GUIDE Black Screen on Wake – macOS Sonoma (OpenCore)

[Nismo350z]

Hey everyone! I recently encountered a scary black-screen issue on my Hackintosh after it woke from sleep. The system was fully functional (I could hear YouTube videos playing, and keyboard inputs still worked), but my monitor refused to show any signal. At first, I thought my GPU or RAM had died. Thankfully, after some troubleshooting, I managed to fix it. I’m sharing the details here in case someone else runs into the same problem.

System Specs​

• Motherboard/CPU: Intel 4770K + Z87-G45 GAMING
• GPU: AMD RX 570
• Bootloader: OpenCore
• macOS Version: macOS Sonoma
• Monitor Connection: Initially using HDMI, eventually switched to DisplayPort

The Problem​

1. System had been running fine for months without any major changes or updates.
2. I left the computer to get some food and let it go to sleep.
3. Upon returning, I tapped the power button to wake it up, but the screen stayed black. The monitor was on standby (no signal).
4. I could type my password, press the space bar, and even hear a YouTube video continuing to play. That meant the system was awake internally—just no display output.
5. Rebooting the machine or unplugging/replugging the HDMI cable didn’t help. The screen simply stayed black.

Initially, I worried about hardware failure (GPU, RAM, or even the drive). But I tested the HDMI cable and monitor on a different PC, and it worked just fine. That pointed to something specific to my Hackintosh setup.

The Weird Behavior​

• The keyboard’s Num Lock indicator would toggle on/off every 10–15 seconds, almost like the Hackintosh was in some kind of loop.
• Booting with DisplayPort also gave me a black screen at first—but once I started spamming the BIOS keys (Del, Ins, F10, etc.), I finally got it to boot into macOS normally, with full display output.

The Fix That Worked​

1. Switch from HDMI to DisplayPort:
   
   • I used a DisplayPort cable (instead of HDMI) to connect my RX 570 to the same monitor.
   • Initially, it still came up black, but spamming a few BIOS keys Del, Insert, F10, F11, F12 eventually kicked it into gear, and macOS booted with display output.
   • After that, the system displayed the login screen as normal.

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