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MacUser2525

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Mar 17, 2007
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Canada
Must admit I am normally a Intel user, it’s crazy I was willing to spend £1,800 on a iMac, and now totalling up the cost of parts for a Hackintosh and they are coming close to £1000 without monitor, I am thinking I am nuts. ?

Well yeah seems a little high, what are you looking at for the parts? That is over $1700 CAD I can build hell of a machine for that kind of money, that would include decent monitor..
 
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jwar1976

macrumors regular
Jan 29, 2019
237
77
Norwich
Well yeah seems a little high, what are you looking at for the parts? That is over $1700 CAD I can build hell of a machine for that kind of money, that would include decent monitor..
I was looking at the Gigabyte Z490, 10th Gen i7, 16gb ram, M2 drive. For the 9th Gen i7, Gigabyte Z390 board it costs £700 for just the board, CPU & Ram. So still over a grand by the time I add the M2 drive and something like the 5500XT. I am doing research on other boards as well, in case there are some decent combinations for Big Sur that are cheape, but still allow me to do video encoding / rendering and gaming.
 
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MacUser2525

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Mar 17, 2007
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I was looking at the Gigabyte Z490, 10th Gen i7, 16gb ram, M2 drive. For the 9th Gen i7, Gigabyte Z390 board it costs £700 for just the board, CPU & Ram. So still over a grand by the time I add the M2 drive and something like the 5500XT. I am doing research on other boards as well, in case there are some decent combinations for Big Sur that are cheape, but still allow me to do video encoding / rendering and gaming.
No sense in the hyper threaded enabled processors you need to turn that off to eliminte the security problems of the Intel processors. One time my being so cheap pays off in spades, not having went with an i7 only the i5. With that in place the processors are identical in performance for the same speed. God damn, the prices are outrageous where you are, England I presume as your reference pounds. The most expensive 490 here I could find on amazon, only just over $300 about £200 pounds. You can get it done cheaper some of the time going with the used last generation tech. This has the advantage of being supported better and keeping more in your pocket for important things like good monitor and more ram if wanted. What I say to you is shop around and get the best deal possible. Oops missed the ram and cpu well i5 going into that board here would be another 300, ram at most 200 for 16gb, probably could get 32 on a reasonable sale. Now I check the 390 are 350 top of line. Only off by $30 on the processor (my processor right now) in those guesses, the ram would be four sticks for it.







My motherboard I purchased for $76.44 open box item according to the order I just looked up. Who knows if you are as tight as I am with the money. The saving can be found do not be in hurry if you do not have to be.

 
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nathansz

macrumors 68000
Jul 24, 2017
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There you are better off looking for guides for the machine you wish to have. Once you see one someone has done with the processor, motherboard really is the main to look for. It is simple to adapt their method to your new install. Perhaps all the files needed will be there in a nice zipped up EFI folder if you duplicate it exactly.

Edit: And I would add if the case of exact duplicate it is so simple it is not funny. Take existing Mac clone to a hard or ssd drive, mount the ESP boot partition the tiny little fat partition on a guid prtitioned hard drive. Once done copy the unzipped EFI folder to the partition. Eject the drive put it into the machine and boot into your new "Mac" the first time without any I am currently looking at guides of different boards on a site called TonyMac, there are probably other sites, but that was one of the first that came up in a search. In all honesty while i am fairly confident in putting a PC together as have done it since the 90’s, but Hackintosh is completely new to me, so the guides are a essential.
i would really recommend against this approach and encourage you to follow the dortania open core guides. it will be much easier to get a working system for whatever hardware you choose and will be much easier to get help and support

 
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jwar1976

macrumors regular
Jan 29, 2019
237
77
Norwich
No sense in the hyper threaded enabled processors you need to turn that off to eliminte the security problems of the Intel processors. One time my being so cheap pays off in spades, not having went with an i7 only the i5. With that in place the processors are identical in performance for the same speed. God damn, the prices are outrageous where you are, England I presume as your reference pounds. The most expensive 490 here I could find on amazon, only just over $300 about £200 pounds. You can get it done cheaper some of the time going with the used last generation tech. This has the advantage of being supported better and keeping more in your pocket for important things like good monitor and more ram if wanted. What I say to you is shop around and get the best deal possible. Oops missed the ram and cpu well i5 going into that board here would be another 300, ram at most 200 for 16gb, probably could get 32 on a reasonable sale. Now I check the 390 are 350 top of line. Only off by $30 on the processor (my processor right now) in those guesses, the ram would be four sticks for it.







