The Hackintosh Thread

[Ichinisan]

Are there any mini-ITX boards with Thunderbolt and 802.11ac? What 802.11ac chipset does Apple use?

I just thought about something: Most genuine Apple computers have a headphone jack that also supports iPhone headsets with microphone and in-line controls (volume+clicker). I doubt there's any board you can use in a hackintosh to support that...right?

I guess a hackintosh will never be quite like the real thing.

 

[Zaap]

Yes, I used Tony's site for the previous builds. But their current customized hacks are way out of my price range. So I am left going to the used market, I think. Would a sandy bridge 2600k (over clocked), matching mother board, etc etc, be a significant upgrade over the i7 960?

Here's where the i7 960 scores on Passmark's CPU benchmarks:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7+960+@+3.20GHz&id=838

It's at nearly 6,000 and the i7 2600K is up around 8,500. (An i5 2500K is around 6,500 by the way).

The problem with a 2600K is that they're simply too expensive to bother with at this point. On eBay, Amazon and other sources they're selling for $300-$400. If you got one used, I'd say it wouldn't be worth it unless it was extremely cheap, say around $150 or less.

Meanwhile, any chance you live near a Microcenter?

They have the i7 4770 for $239
http://www.microcenter.com/product/413249/Core_i7_4770_34GHz_Boxed_Processor

and even better (if you're lucky enough to live near a store that has one)
the i7 4770K for $250
http://www.microcenter.com/product/413248/Core_i7_4770K_35GHz_Socket_LGA_1150_Boxed_Processor

The 4770K benches at 10,300
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-4770K+@+3.50GHz&id=1919

Even for $100 more than the microcenter in-store price (which is its normal price) it's a hell of an upgrade from your 960, almost doubling the CPU power you're currently using.

Are you doing an upgrade of your 960 system, reusing the RAM, case, PSU, drives, etc? If so, you could upgrade just mobo and CPU within your budget.

You could for example use this motherboard:

GA-Z87-HD3
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D94X6AK/...nymacx86com-20

Paired with a 4770K:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819116901

costing you roughly about $470. (Assuming you couldn't score the CPU at a Microcenter price.) Replacing with parts in your 960 system, this is an upgrade that would nearly double your processing power.

Keeping within your $800 budget (which is extremely low-ball for the level of system you're wanting) you'd have $330 left over to work out your graphic card and monitor needs.

 

[darth maul]

I would love to canabilize one of the other systems, just not an option. They are at my wifes business being used as video edit stations. And ya I saw the microcenter price, nearest one is Chicago I am by Madison, WI. According to slick deals you can some times get staples to price match, so I might do that, if I can find a staples that will price match microcenter. Or I might just take a road trip!!!! Lol. This is not a immediate needed build, per say. So I will need to think about the price vs performance ratio. But I am leaning towards the 4770k now. This morning I was thinking real hard about a 2600k which i probably would get used from the for sale forum, now not so much.

BTW, I think the only extra I have laying around is a DVD drive, so I am starting with nothing but that.

PS: with the lean now towards the 4770k, the budget probably has been increased and/or at the very least the final install of everything will be pushed back by yet another month or two.

 

[Ichinisan]

Probably going to get a Z87E-ITX because it has mSATA and it will help me keep this system super tidy...but it doesn't seem to be the best choice for a hackintosh. Are there any other mini-ITX boards with mSATA?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Probably going to get a Z87E-ITX because it has mSATA and it will help me keep this system super tidy...but it doesn't seem to be the best choice for a hackintosh. Are there any other mini-ITX boards with mSATA?

Lots.

I have an Asrock Z77E-ITX and a Gigabyte GA-H81TN. Both have two expansion slots - one mSATA and one mPCIE. (The mSATA of the Z77E-ITX is on the bottom, which is kind of a neat idea. Not sure if they kept that for the Z87E-ITX.)

