SATA, PCIe, and NVMe

Ethernet networking

USB3

Power saving, sleep, etc.

Bluetooth. Driver loads but doesn't pair, probably due to requiring firmware. If you dual boot, you may get it fully working by configuring Bluetooth in Windows and then rebooting to OS X without unplugging the machine. See this post.

WiFi -- driver development underway but will take a while to come to fruition.

SD card reader (few PCIe card readers supported)

HDMI audio (no HDMI audio for Skylake integrated graphics yet)

NFC

IR

Wireless

Installation Prerequisites

A Skylake NUC, model starting with NUC6i3 or NUC6i5

If you only use one RAM chip, it should be installed in the bottom slot. Using two identical RAM chips is better.

Note the size and speed of your RAM chips (e.g. 8 GB / 2133) because you will need to specify those in order to avoid OS X only seeing half your memory.

A working Mac or Hackintosh

A USB stick or drive, 8 GB or larger

Get El Capitan

Open Mac App Store Log in with your Apple ID Download OS X El Capitan 10.11.4 or greater When the download finishes and the setup screen appears, Quit the app from the menu bar. You should now see the application /Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app

Other Things to Download

BIOS Versions

Intel recommends 0039 or higher due to various issues (see the PDF attached to this post). Some users speculate that bad fan settings cause the NUC to overheat with early BIOS releases. It may be a good idea to stay relatively up to date.

or higher due to various issues (see the PDF attached to this post). Some users speculate that bad fan settings cause the NUC to overheat with early BIOS releases. It may be a good idea to stay relatively up to date. 0045 : Works well so far -- sleep/wake works, no obvious problems. Disabling legacy boot may give cosmetic errors before the Clover menu starts.

: Works well so far -- sleep/wake works, no obvious problems. Disabling legacy boot may give cosmetic errors before the Clover menu starts. 0044 : Brought improvements to NVMe SSD speed, but reportedly requires BIOS restore for full effect

: Brought improvements to NVMe SSD speed, but reportedly requires BIOS restore for full effect 0039 : Works well so far -- sleep/wake works, no obvious problems. Disabling legacy boot may give cosmetic errors before the Clover menu starts.

: Works well so far -- sleep/wake works, no obvious problems. Disabling legacy boot may give cosmetic errors before the Clover menu starts. 0036 : no reports yet

: no reports yet 0033 : May disable m.2 slot by default -- be sure to re-enable it if you're using it.

: May disable m.2 slot by default -- be sure to re-enable it if you're using it. 0028: Gives boot errors if onboard Bluetooth is disabled. Seems to require PCIe ASPM Support to be on. Legacy Boot must be enabled in order to display M.2 PCIe SSD settings in BIOS (though you can still boot to the SSD with Legacy Boot disabled). Predated the discovery of a Skylake hardware bug, so it may be worth updating to get the latest CPU microcode if nothing else.

BIOS Settings on the NUC

Press F2 during boot to access BIOS

during boot to access BIOS Most important: on Advanced / Boot / Boot Priority screen, set UEFI Boot to checked. (It may show no boot devices; that is OK.)

screen, set to checked. (It may show no boot devices; that is OK.) On Security, set Intel VT for Directed I/O (VT-d) to unchecked

to unchecked On Boot / Boot Configuration, set Network Boot to Disable

to Disable On Boot / Secure Boot make sure Secure Boot is unchecked

is unchecked On Power make sure Wake on LAN from S4/S5 is unchecked or set to stay off ( or else when you shut down the NUC may restart instead )

is unchecked or set to stay off ( ) In Devices / Video set IGD Minimum Memory to 128 MB and IGD Aperture Size to 256 MB

to and to In Devices / Onboard Devices you can uncheck WLAN , Near Field Communication (NFC) , and Enhanced Consumer IR (unless you will dual-boot with an OS that recognizes all this hardware). With BIOS 0028 you must leave Bluetooth enabled, even if you will not use it.