My motherboard I purchased for $76.44 open box item according to the order I just looked up. Who knows if you are as tight as I am with the money. The saving can be found do not be in hurry if you do not have to be.

Thank you for those suggestions, unfortunately that particular Z390 board is now end of life and cannot be purchased easily. The Z490 one is available at a price of £189, which is about 330 Canadian dollars. There are a few places that do bundles for Z390 & Z490 boards where you get the CPU & Ram or just the CPU. One bundle I have seen is the Intel i7 9700 Bundle - UHD 630, Gigabyte Z390 UD Motherboard for £425 which is 737 Canadian dollars.

After doing lot’s of research and reading of reviews / Hackintosh blogs, I have found a cheaper alternative which apparently works great and that is with the Gigabyte Gaming X board. Which I can get as a bundle with the Intel i5 10400F and 32gb of HyperX Fury Ram for £458. So by the time I add the case, psu, choice of Nvme drives & Radeon graphics, I am looking at a total of under £1000 for a fairly decent machine. Also I understand there is a pcie WiFi / Bluetooth card that is designed for Hackintosh machines and works flawlessly, so will look into that as well.

 
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Aoligei

macrumors 65816
Jul 16, 2020
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i would really recommend against this approach and encourage you to follow the dortania open core guides. it will be much easier to get a working system for whatever hardware you choose and will be much easier to get help and support


I think it is depends. I have followed the Dortania OpenCore guide for my AMD build and I could never get it work. Maybe I missed something, but I am sure I have followed the guide.

I went to search EFI folder for exact motherboard, it is quite common I believe, Gigabyte B420M DS3H. Download the EFI and copy install USB EFI. MacOS installed and booted perfectly fine. The only thing I did different is get GenSIMBIOS to get new serial number and UUID, so Apple services can run.
 

Aoligei

macrumors 65816
Jul 16, 2020
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Thank you for those suggestions, unfortunately that particular Z390 board is now end of life and cannot be purchased easily. The Z490 one is available at a price of £189, which is about 330 Canadian dollars. There are a few places that do bundles for Z390 & Z490 boards where you get the CPU & Ram or just the CPU. One bundle I have seen is the Intel i7 9700 Bundle - UHD 630, Gigabyte Z390 UD Motherboard for £425 which is 737 Canadian dollars.

After doing lot’s of research and reading of reviews / Hackintosh blogs, I have found a cheaper alternative which apparently works great and that is with the Gigabyte Gaming X board. Which I can get as a bundle with the Intel i5 10400F and 32gb of HyperX Fury Ram for £458. So by the time I add the case, psu, choice of Nvme drives & Radeon graphics, I am looking at a total of under £1000 for a fairly decent machine. Also I understand there is a pcie WiFi / Bluetooth card that is designed for Hackintosh machines and works flawlessly, so will look into that as well.


Unless you really need perfect AirDrop, handoff, I don't think it is worth to pay for these Hackintosh compatible Wi-Fi Cards. I could not find any that is less than 50CAD... Some are even going for 90CAD.

You could technically buy Broadcom chips along with PCI-E adaptor, but these would cost you lots of money.

I went to grab a cheap TP-link USB Wifi and cheap bluetooth adaptor, they are both working fine under Big Sur. While I don't get AirDrop, handoff or location services, but I really don't care that much.
 

lowendlinux

macrumors 603
Original poster
Sep 24, 2014
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Wow I can't believe this thread is almost 6 years old!

