After days of bleeding hands and using the wrong screwdrivers, I finally finished a complete tear down of my Early 2008 Mac Pro (2.8)
There were no parts left inside. Then it hit me. Mac Pro motherboards don’t use standard screw patterns! I am planning on buying a gigabyte micro atx motherboard (Amazon link
here)
It uses a Micro ATX screw pattern. Any suggestions on how I can make cutouts for I/O and PCI/graphics card?
Also are there any ways to adapt the screw pattern to work with a micro atx motherboard? I can buy a different form factor mobo if that makes life easier.
Building Hacks last 15 years. Some advises:
1. The Mac Pro case is awesome. Keep it and build Hack inside. No problems with screws, manage that. Case is far more beneficial and looks super cool. In addition, it is expensive.
2. Since the case is big, do not use MicroATX. Mini or plain normal ATX mainboard will be good and have tons of expansion.
3. Always use Asus boards. I had very bad luck with super expensive Gigabyte. Asus are reliable, budget friendly, easy to reset, update, Mac friendly.
4. My recommendation: choose Intel i9 and a corresponding Asus board. Maybe Asus Z590 ( i use Z490 P in my latest build, i9 10850, Asus Z490P, Sapphire RX 6600XT, 32GB of RAM, WD SSD M2).
5. Choose WD m2 as a main storage. Samsung has well known bug with very long boot in Hackintosh.
6. Choose AMD graphic card (RX 580 min), 6600XT etc. Sapphire is most Mac friendly, but Asus cards are fine too. I had long working Asus RX580, worked very well.
7. Choose Opencore or Clover for your EFI build. Clover is easier but Opencore is more modern. I am too lazy to build proper USB map, so I leave it as it is. I think, Macs do not have more than 15 USB ports, so there are limits.
8. For Monterey and later installs, Opencore should be 0.8 or higher version. It can updated automatically.
9. Use Clover configurator for EFI Mount utilties for mounting and installing EFI.
10. There are Mac friendly WIFI BT cards, such as Fenvi t919. It gives you native Airdrop, native BT, wifi etc. Easy to use with Apple Airpods, Max, Pro etc.
11. For all audio I use only USB audio cards, such as Focusrite Solo 3 and my table speakers are USB Edifier G2000. Removes all hassles related with audio in Hackintosh.
12. I use Logitech keyboard and mouse with USB receiver. Works very reliably, removes all hassles with USB, which may happen be even on native Macs.
Finally, while Apple's Mx CPUs are awesome, Intel machines are good too and Apple still has MacPro with Intel inside and will keep it for some time. So, Intel hackintosh might be a good idea for your build.