, , and (unless you will dual-boot with an OS that recognizes all this hardware). If you like, you can compare many of the other BIOS settings to the screen captures in the attached View attachment nuc6i5-0039.zip (taken with 0039)

Prepare Bootable USB Install Drive

Insert the USB drive Open /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility Highlight the USB drive in left column On a Yosemite or older system: Click on the Partition tab Click Current and choose 1 Partition Click Options... Choose GUID Partition Table Under Name: type Installer Under Format: choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) Click Apply then Partition. When it finishes, close Disk Utility. On an El Capitan or newer system: Click on the Erase button in the toolbar For Name: enter Installer Make sure Format is set to OS X Extended (Journaled) Make sure Scheme is set to GUID Partition Map Hit Erase. When it finishes, close Disk Utility. Run UniBeast Hit Continue on the main screen, Continue on the UniBeast+MultiBeast screen, Continue on the Clover Credits screen, Continue on the Software License Agreement screen, and agree to the license Select your newly formatted USB drive (so it turns blue) on the Select a Destination screen and hit Continue Select El Capitan (so it turns blue) and hit Continue Select UEFI Boot Mode (so it turns blue) and hit Continue Leave all graphics options unchecked and hit Continue On the Verify Installation Options screen, hit Continue Enter you password when prompted and wait When the install finishes, hit Quit Create an extra directory called postinstall on the USB drive to hold the files you’ll need on the machine after installation. Copy these files you downloaded to the new directory: MultiBeast

Clover Configurator

The SSDT for your model Eject the USB drive and insert it into the new machine.

Install El Capitan

Start the NUC with the USB drive inserted. Hit F10 at the BIOS splash screen to get a list of boot devices, and select the UEFI entry for your USB drive. You should get a Clover menu. Select Boot Mac OS X from Installer (it should have a picture labeled "EXTERNAL"; use left/right arrow keys to select from multiple options and press enter when the correct one is selected) You should see the apple logo and a progress bar as the installer loads. After a couple of progress bars (one of which takes a long time with little apparent progress), you should be prompted to select a language. Then you should see the OS X screen. Select Utilities / Disk Utility... from the menu bar. Select the drive on the left where you want to install El Capitan Hit Erase From the dialog that pops up, put in whatever Name you want for the disk, select the Format OS X Extended (Journaled), and the Scheme GUID Partition Map Hit Erase When the erase finishes, hit Done then Quit Disk Utility from the menu Back at the OS X screen hit Continue. On the license screen hit Continue and the on the popup Agree Select the disk you just created by name and hit Continue This stage of the installation will take some time, but it should eventually restart. (The installation is not yet complete, though; do not remove the USB drive.) After the reboot, the machine should boot to the Clover menu again. If it says there's no boot device or boots to the wrong thing, reboot and hit F10 from the BIOS splash screen and select the USB drive. At that point you should get the Clover menu. At the Clover boot screen, select Boot Mac OS X from YourDiskName and you should get to the Welcome screen. (The progress bar for this takes longer than average as well.) Select your country, keyboard, and complete the rest of the setup process. Tell it "My computer does not connect to the Internet" because we have not set up network drivers yet. Do not "Transfer Information to This Mac" yet (you can run Migration Assistant later to do that). After the setup, you should end up at the desktop. Congratulations! But you must still perform the post-install setup next.