I wonder how many more years we're going to be able to do this
 

nathansz

macrumors 68000
Jul 24, 2017
1,731
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Wow I can't believe this thread is almost 6 years old!

I wonder how many more years we're going to be able to do this

it’s hard to say without knowing if anymore intel mac are coming out. my guess would be two more os versions after last intel mac, then two more years of security updated after that. of course even then you could still build with older hardware. people
are still doing high sierra builds with old nvidia gpus

those intel ads do make me suspect we’ve seen our last intel mac
 

Aoligei

macrumors 65816
Jul 16, 2020
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it’s hard to say without knowing if anymore intel mac are coming out. my guess would be two more os versions after last intel mac, then two more years of security updated after that. of course even then you could still build with older hardware. people
are still doing high sierra builds with old nvidia gpus

those intel ads do make me suspect we’ve seen our last intel mac

I suspect Intel Mac Pro will stay for a while and I suspect Apple is still going to sell Intel based Macs for a while until they got ride of all stock, including refurbished Intel Macs. I also suspect Apple would still release few version of macOS for Intel Macs..

But you are right, there maybe no more new Intel Macs comes out. This really means, on desktop side, Intel Comet Lake is probably the last Intel chip supported by macOS. And on laptop side, Ice Lake probably the last one.

This effectively means, if anyone build Hackintosh with native supported CPU, it is in counted time. I don't know if these genius would make patches for newer Intel chip work with macOS, but it gonna be pretty complicated.

Anyway, Hackintosh is effectively dead at this point. All we do right now is hoping Apple would continue support Intel for a while.

And I for one, is really sad about it. I am not looking forward for all soldiered, not upgradable Mac. With Hackintosh, I can do whatever I wanted with lots of upgradability.
 

nathansz

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I suspect Intel Mac Pro will stay for a while and I suspect Apple is still going to sell Intel based Macs for a while until they got ride of all stock, including refurbished Intel Macs. I also suspect Apple would still release few version of macOS for Intel Macs..

But you are right, there maybe no more new Intel Macs comes out. This really means, on desktop side, Intel Comet Lake is probably the last Intel chip supported by macOS. And on laptop side, Ice Lake probably the last one.

This effectively means, if anyone build Hackintosh with native supported CPU, it is in counted time. I don't know if these genius would make patches for newer Intel chip work with macOS, but it gonna be pretty complicated.

Anyway, Hackintosh is effectively dead at this point. All we do right now is hoping Apple would continue support Intel for a while.

And I for one, is really sad about it. I am not looking forward for all soldiered, not upgradable Mac. With Hackintosh, I can do whatever I wanted with lots of upgradability.

I don't know much about cpu architecture, but I suppose that as long as intel continues to refresh Skylake over and over it wouldn't be too difficult to spoof their id's to run an intel supported macOS.

I'm pretty sad too. I just built my first hackintosh last spring and could not be happier. since then I've already upgraded motherboard, cpu and gpu. I love being able to add and remove internal storage in a matter of minutes and love to be able run and play with nearly every operating system around
 

Aoligei

macrumors 65816
Jul 16, 2020
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I don't know much about cpu architecture, but I suppose that as long as intel continues to refresh Skylake over and over it wouldn't be too difficult to spoof their id's to run an intel supported macOS.

I'm pretty sad too. I just built my first hackintosh last spring and could not be happier. since then I've already upgraded motherboard, cpu and gpu. I love being able to add and remove internal storage in a matter of minutes and love to be able run and play with nearly every operating system around

Well. Continue refinement of Skylake is over. Intel is due to release its Alder Lake processor, which is Intel's attempt to bring Big.Little to x86 processor. Even Windows will have difficult to operate on this type of processor (assume Microsoft will able to rewrite Windows's Kernel and scheduler), let alone macOS.

