Installing Big Sur on a mid-2010 Mac Pro (MacPro5,1)

Working.

I successfully installed Big Sur on a “mid-2010” “classic” Mac Pro (MacPro5,1). This required upgrading the video card (I went with a relatively inexpensive GTX680 I flashed with an Apple ROM), but was otherwise pretty painless and a lot less involved than I’d been reading - which has me wondering if I’ve missed something?

Obtaining the Installer

Used a great script to obtain the Big Sur installation app directly from Apple, even though the computer I was using (Late 2013 iMac) isn’t supported:

$ curl -o ~/installinstallmacos.py https://raw.githubusercontent.com/munki/macadmin-scripts/main/installinstallmacos.py

$ chmod +x ~/ installinstallmacos.py

$ sudo ./installinstallmacos.py

...

# ProductID Version Build Post Date Title

1 071-14766 11.2.3 20D91 2021-03-08 macOS Big Sur

2 001-68446 10.15.7 19H15 2020-11-11 macOS Catalina

3 041-91741 10.13.6 17G2208 2019-10-13 macOS High Sierra

4 001-04366 10.15.4 19E2269 2020-05-04 macOS Catalina

5 071-08935 11.2.2 20D80 2021-03-01 macOS Big Sur

6 061-86291 10.15.3 19D2064 2020-03-23 macOS Catalina

7 041-91758 10.13.6 17G66 2019-10-19 macOS High Sierra

8 001-57224 10.15.7 19H4 2020-10-27 macOS Catalina

9 041-90860 17E199 2019-10-22 macOS High Sierra

10 061-26589 10.14.6 18G103 2019-10-14 macOS Mojave

11 071-05432 11.2.1 20D75 2021-02-15 macOS Big Sur

12 001-51042 10.15.7 19H2 2020-09-24 macOS Catalina

13 001-36735 10.15.6 19G2006 2020-08-06 macOS Catalina

14 041-88800 10.14.4 18E2034 2019-10-23 macOS Mojave

15 041-90855 10.13.5 17F66a 2019-10-23 Install macOS High Sierra Beta

16 061-26578 10.14.5 18F2059 2019-10-14 macOS Mojave

17 001-36801 10.15.6 19G2021 2020-08-12 macOS Catalina

Choose a product to download (1-17): 11

...

Disk image created at: ./Install_macOS_11.2.1-20D75.dmg

$ open ./Install_macOS_11.2.1-20D75.dmg

(I went with the oldest build of Big Sur listed, as I have no need to be on the cutting edge when building what’s essentially a “hackintosh,” hopefully with a build released almost a month ago, anything that needed tweaking in the patchers, etc., has been tweaked.)

It will take a while (it’s downloading > 10 GB and building temporary disk images). In the meantime, I erased my 16GB USB flash drive as a GUID, Mac OS Extended (Journaled), device:

Building a Bootable Installation USB Drive

When the Install_macOS disk image is ready and open, copy (drag and drop) Install macOS Big Sur.app into /Applications. Once that’s done, make an installer on the USB drive:

$ sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Big\ Sur.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/USB

Patch it

Because I’m installing onto a not-officially-supported device (a 2010 Mac Pro), I followed the instructions I found at https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/install-macos-old-mac-3654960/ and downloaded and ran the Big Sur MicroPatcher (big-sur-micropatcher-main.zip), including the bundled setvars script (with the -d flag because I was running this on a late 2013 iMac) against the mounted USB installation media:

$ unzip ~/Downloads/big-sur-micropatcher-main.zip

$ cd big-sur-micropatcher-main/

$ ./micropatcher.sh /Volumes/Install\ macOS\ Big\ Sur

$ ./install-setvars.sh -d /Volumes/Install\ macOS\ Big\ Sur

Boot It

I removed the High Sierra drive (a 1TB SSD mounted on an OWC Accelsior S PCIe/SATA bridge card) and connected the “Big Sur” drive (a Crucial MX500 1TB SSD) to one of the onboard SATA connectors (limited to 3GB/s, natch), and booted the Mac Pro with the USB installation media stuck in one of the front USB ports, holding down the Option key.

First, I booted the EFI Boot partition, which quickly sets up the Mac’s NVRAM and just as quickly powers the machine off.