Post-Installation Configuration

Copy all the files from the postinstall directory of the USB stick to your new El Capitan install (e.g. to Downloads) Run the copy of MultiBeast you just copied to the new drive. Select Quick Start and then UEFI Boot Mode Select Drivers and then Audio and then Realtek ALCxxx. Under that heading check first ALC283 (BRIX Pro and NUC only) and then 100 Series Audio Select Drivers and then Network and then Intel and then IntelMausiEthernet (while the latest AppleIntelE1000e driver also works for this Ethernet chip, it breaks sleep/wake so the Mausi driver is preferred). In MultiBeast 8.2.3 the current Mausi release is v2.1.0d3 Select Customize and then Graphics configuration. Choose Intel HD 530. Select Customize and then System Definitions. Choose iMac then iMac 17,1. Hit Save on the top right to save a copy of this configuration for future reference. Hit Build and then Install When it says "Install Succeeded" then quit MultiBeast Go to the Apple menu in the top-left corner and hit About This Mac. Note whether the Memory total is correct (if not, we will fix it shortly). The MultiBeast installation should have left the EFI partition of your system drive mounted (called EFI in Finder). Copy the SSDT from your postinstall directory into EFI/CLOVER/ACPI/patched/ Run the Clover Configurator app from your postinstall directory (may be in "CCV.zip") Select the file EFI/EFI/CLOVER/config.plist to open (it should be listed on the bottom of the main window). Go to the SMBIOS screen on the left. If the Memory total was NOT correct in About This Mac, click the "+" under the Memory box, once for each chip you have installed (typically 2). Also under the Memory box, set Channels to Dual Channel and SlotCount to 4 (even though the machine only has two slots, it needs to be set to 4 to active dual-channel memory). Then: Set the Size and Frequency for each of the two memory entries to match your installed RAM. You should enter a Vendor , Part , and Serial value for each chip, though you can set it to whatever you want if you're not sure of the correct values (just don't leave them blank). Set the first slot to 0 , and if you have two chips set the other slot to 2 . All entries should use the Type DDR4 .

and for each of the two memory entries to match your installed RAM. You should enter a , , and value for each chip, though you can set it to whatever you want if you're not sure of the correct values (just don't leave them blank). Set the first slot to , and if you have two chips set the other slot to . All entries should use the Type . If you have 16 GB or larger memory chips, the current release of Clover Configurator does not let you select that value for your memory chips. Just use 8192 for now. If you don’t care about iCloud/iMessage/etc. then hit File/Save to save config.plist and Quit Clover Configurator. Otherwise if you do want iCloud/iMessage/etc., then you must further customize config.plist. For more details on this process see How to Fix iMessage. Still on the SMBIOS screen, copy the value in the Serial Number field Go to the RtVariables screen on the left Paste your serial number into the MLB field, and then add 5 random characters or digits to the end, to make 17 characters total. Enter a value for the ROM field. If you will use the Ethernet port on the machine, you can select "UseMacAddr0" from the drop-down. Otherwise, enter 12 random hexadecimal digits. File/Save config.plist and Quit Clover Configurator. If you couldn't set your proper memory chip size, open the same /EFI/CLOVER/config.plist file in TextEdit or your favorite text editor. Scroll down to the SMBIOS section, then find the Memory entry under SMBIOS, and set the size for each memory chip. A 16 GB chip should use a size of 16384. If you use an HDMI television for a display or a high-resolution HDMI monitor, and you're not getting the correct resolution, you should add the following patch to config.plist. The best way is to copy and paste this block into config.plist in the KernelAndKextPatches array (which ought to have a few entries already; just add this before or after one of them): Code: <dict> <key>Comment</key> <string>Port 5 HDMI fix</string> <key>Disabled</key> <false/> <key>Find</key> <data> AQUJAAAEAAA= </data> <key>Name</key> <string>AppleIntelSKLGraphicsFramebuffer</string> <key>Replace</key> <data> AQUJAAAIAAA= </data> </dict> Eject and remove the USB install drive Restart your system. It may take some time to restart. You should get a Clover menu on startup, and you can select Boot Mac OS X from YourDriveName or let it do it automatically. It should quickly proceed to the login screen. After logging in, check whether your audio is working. If not, there's one last fix needed: Mount your EFI partition. The easiest way is to run Clover Configurator. When it gives a popup saying no config.plist found, hit Mount EFI Partition and then Mount EFI Partition again on the bottom right. Run MultiBeast again. This time only select Drivers / Audio / Realtek ALCxxx / ALC283. Then go to Build and hit Install. When MultiBeast finishes, close it. Restart one last time. After the restart, your front headphone jack should be working. In System Preferences / Sound you can turn on the volume control in the menu bar. If you have speakers or headphones handy, try playing a song in iTunes to be sure.