My Foxconn D70S-P has a mini-PCI-E slot on it. Not sure if it's mSATA compatible though.

 

[Zaap]

PS: with the lean now towards the 4770k, the budget probably has been increased and/or at the very least the final install of everything will be pushed back by yet another month or two.

There's no doubt the 4770K is a tremendous bang for buck- especially when you consider it performs at near the level of CPUs that cost 3x as much.

I've been contemplating upgrading my signature system to a 4770K for some time now. (New mobo and CPU + better nVidia GPU).

But my current system keeps on keeping on and I have no real reason to upgrade except that I just lust for faster/better/newer like most of us tech geeks. The 2600K is actually a great CPU, and mine is over-clocked to 4.0 Ghz on air and blazes through my work.

Anyway, good luck with the upgrade quest!

 

[darth maul]

There's no doubt the 4770K is a tremendous bang for buck- especially when you consider it performs at near the level of CPUs that cost 3x as much.

I've been contemplating upgrading my signature system to a 4770K for some time now. (New mobo and CPU + better nVidia GPU).

But my current system keeps on keeping on and I have no real reason to upgrade except that I just lust for faster/better/newer like most of us tech geeks. The 2600K is actually a great CPU, and mine is over-clocked to 4.0 Ghz on air and blazes through my work.

Anyway, good luck with the upgrade quest!

Thank you!!!! It's people like you that make people like me even more poor then we already are.

Naw, the real problem is wanting to chew through HD footage like my previous builds did to SD footage.

 

[darth maul]

MSI h81M-p33 <-----anybody hackintosh that? Found a slick deal on it, and was wondering if anyone did a successful build with that motherboard? Newegg has it with total defense for $13.99, after a bunch of rebates and combo discount.

Now I saw two or three people on tony mac try it, some only got to safe mode, but really if you get that far shouldn't a tweak here or there finish the build off?

And yes I realise the limitations of the board....biggest one I would be missing it's raid followed by FireWire.

Oh and can a PCIE 3.0 16x card be used in a PCIE 2.0 16x slot? Been a while since my last build and some things change...

 

[terpsy]

I just did my Hackintosh, it has been a while but I went with the MC combo
with the following board

Gigabyte B85M-D3H and an i5 chip.

The board cost me $49.99 and the chip was $159.99

This board was perfect. I am running up on Mavericks without issue

Sleep works and the machine is running perfectly for 4+ weeks straight.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

MSI h81M-p33 <-----anybody hackintosh that? Found a slick deal on it, and was wondering if anyone did a successful build with that motherboard? Newegg has it with total defense for $13.99, after a bunch of rebates and combo discount.

Now I saw two or three people on tony mac try it, some only got to safe mode, but really if you get that far shouldn't a tweak here or there finish the build off?

And yes I realise the limitations of the board....biggest one I would be missing it's raid followed by FireWire.

Oh and can a PCIE 3.0 16x card be used in a PCIE 2.0 16x slot? Been a while since my last build and some things change...

The H81 board I have is a GA-H81TN. Different beast. I've heard that DVI ports sometimes won't work with IGP graphics, but VGA/HDMI/Displayport are okay.

I did have issues with safe-mode-boot-only - in my case I traced it back to Vt-d. The BIOS wouldn't give me the option of disabling it so I had to use a boot flag instead.

You're right - if it'll boot in safe mode, there's probably something you can do to get it working if you throw your brain and google at it enough. But it could be frustrating. $14? ...might be worth a gamble if you have a free weekend or two... :hmm:

 

[vailr]

MSI h81M-p33 <-----anybody hackintosh that? Found a slick deal on it, and was wondering if anyone did a successful build with that motherboard?