Next, I booted up again, again holding down the Option key, and this time selected Install MacOS Big Sur:

Used Disk Utility to format the Crucial drive:

Then installed Big Sur normally (including migrating applications, documents, and settings from my High Sierra MacBook Pro):

Hardware Compatibility

This is my machine, as reported by Apple’s System Information tool:

Hardware Overview

Model Name: Mac Pro

Model Identifier: MacPro5,1

Processor Name: 6-Core Intel Xeon

Processor Speed: 3.33 GHz

Number of Processors: 1

Total Number of Cores: 6

L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB

L3 Cache: 12 MB

Hyper-Threading Technology: Enabled

Memory: 32 GB

System Firmware Version: MP51.0089.B00

SMC Version (system): 1.39f11

SMC Version (processor tray): 1.39f11

Serial Number (system): ###########

Hardware UUID: AED17049-7FFF-4EFC-9901-63C2A3CF8217

Provisioning UDID: 86995DB7-B11D-450F-B759-6BB593DDF6C8

It sees all the memory (4x 8GB sticks of 1333MHz DDR3 ECC).

According to sysctl -a | grep brand, the CPU is an Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5680 @ 3.33GHz a/k/a a Westmere, so that’s one upgrade I don’t have to worry about (I’ve heard of folks having issues, most notably with audio, with the older Nehalem chips).

Networking

Big Sur recognizes the two onboard Intel 82574L gigabit controllers and connects to the network. WiFi does not work; I have the Broadcom BCM4322, which is unsupported:

$ ioreg -r -n ARPT | grep IOName

| "IOName" = "pci14e4,432b"

I/O

Bluetooth appears to be working (it shows up and is recognizing local devices) but I haven't tested yet.

Update: Works fine, so far (I’m typing this on a Keychron K8 connected via Bluetooth, and I’m listening to the Music app playing through a Bluetooth-connected Bose QC35 II headset.

It seems to recognize the built-in FireWire 800 controller, but I don't have any FireWire devices handy to test with.
I'm using an external Topping MX3 DAC/Amp for sound (connected via USB), and it's recognized and works.
It seems to see the Inateck KT4004 4-port PCIe USB3 card (not yet tested)
- Update: Disk Utility sees a drive connected to the card, but can't mount it. The System Information app doesn’t show anything connected. Odd. There are reports that these cards work natively in Big Sur, but so far, no dice. May have to replace it with a Sonnet Allegro card?

GPU

It’s recognizing the GPU:

Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680

Type: GPU

Bus: PCIe

Slot: Slot-1

PCIe Lane Width: x16

VRAM (Total): 2 GB

Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)

Device ID: 0x1180

Revision ID: 0x00a2

ROM Revision: 3731

Metal Family: Supported, Metal GPUFamily macOS 1

Displays:

DELL U2311H:

Resolution: 1920 x 1080 (1080p FHD - Full High Definition)

UI Looks like: 1920 x 1080 @ 60.00Hz

Framebuffer Depth: 24-Bit Color (ARGB8888)

Display Serial Number: ###########

Main Display: Yes

Mirror: Off

Online: Yes

Rotation: Supported

Automatically Adjust Brightness: Yes

Storage

It sees the SSD (obviously):

CT1000MX500SSD1:

Capacity: 1 TB (1,000,204,886,016 bytes)

Model: CT1000MX500SSD1

Revision: M3CR033

Serial Number: ############

Native Command Queuing: Yes

Queue Depth: 32

Removable Media: No

Detachable Drive: No

BSD Name: disk0

Medium Type: Solid State

TRIM Support: Yes

Bay Name: Bay 3

Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)

S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified

Volumes:

EFI:

Capacity: 209.7 MB (209,715,200 bytes)

File System: MS-DOS FAT32

BSD Name: disk0s1

Content: EFI

Volume UUID: 4A002648-3CE9-4139-A52B-EC6DFF9397B3

disk0s2:

Capacity: 1 TB (999,995,129,856 bytes)

BSD Name: disk0s2

Content: Apple_APFS

So far so good. Dealing with specialty apps (Tree is the only one I can’t find a ready replacement for, but I haven’t looked very hard), buying updated versions of others (Scrivener, to version 3; Clean Text), for 64-bit compatibility, is a bit of a nuisance, but survivable (and expected). Java? AdoptOpenJDK.

Shopping list:

I have all four silver aluminum drive sleds for the Mac Pro, but two are pretty gnarly. There are $10 adapters that will re-use the existing sleds for SSDs, or whole-sled replacements for $15. I think I’m going to pick up two of the latter to have a complete system.
Another Accelsior S card. I’m wrestling with this; on the one hand it’s “only” $38 and will double my hard drive performance. On the other, I’m not sure I’ll notice the difference with my usual use case, and I’m trying to keep this retrofit not too expensive. Finally, will these cards be readily available forever?
The Sonnet Allegro USB card ($50). Or, if I was serious about USB, maybe the Sonnet Allegro Pro card ($140), with two controllers and therefore much better throughput.

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