Appendix B: Windows 10 Dual Boot (same drive)

Requirements

Your El Capitan install USB drive (if you wipe this out to use for Windows, you will have to recreate it later)

A USB drive to use for the Windows installer

A Windows 10 ISO

An existing Windows computer to prepare the ISO If you don't have a Windows computer, skip the next section and see n3oNLit3's instructions in this post to prepare a bootable USB Windows installer



Prepare Windows 10 USB on a Windows computer

Download the Windows USB/DVD Download Tool Insert your USB stick or drive Run the tool Select your Windows 10 ISO Select the USB install type Select your USB drive Wait for it to finish and move the USB drive to the NUC

Install Windows 10

Open Disk Utility Select your El Capitan drive (not the partition underneath it) Select Partition Hit the + to add a new partition for Windows, and drag the pie chart slider until the two partitions are sized appropriately Leave the format of the new partition as OS X Extended (Journaled). Hit Apply With the Windows USB drive attached, restart the NUC If the BIOS is not set to boot USB devices first, hit F10 and select the USB drive (you want the UEFI entry in order to be able to install to a GPT drive) Install Windows. When you get to the pick a disk partition screen, select the partition you created for Windows above (easiest to identify by size, usually). Delete the partition, then format it. When it prompts you that Windows may create extra partitions, that's OK. Then select the new big partition it created to install to. After the first reboot during the Windows install, if the NUC is still set to boot USB devices first, you will need to remove the USB drive. If you missed it and you're back at the "choose a language" installer screen, remove the USB and reboot to boot to the new install and continue the process. After the Windows install completes and leaves you at the desktop, go to Settings / Update & security / Windows Update and install all available updates. (You can skip this, but you'll probably have more work later if you do because the updates may break the boot loader.)

Fix Dual Booting

At this point, the NUC is booting only to Windows. Insert your El Capitan install USB drive and restart. Use F10 if needed to boot to the USB. You should see a Clover menu. Select Boot Mac OS X from YourDriveName. Once in OS X, mount your EFI partition. You may need to use diskutil list to identify the correct partition, but the typical command is: Code: mkdir /Volumes/EFI && sudo mount_msdos /dev/disk0s1 /Volumes/EFI Go to the EFI partition Go to EFI/Microsoft/Boot/ and rename bootmgfw.efi to bootmgfw-orig.efi Copy EFI/CLOVER/CLOVERX64.efi to EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi Eject the El Capitan install USB drive Reboot You should get a Clover menu, with the usual settings to boot to OS X and also new Windows options. To start Windows, select Boot Microsoft EFI boot menu from EFI. After future Windows updates, Windows may reset the EFI partition to boot only to Windows again. You'll need to repeat the steps in this section.

Other NUC guides, in case you're not looking for the Skylake model:You should installto avoid problems with the integrated graphics (this guide last updated for 10.11.6).Overall, with the latest BIOS and OS X, the NUC works quite well. The major problem is that all present Skylake models include soldered WiFi/Bluetooth, and at least the WiFi part of that does not yet have OS X drivers. (There is an effort underway to port a driver, but it's a long-term kind of thing.)Working:Has issues:Built-in hardware that doesn’t work due to lack of OS X drivers:If you'd like WiFi, for the moment, you'll need a USB adapter. I've used an Edimax AC-1200, which at long last has a decent El Capitan driver available. However, it is large enough that it blocks a second USB port on the NUC unless you get a USB hub or extension cable.(download here ):This whole section should be performed on the working Mac/HackintoshNote: the speed of this installation process is not a reflection on the speed or quality of your hardware. It’s just going to take a while.Note: You must complete this or else your Hackintosh won't be able to boot without the USB drive in place.That’s it! Your hackintosh should be working in El Capitan. Enjoy.tonymacx86 (original Clover installation procedure)andfrom MacMan, with audio install based onby toleda If you'd like to install Windows 10 in a dual boot configuration on the same drive as El Capitan, follow these additional steps. There are many ways to do the installation, this is just one that is known to work.Start from the working El Capitan install above, and:You should now be able to boot to both Windows and OS X!