The Hackintosh Thread

[Middleman-77]

Have you been able to test how the E-Cores (disabled, enabled, with and without hyperthreading) affect Adobe apps, specifically Photoshop?

I haven't gotten around to that yet, but I will be. Photoshop is definitely one of those tests I'm hoping should be okay since it relies on AVX-512 functionality. There is no specific AVX-512 setting per se in the Asus BIOS that I have (and one reason why I am eager to test Photoshop functionality on the Asus board), but it is present in the Gigabyte versions.

There's a lot to do still with testing configurations and software. I just managed to install and get Monterey working today. The Z690 systems are currently booting and working both with and without hyperthreading. But if you want to boot into macOS one of either two must be disabled (ie either/or HT or E-cores).

As far as we know it can now/should boot Catalina, Big Sur and Monterey without issues. Thunderbolt 3 also works fully on supported motherboards, but USB 3 settings can be a challenge to set at first.

 

[Middleman-77]

Damn! That is some HOTness

Thank you!

 

[ahurst]

As an iMac fan who's preferred to spend money on a high-spec desktop over a laptop, I've made my way through 3 different extremely cheap hackintosh laptops since 2014: two Dell D630s and a ThinkPad X220.

I only meant to buy one D630 but I ended up with two: the first one they sent had Intel X3100 graphics and I'd specifically bought one with a NVidia GPU, so they sent me a second one free of change. I ran Lion on the X3100 D630 for a year or so until the hard drive failed, at which point I switched over to the NVidia D630 with an SSD running Mavericks (and later El Cap). Even with 2007-era specs, they ran surprisingly well for web browsing and office work! All thanks to the fine folks (especially Hervé) over at osxlatitude.com:

I still keep it around for when I need to image or burn CDs/DVDs. Eventually the 2 GB of RAM and poor GPU cooling in the NVidia D630 began to be a problem, even for light use, so in late 2016 I bought a used ThinkPad X220 (i7, 8 GB RAM, IPS display) off eBay for ~$250 and have been running macOS on it as a daily driver ever since. It's a fantastic laptop with a great keyboard, good screen, and enough performance to run smoothly almost 10 years after launch. Using the mcdonneltech guide and a mac-compatible Wi-Fi card it was a snap to set up. Still running El Capitan because I've been too lazy to update to High Sierra (the latest officially supported OS by its HD3000 GPU) with all the normal hackintosh complications:

Finally after 5 years with a 2011-era laptop and 8 years with a 2013-era iMac, I'm biting the bullet and picking up a 14" MBP since I'm getting into heavier compute tasks for work, but I'll always look back fondly at my Hackintosh laptops. The amount I saved not buying new or used MacBooks over the years has definitely made the cost sting a lot less. Very thankful these held me over through until the Apple Silicon era!

 

[turbineseaplane]

A Hackintosh Thinkpad is still a damned sexy package...

 

[ahurst]

A Hackintosh Thinkpad is still a damned sexy package...

It really is! The form factor of the X220 is great for portability too. If they hadn't switched to chicklet keyboards and Intel's mobile chips were still competitive with the M1, I'd have had a much harder decision on my hands. I can see why ThinkPads were Steve's laptop of choice through the NeXT and early return-to-Apple years.

 

[amgff84]

As an iMac fan who's preferred to spend money on a high-spec desktop over a laptop, I've made my way through 3 different extremely cheap hackintosh laptops since 2014: two Dell D630s and a ThinkPad X220.

I only meant to buy one D630 but I ended up with two: the first one they sent had Intel X3100 graphics and I'd specifically bought one with a NVidia GPU, so they sent me a second one free of change. I ran Lion on the X3100 D630 for a year or so until the hard drive failed, at which point I switched over to the NVidia D630 with an SSD running Mavericks (and later El Cap). Even with 2007-era specs, they ran surprisingly well for web browsing and office work! All thanks to the fine folks (especially Hervé) over at osxlatitude.com:

View attachment 1910320

I still keep it around for when I need to image or burn CDs/DVDs. Eventually the 2 GB of RAM and poor GPU cooling in the NVidia D630 began to be a problem, even for light use, so in late 2016 I bought a used ThinkPad X220 (i7, 8 GB RAM, IPS display) off eBay for ~$250 and have been running macOS on it as a daily driver ever since. It's a fantastic laptop with a great keyboard, good screen, and enough performance to run smoothly almost 10 years after launch. Using the mcdonneltech guide and a mac-compatible Wi-Fi card it was a snap to set up. Still running El Capitan because I've been too lazy to update to High Sierra (the latest officially supported OS by its HD3000 GPU) with all the normal hackintosh complications:

View attachment 1910321

Finally after 5 years with a 2011-era laptop and 8 years with a 2013-era iMac, I'm biting the bullet and picking up a 14" MBP since I'm getting into heavier compute tasks for work, but I'll always look back fondly at my Hackintosh laptops. The amount I saved not buying new or used MacBooks over the years has definitely made the cost sting a lot less. Very thankful these held me over through until the Apple Silicon era!

I still have my D630. I have Windows 11 on it and it works fine but I did Hackintosh it at one point. I swear, you can't kill these things. For Win11 though, I have disabled most animations and removed opacity.

 

[amgff84]

I know this topic has been discussed before but probably never on Monterey. My Hackintosh showed the GPU as an HD 7850 in Big Sur, but now as HD 7xxx in Monterey. Seems to work fine, but is there any way to get the name to show properly again? I'm on Opencore 071. No other issues YET...