I mean, it could work with CPU spoofing. You can do AMD based Hackintosh, even though macOS never had support of AMD processor. I am more worried about getting macOS runs stable enough on non-native support CPU, then worrying about getting macOS installed on non-native support CPU. I mean, what does it do good when you get constant kernel panic?

I really don't know what to do after Hackintosh party is over. I could run last supported macOS forever until the hardware kick the bucket or I could install Windows (which is my last option).

With upgradability, I guess if you have enough soldering skills, you can install RAM and SSD by yourself. All you need to make sure is you know what you are doing ????
 

pshufd

macrumors G4
Oct 24, 2013
10,155
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Well. Continue refinement of Skylake is over. Intel is due to release its Alder Lake processor, which is Intel's attempt to bring Big.Little to x86 processor. Even Windows will have difficult to operate on this type of processor (assume Microsoft will able to rewrite Windows's Kernel and scheduler), let alone macOS.

I mean, it could work with CPU spoofing. You can do AMD based Hackintosh, even though macOS never had support of AMD processor. I am more worried about getting macOS runs stable enough on non-native support CPU, then worrying about getting macOS installed on non-native support CPU. I mean, what does it do good when you get constant kernel panic?

I really don't know what to do after Hackintosh party is over. I could run last supported macOS forever until the hardware kick the bucket or I could install Windows (which is my last option).

With upgradability, I guess if you have enough soldering skills, you can install RAM and SSD by yourself. All you need to make sure is you know what you are doing ????

I'm still running High Sierra on my Late 2009 iMac and it's fine. I could see running Mojave for another five years.

If Apple plays their cards right, though, they could wind up with a lot of people that will just buy their gear and not bother with Hacks. The idea would be to make prices for RAM and storage reasonable and then gain gross amounts of marketshare as they would be the leader in price/performance/watt.
 
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bradl

macrumors 603
Jun 16, 2008
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Well. Continue refinement of Skylake is over. Intel is due to release its Alder Lake processor, which is Intel's attempt to bring Big.Little to x86 processor. Even Windows will have difficult to operate on this type of processor (assume Microsoft will able to rewrite Windows's Kernel and scheduler), let alone macOS.

I mean, it could work with CPU spoofing. You can do AMD based Hackintosh, even though macOS never had support of AMD processor. I am more worried about getting macOS runs stable enough on non-native support CPU, then worrying about getting macOS installed on non-native support CPU. I mean, what does it do good when you get constant kernel panic?

I really don't know what to do after Hackintosh party is over. I could run last supported macOS forever until the hardware kick the bucket or I could install Windows (which is my last option).

With upgradability, I guess if you have enough soldering skills, you can install RAM and SSD by yourself. All you need to make sure is you know what you are doing ????

They also have Cascade Lake (already released), Copper Lake (which was released in September), Ice Lake (which I received the first samples of in December), in addition to Alder Lake. Those are going to be supported for a while, but seeing that M1 came out right at the time Cascade Lake was already in public consumption, I think that the cutoff will be whenever production ends for Cascade Lake.* By then, M1 will already have been mainstream long enough, with possibly an M2, that Intel-based Macs will be unsupported by then.

* Most of these that I am referring to are server CPUs, not desktop, so YMMV.

BL.
 

pshufd

macrumors G4
Oct 24, 2013
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Working on macOS running on QEMU on Ubuntu running under WSL 2. I'm currently rebuilding the Kernel.

Virtualization works fairly well except for video performance (there's no acceleration), and audio (there isn't any). The reason for the above approach is to get video acceleration and all of the stuff that Windows provides for you in terms of drivers; in a relatively easy installation. I suspect that the installation itself is easy. But setting WSL 2, Ubuntu up, and building the Kernel has been a fair amount of work. And I think that I'm about halfway to trying the actual installation. This approach requires Windows Dev Channel build so it's being done on an old, junk system as a testcase. If it does work, then I might try buying a used Windows PC to do this with as they generally depreciate a lot.
 

