Running macOS Big Sur on Proxmox 6.2

macOS Big Sur Beta is available for download. Well, you will need a valid developer account to obtain the installation file for Big Sur. Or, you can find some trick on how to obtain Big Sur Beta without a developer account.

This is not a how-to tutorial to install macOS Big Sur on Proxmox. I am currently preparing the tutorial about the Big Sur on Proxmox. Stay tuned on this blog. In this article just want to share my story about this new BigSur running on Proxmox 6.2 VE as a virtual machine. It is a great experience to have macOS running on Proxmox. Since this is the Beta version, there are a lot of bugs and not fully functional features.

Why use Proxmox?

I have been testing the macOS on various systems. I run it on VMware, VirtualBox, install directly to my PC and lastly install it on Proxmox. Forget about installing macOS on VMware or Virtualbox. They lack graphic acceleration and cannot deliver a good performance. Another option is to use the dual boot system. If you run Windows and want to try Hackintosh on the same PC, I would recommend having another disk for macOS installation.

Nowadays, installing macOS on PC (Hackintosh) is not that difficult. I am not a Hackintosh guru but I can install and run Hackintosh on my Ryzen PC without any issues. So now let’s talk about running macOS on Proxmox. Similar to VMware or VirtualBox, basically we run macOS as a virtual machine under Proxmox. But, with a little trick, we can enable the GPU Passthrough on our virtual machine. By doing this, our macOS virtual machine will have graphic acceleration which allows us to play games, edit video using Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve easily.

macos big sur desktop
macOS Big Sur on Proxmox VE

I did a benchmark comparing AMD Ryzen Hackintosh with a Proxmox VM, both running macOS Catalina 10.15.5. And the result was very interesting. The difference between the two systems is very minor. So I can say, even it is installed as a virtual machine, but with the GPU Passthrough enabled, we can get way better performance. As a bonus, we still be able to run another operating system simultaneously. No need a dual boot.

System Specifications for macOS Big Sur

I am running Proxmox 6.2 VE installed on the following hardware:

  • AMD FX 8350 processor
  • Gigabyte GA-780a-D3P
  • 16 GB DDR3 RAM
  • MSI Radeon RX-570 8 GB graphic card

I was able to run macOS Catalina virtual machine on this Proxmox server with GPU passthrough. It performs very well with graphic acceleration enabled.

OpenCore Boot Loader

OpenCore boot loader is used in this system. It runs perfectly on the Proxmox virtual machine. Thanks to this guy who provides everything you need to run macOS Big Sur on Proxmox using OpenCore boot loader.

So, welcome to a new journey of macOS Big Sur. I will try to write more article about Hackintosh macOS Big Sur in the future. Stay tuned.

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