So far: only able to get a working OSX system via DVD copy of Niresh's OSX 10.8.2 installer on the MSI H81M-P33 board, but without a functioning audio or Lan port. The drivers from "MultiBeast-Mountain-Lion-Edition-5.5.5" did not enable either function: audio (ALC 887) or Lan (RTL8111G).
An update attempt using the official 10.8.5 combo update resulted in a non-bootable system.
Note: using an Intel i3-4130 CPU, onboard Intel 4400 graphics, DVI monitor connection, and latest bios (v. 1.3).
......................
March 2, 2014 Update: the most recent Realtek LAN driver here:
https://code.google.com/p/os-x-realtek-network/downloads/list
enabled a working LAN port on OSX 10.8.2.
Also tried using Niresh's 10.9.0 installer, which did complete installation to a bootable desktop, but still without a working LAN or audio. Updating to 10.9.2 with the official combo update resulted afterwards in a non-bootable system.

There's similarities (same Realtek Lan port) between this MSI H81M-P33 board and the Gigabyte Brix Haswell device, discussed here:
http://www.tonymacx86.com/mavericks-desktop-support/122183-gigabyte-gb-bxi5-4570r-brix-pro.html

 

[Zaap]

Just built a low-end Hack for my boss. This to replace a Hack I built for him back in 2008 that's been running great all this time. The original system was a Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L with 4GB of DDR2 and a 8600GTX graphics card, running 10.6.8.

Upgrade:

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-Z87MX-D3H

CPU: i3 4130 3.4 Ghz

GPU: eVGA GT610 2GB

8GB DDR3 1600

Crucial M500 120GB SSD

Swapped into the same mATX box case with PSU and twin 640GB hard drives.

All-in-all a pretty nifty upgrade for around $450.

For anyone looking to build a decent mATX Hackintosh, I highly recommend this motherboard. Mavericks 10.9.2 was easy to install on it, and its been running rock stable.

He gave me the old parts so I'm building another system around it and giving it to a friend that currently needs a computer. (Just a Windows box though as they don't need OSX, nor do I feel like bothering hacking such old hardware anymore.)

 

[mosslack]

Nice, I know what you mean about old stuff. Most of mine that I give away I put Windows 7 on them. A lot of people say they want to try OS X, but when push comes to shove, they opt for Windows.

 

[Kaido]

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-Z87MX-D3H

CPU: i3 4130 3.4 Ghz

GPU: eVGA GT610 2GB

8GB DDR3 1600

Crucial M500 120GB SSD

Swapped into the same mATX box case with PSU and twin 640GB hard drives.

All-in-all a pretty nifty upgrade for around $450.

For anyone looking to build a decent mATX Hackintosh, I highly recommend this motherboard. Mavericks 10.9.2 was easy to install on it, and its been running rock stable.

Never ceases to amaze me how great the scene is these days. Plenty of good solid tools out there now, lots of stability, loads of hardware options. It was a pretty long haul to get here, but it's nice!

 

[Zaap]

Nice, I know what you mean about old stuff. Most of mine that I give away I put Windows 7 on them. A lot of people say they want to try OS X, but when push comes to shove, they opt for Windows.

I originally built my boss's system as dual boot with Windows Vista at the time and Leopard. Later I upgraded him to Snow Leo.and Win 7. In 5 years he booted in to Windows maybe 3 or 4 times! With this latest upgrade he had me just nuke the practically never-used Windows drive and go OSX all the way.

But yeah, non-Macheads tend to prefer Windows, but if they're not into OSX I can see why. (Although I've only built two Windows 8.1 rigs for people. Tons of Win7 builds though).

Never ceases to amaze me how great the scene is these days. Plenty of good solid tools out there now, lots of stability, loads of hardware options. It was a pretty long haul to get here, but it's nice!

Recently I was reading back through how the process used to be like 5 years ago. I'd totally forgotten how complicated it was back then! The hardware limitations were a lot more strict, and some command line fiddling was guaranteed.

Now it's pretty straightforward. (Although ironically with this build I did need the command line once on the first boot after installing Mavericks. First boot:0 error I've seen in years but it only took a minute or so to sort.)