pshufd

macrumors G4
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I got Windows -> WSL 2 Ubuntu -> KVM -> QEMU -> Ubuntu running as a test of the concept. It took me about ten hours. Next up is trying to do this with macOS. If it works and performs, I'll be pretty happy. Still, it would have been far less work to just order a Mini/M1.
 

nathansz

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Jul 24, 2017
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I got Windows -> WSL 2 Ubuntu -> KVM -> QEMU -> Ubuntu running as a test of the concept. It took me about ten hours. Next up is trying to do this with macOS. If it works and performs, I'll be pretty happy. Still, it would have been far less work to just order a Mini/M1.

i’m curious what the advantage of this method is over merely installing macos on to the hardware
 

pshufd

macrumors G4
Oct 24, 2013
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i’m curious what the advantage of this method is over merely installing macos on to the hardware

I believe that it's drivers. You're running lightweight processes on Windows with emulated hardware or passthrough. I've never been able to get an acceptable Hack from an old machine because of driver issues and I'm curious if this approach can fix that. You can just run it over Linux too - but you may again have driver issues. There are some developers that need all three operating systems as well and this is a convenient and efficient way to do it.
 

pshufd

macrumors G4
Oct 24, 2013
10,155
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New Hampshire
I was able to install macOS but everything died when I tried to reboot it. It did run reasonably well while it ran. I suspect that I need to reinstall Windows to fix it - that's the common solution to problems like these when you are on the Dev Channel builds - stuff is pretty raw. Next up: install Ubuntu and run KVM/QEMU there. The temptation is to buy an i7 iMac or a Mac Mini/M1 when neither of them have what I really want. I want the CPU power of the M1, the ability to add 128 GB of RAM if I want to and the ability to drive 3xk monitors. I want a big iMac with an M1X. In the meantime, I cobble together old hardware.

I found a 12 Core Dell server with 72 GB of RAM for sale: $300 or best offer. He wants it to go to a good home. The chips are from around 2012 and the machine is spec'd out like a 2012 Mac Pro. It's made by Dell, though, and that means that it's hard to sell. Most people don't want a computer with weak single-core performance but great multicore performance and it would take some effort to get it running and keep it running.
 
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lowendlinux

macrumors 603
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Sep 24, 2014
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I was able to install macOS but everything died when I tried to reboot it. It did run reasonably well while it ran. I suspect that I need to reinstall Windows to fix it - that's the common solution to problems like these when you are on the Dev Channel builds - stuff is pretty raw. Next up: install Ubuntu and run KVM/QEMU there. The temptation is to buy an i7 iMac or a Mac Mini/M1 when neither of them have what I really want. I want the CPU power of the M1, the ability to add 128 GB of RAM if I want to and the ability to drive 3xk monitors. I want a big iMac with an M1X. In the meantime, I cobble together old hardware.

I found a 12 Core Dell server with 72 GB of RAM for sale: $300 or best offer. He wants it to go to a good home. The chips are from around 2012 and the machine is spec'd out like a 2012 Mac Pro. It's made by Dell, though, and that means that it's hard to sell. Most people don't want a computer with weak single-core performance but great multicore performance and it would take some effort to get it running and keep it running.
I don't know how hard it would actually be I started this thread with my Dell Hackintosh
 

MBAir2010

macrumors 604
May 30, 2018
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What makes a PC laptop fully macinhack-hable, the logic board or SSD drive?
i would love to hackintoch my Dell XPS 2019 but the wifi, trackpad and bluetooth won't work.
 

maflynn

macrumors Haswell
May 3, 2009
73,682
43,740
What makes a PC laptop fully macinhack-hable, the logic board or SSD drive
Mostly the motherboard, but also the GPU and I believe also to some extent the CPU, since you need to have kexts (device drivers) available, for instance you cannot use an nvidia GPU simply because the last few versions of macOS don't include device drivers. I could be wrong, but given that macOS is intel only you could run into deep weeds for AMD processors, but I could be wrong there.
 
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