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Prebuilt Hackintosh... wondering..

Why not build one yourself - it will save you money, and its pretty easy.
 
if your not 100% percent confident in your building, and bios and flags stuff skills. don't do it yourself because your looking at a world of hurt.
 
RoastingPig said:
if your not 100% percent confident in your building, and bios and flags stuff skills. don't do it yourself because your looking at a world of hurt.
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Yeah, that's why I'm considering these pre-built ones... but one based on my specs.
 
RoastingPig said:
if your not 100% percent confident in your building, and bios and flags stuff skills. don't do it yourself because your looking at a world of hurt.
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Its not really that difficult, just visit tonymac or insanely mac, there are step by step directions. As long as you purchase the right motherboard, there's almost no "monkeying" around with the Bios.

Back when I did it, I got the components, put it all together, loaded the bootloader and I had OSX up and running. The only things I changed in the BIOS had to do with SATA drives and hibernation - basic non complicated settings
 
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I *strongly* encourage you to build it yourself. If you do some research, it's actually mindnumbingly easy to build a hackintosh these days. It might be easier than installing Windows depending on your hardware choice. Plus, just to throw it out there, selling Hackintoshes is actually still illegal.
 
It might look complicated at first, but do some research and you will find it extremely easy to build such a system because Mavericks is well-designed; so you just need to install sound driver and fix app store error then you are good to go. Consider to buy Gigabyte motherboard to make the project even more easier. I can help you for free if you live in San Jose.
 
matixryder said:
It might look complicated at first, but do some research and you will find it extremely easy to build such a system because Mavericks is well-designed; so you just need to install sound driver and fix app store error then you are good to go. Consider to buy Gigabyte motherboard to make the project even more easier. I can help you for free if you live in San Jose.
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I'm in LA, so a bit of a drive.. :D

Looking over at the systems on TonyMac, appears a top-end i7 rig with a GTX760 will run just a tad under $2k. Still wonder about long-term though.

The other trade-off is that for my PS and LR work, the nMP would be better obviously, but for gaming the GTX760 will likely beat the D300s, and maybe give the D500s a run for their money.
 
You can go with a 780 ti with $2000 budget. And you are living LA, you can go to Micro Center for cheap i7 4770k. Go in buy a compressed air can-> check out to get 5% off coupon. Go in again pick up the 4770k. I believe that you can save a hundred buck for the chip.
 
matixryder said:
You can go with a 780 ti with $2000 budget. And you are living LA, you can go to Micro Center for cheap i7 4770k. Go in buy a compressed air can-> check out to get 5% off coupon. Go in again pick up the 4770k. I believe that you can save a hundred buck for the chip.
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Thought there was an issue with the 780s.. guess it depends on what software I'm running..
 
I haven't heard about the issue, but you can make sure by google for compatible between 780ti and hackintosh. Anyway, below is the system I have built on Amazon. It should cost $2000 included tax.
 

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I've built two for a customer who bought a pair of those new quo motherboards when they were in Taiwan, the OS free ones which happen to have a TI FireWire chip installed and whose components are common to a certain company. Flash the uefi, load the sound drivers and by far the easiest hackintosh I have ever built.
 
Gav Mack said:
I've built two for a customer who bought a pair of those new quo motherboards when they were in Taiwan, the OS free ones which happen to have a TI FireWire chip installed and whose components are common to a certain company. Flash the uefi, load the sound drivers and by far the easiest hackintosh I have ever built.
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Firewire would be handy...

So a 2K i7 system, or a 4k hex/d500...

Really really hope we see the nMP soon, and some performance tests.
 
Another chiming in and saying "build it yourself" - use a TonyMacx86 Golden Build, there's a list of components on their website that work flawlessly with OS X, and detailed threads from most of the users as to how they got each of their builds working. I can vouch for the ease of some of TonyMac's builds. I've worked with difficult builds, such as laptops and unsupported boards, and I also have my own that was a recommended build. I can safely say that anything TonyMac recommends in the Buyers Guide works without a hassle. Quite honestly, installing OS X on my custom desktop was easier than installing Windows on my Mac Pro.

Also recommend Micro Center. Great deals on CPU bundles. I also know for a fact they stock compatible Gigabyte boards.
 
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wildmac said:
Firewire would be handy...

So a 2K i7 system, or a 4k hex/d500...

Really really hope we see the nMP soon, and some performance tests.
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Haswell 1155 only sadly, but has the Texas fw chip and thunderbolt. Allegedly the uefi update works wonders too but the user has to flash it.

http://quocomputer.com/shop/z77mx-quo-aos/

I would imagine as soon as the black can is unleashed they'll be designing a LGA2011 version :)

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NOTNlCE said:
Another chiming in and saying "build it yourself" - use a TonyMacx86 Golden Build, there's a list of components on their website that work flawlessly with OS X, and detailed threads from most of the users as to how they got each of their builds working. I can vouch for the ease of some of TonyMac's builds. I've worked with difficult builds, such as laptops and unsupported boards, and I also have my own that was a recommended build. I can safely say that anything TonyMac recommends in the Buyers Guide works without a hassle. Quite honestly, installing OS X on my custom desktop was easier than installing Windows on my Mac Pro.