 

[vailr]

Has anyone here tried this "PMPatch" with a non-Gigabyte board's bios?: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/285444-pmpatch-uefi-patching-utility/
There's an updated (2014-02-21) version 1.4 bios for the MSI H81M-P33 board:
http://us.msi.com/product/mb/H81MP33.html#/?div=BIOS

@Zaap: did you use the
boot: xpcm-free -v
command when booting the OSX installation DVD/USB stick on a Haswell CPU system?

.................
Update 3/23/2014: did the PMPatch on the version 1.4 bios for H81M-P33 motherboard. Seems to have corrected the non-bootable condition after updating a Niresh install of 10.9.0 to 10.9.2. Audio also working after Multibeast 887 kext installation. Only remaining problem is finding a video driver for the onboard Intel 4400 GPU. With no video kext installed, screen resolution currently only at (system default) 1024 x 768, on a 1920 x 1080 monitor.

 

[Zaap]

@Zaap: did you use the
boot: xpcm-free -v
command when booting the OSX installation DVD/USB stick on a Haswell CPU system?

Nope. Just used Unibeast 3.0.1 and the USB installer booted and installed no problem, no flags needed. If anything, I was thinking the non-standard GT610 2GB card might present a problem- like a black screen at installation, but no problem there either, and no problem driving dual monitors at 1080p x2.

 

[AlexSchwarz]

OMG why bother?

 

[Zaap]

^ LOL. I see you're off to a flying start in the running for "most helpful and informative poster" award. Good luck with that.

 

[darth maul]

I know been awhile since my last post, funds dried up and well I have been buying on the thoughts of how much can I save with this purchase, or that purchase. What follows is what I have so far:

Gigabyte GA-Z87-DS3H
Antec GX500
Crucial SSD M500
Rosewill fans
LG DVD
HP 23xi monitor
Logitech M510 Mouse
USB wired Keyboard
Corsair CX500 PSU

I need advice on memory, again this a Final Cut Pro machine or will be once completed. Should I really, really, really, hold out for 16GB of RAM or should I just get 8GB and cheap out? There is a newegg shellshocker today, for 8GB of G.Skill 2133 sniper RAM, for $75, good deal? Or hold out till I can afford 16GB of probably 1600 for around $130? So I guess fast RAM but smaller amount or slower RAM but larger amount?

 

[Zaap]

Your board has 4 RAM slots; is the 8GB 2133 deal 2 x 4GB?

If so, I'd say go for it. You can always add another 8GB later. I find 16GB plenty for Final Cut work. I use FCP 7, not X. (7 can't fully utilize more than 4GB of RAM- yet X, which can, can't hold its own in a professional studio environment. The dilemma of Apple).

If its 4x 2GB I would pass. (Slot-waste IMHO).

Its been my experience that G.SKILL and Gigabyte boards go together perfectly. I've always preferred that brand. (Keep in mind some RAM can be finicky- often if it has unusual timings. If in doubt, check Gigabyte's approved RAM list for your motherboard.)

 

[darth maul]

Ya, it's two 4GB sticks.

 

[vailr]

A budget Mac: how to install a Hackingtosh
http://us.hardware.info/reviews/5252/a-budget-mac-how-to-install-a-hackingtosh

 

[Zaap]

A budget Mac: how to install a Hackingtosh
http://us.hardware.info/reviews/5252/a-budget-mac-how-to-install-a-hackingtosh

Someone needs to tell them its Hackintosh, no g.

One interesting point I saw in that article:

If you are using a SSD or a modern hard disk with 4k sectors you will get an error when booting up, boot0: error. This error will stop you from booting up the Mac OS. Luckily it's fairly simple to fix.

Explains why I saw that error with my boss's machine. I'm just amazed I never heard of it before having built so many Hacks and I'm fairly certain using 4k drives.

 

[vailr]

Someone needs to tell them its Hackintosh, no g.

At least they didn't call it a "Hackeringtosh".