Also recommend Micro Center. Great deals on CPU bundles. I also know for a fact they stock compatible Gigabyte boards.
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I don't mind building them for customers, plenty of labour involved keeping me busy, plus ever year when they launch a new OSX for example. Me personally, I'll stick with the legit can't be bothered to maintain my own. Just want it to work!

The Quo board is manufactured by gigabyte using one of their most compatible boards as a template.
 
Gav Mack said:
Haswell 1155 only sadly, but has the Texas fw chip and thunderbolt. Allegedly the uefi update works wonders too but the user has to flash it.

http://quocomputer.com/shop/z77mx-quo-aos/

I would imagine as soon as the black can is unleashed they'll be designing a LGA2011 version :)
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I can tell you LGA2011 with E5-2630s works on supermicro boards using 10.6. I run ubuntu now, and just use a MBP for OSX, but I wanted to see if it could work and it did. I keep OSX on a virtual machine on the workstation now and boot it up occationally.
 
pastrychef said:
Is the seller going to be around to help with upgrading to the next version of OS X?
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Well, my greatest fear with a Hackintosh is that with the coming of the nMP, we would see a kernel change that would break them somehow, and block OS updates. So if we get past 10.9.1 with the nMP rollout, and if the Hackintoshes are still safe, then they are good for a while probably.

Then again, my 7-year-old MP is still on 10.7.5, since it was blocked out a while ago.

The way it's really boiling down for me is I'll get either a beefy Hackintosh, or the nMP, as the iMac and MBP both have downsides that are deal breakers for me, given the prices.
 
wildmac said:
Well, my greatest fear with a Hackintosh is that with the coming of the nMP, we would see a kernel change that would break them somehow, and block OS updates. So if we get past 10.9.1 with the nMP rollout, and if the Hackintoshes are still safe, then they are good for a while probably.

Then again, my 7-year-old MP is still on 10.7.5, since it was blocked out a while ago.

The way it's really boiling down for me is I'll get either a beefy Hackintosh, or the nMP, as the iMac and MBP both have downsides that are deal breakers for me, given the prices.
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There was a decent kernel change in the 10.9 release, and I've seen patches of power management for the Socket 2011 CPUs. Can't know for sure how well they work, but I've seen them. I really doubt there will be a huge kernel change, and even if there is, someone will patch the kernel. If AMD CPUs have a chance of working with OS X, you better believe anything Intel is going to end up working. Someone, somewhere, will fix it. As far as your old MP goes, there are methods of getting newer versions of OS X installed if you wanted. What it seems like now, to me, is whether you want the internal expandability. Surely, wait for a little bit longer to see if the kernel changes for OS X, and how that affects Xeons or -E series workstation processors, but at this point it seems to all be upgradability.
 
bkribbs said:
Isn't this still a grey area as to legality though?
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Yes, it is pretty grey, but Apple has never done anything to stop people installing OS X on a Hackintosh, nor pursued legal action against them. People selling Hackintoshes with OS X installed is a different matter.

However, the licensing terms state that OS X must be installed on an "Apple branded computer". So stick an Apple sticker on the side and you're good to go. :cool:
 
My old MP is really old enough that I don't think it's worth that effort. It needs ram, larger drives, and a better video card (assuming the OS was updated to support that). By the time I were to buy all that...

Until there's a fix for the Xeons.. it's back to the i7 vs nMP question.

Waiting for Barefeats to get ahold of a nMP.. :)

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theSeb said:
Yes, it is pretty grey, but Apple has never done anything to stop people installing OS X on a Hackintosh, nor pursued legal action against them. People selling Hackintoshes with OS X installed is a different matter.

However, the licensing terms state that OS X must be installed on an "Apple branded computer". So stick an Apple sticker on the side and you're good to go. :cool:
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Yeah, I've seen these systems selling on eBay for over a year now, and the guy is still selling them, so it must not be a large enough target for Apple to chase.
 
It was so easy with these Quo boards I will be very tempted to get a socket 2011 product. Once flashed its a Mac.

A dual or quad Xeon board with 8 dimms, lots of PCIe slots and thunderbolt would give the power users on here something to think about

If apple don't want to make a high performance board they can at least turn a blind eye, nod and wink at the user community to modify a few versions to work. Maybe a custom board to fit a 4 or 5,1 even :)
 
Well, if you have money for nMP then go for it. However, I think you should wait for the reviews because the airflow of the machine doesn't look good to me. I love to have one because of the nice design, but it is too expensive for a computer.
 
Yes - if you are curious build one - it may very well work for you.

I built two and they were both stellar hardware machines. I now have no interest in building another :)... Way more trouble than just geting a Mac and going on with life. There are alternate solutions to everything a Hack solves yet YOU will be the solution for any problem the hack has... :)
 
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