 

[ahurst]

I still have my D630. I have Windows 11 on it and it works fine but I did Hackintosh it at one point. I swear, you can't kill these things. For Win11 though, I have disabled most animations and removed opacity.

Nice! With the Nvidia or Intel GPU? I think the NVidia ones are supposed to be failure-prone due to cooling issues with the chip, but the Intel ones don't suffer the same issue. Since mine has the NVidia chip (which means you can run up to High Sierra with QE/CI instead of maxing out at Lion), I replaced the thermal pads with some eBay copper shims and high-quality thermal paste which brought temps down by like 20° C. It was super cheap, so highly recommend it if you have heat issues with yours!

But yeah, extremely well-built laptops! Definitely feels a lot less brittle than an equivalent plastic MacBook from the same era (though the hinges are a bit loose and the screen bezel cracked somehow). I also appreciate the reliable tray-loading DVD drive, means I don't have to worry about the slot-loading motor failing when I'm burning or imaging old CDs/DVDs.

 

[amgff84]

Nice! With the Nvidia or Intel GPU? I think the NVidia ones are supposed to be failure-prone due to cooling issues with the chip, but the Intel ones don't suffer the same issue. Since mine has the NVidia chip (which means you can run up to High Sierra with QE/CI instead of maxing out at Lion), I replaced the thermal pads with some eBay copper shims and high-quality thermal paste which brought temps down by like 20° C. It was super cheap, so highly recommend it if you have heat issues with yours!

But yeah, extremely well-built laptops! Definitely feels a lot less brittle than an equivalent plastic MacBook from the same era (though the hinges are a bit loose and the screen bezel cracked somehow). I also appreciate the reliable tray-loading DVD drive, means I don't have to worry about the slot-loading motor failing when I'm burning or imaging old CDs/DVDs.

Mine is the Nvidia chip. I have the motherboard for the intel chip... I just don't have time like I used to. Ironically I bought 2 of these also and for the same reason, except I paid for both. One was stripped and I put all the good parts on one, just never changed the board yet. I have no issues with the hinge but the battery doesn't last long at all.

 

[Middleman-77]

Btw for those interested these were my results from Cinebench on macOS on the Alder Lake i9-12900K.

Coming at 3rd place, the system beats a AMD Ryzen 1950X on rendering, but is actually capable of beating the 2nd place 24C/48T Xeon-W (I know someone who has a score of 23000 on the Alder Lake i9). I am still in the process of making adjustments to the build.

 

[blazerunner]

Btw for those interested these were my results from Cinebench on macOS on the Alder Lake i9-12900K.

Coming at 3rd place, the system beats a AMD Ryzen 1950X on rendering, but is actually capable of beating the 2nd place 24C/48T Xeon-W (I know someone who has a score of 23000 on the Alder Lake i9). I am still in the process of making adjustments to the build.

View attachment 1911226

Are E-Cores disabled?
Hyperthreading enabled?
AVX-512 Enabled?

 

[Middleman-77]

Are E-Cores disabled?
Hyperthreading enabled?
AVX-512 Enabled?

In this configuration, I am using P-cores + E-cores, hyperthreading is disabled.
However it also works with P-cores only, hyperthreading on.

AVX-512 works with the P-cores on, regardless of whether the E-cores are on or off or hyperthreading is on or off.
As you can see Photoshop works very well under Monterey.

 

[blazerunner]

In this configuration, I am using P-cores + E-cores, hyperthreading is disabled.
However it also works with P-cores only, hyperthreading on.

AVX-512 works with the P-cores on, regardless of whether the E-cores are on or off or hyperthreading is on or off.
As you can see Photoshop works very well under Monterey.

View attachment 1911439

This is amazing! I've been wanting to build an Alder Lake Hackintosh, my current desktop is almost 8 years old, a 4790k. Surprisingly it's still more than a capable machine, just a bit slow. I'm wondering if I should just wait a bit longer for Raptor Lake...

 

[amgff84]

This is amazing! I've been wanting to build an Alder Lake Hackintosh, my current desktop is almost 8 years old, a 4790k. Surprisingly it's still more than a capable machine, just a bit slow. I'm wondering if I should just wait a bit longer for Raptor Lake...

Ha! I just picked up a 4790 and seems good. This is basically just a fancy web browser as I don't do anything on it but that. I also game, but I do that through GeForce Now so there is no load. In fact, I am using GPU's from that era as well. As long as it runs Monterey as well as it does, then I'm good. I'm curious if we should compare Geekbench 5 scores?

 

[TheStork]

This is amazing! I've been wanting to build an Alder Lake Hackintosh, my current desktop is almost 8 years old, a 4790k. Surprisingly it's still more than a capable machine, just a bit slow. I'm wondering if I should just wait a bit longer for Raptor Lake...

Follow the early adapters make OC work with the Z690 motherboards.

Z690 Chipset Motherboards and Alder Lake CPU

This is the Z690 Chipset Motherboards and Alder Lake CPU general compatibility thread. Please note these are just released and have no Intel Mac counterpart for compatibility. For reference here are some links to parts on Amazon: Intel Alder Lake CPUs: https://amzn.to/3ksGFre Z690...

www.tonymacx86.com

 

[blazerunner]

Ha! I just picked up a 4790 and seems good. This is basically just a fancy web browser as I don't do anything on it but that. I also game, but I do that through GeForce Now so there is no load. In fact, I am using GPU's from that era as well. As long as it runs Monterey as well as it does, then I'm good. I'm curious if we should compare Geekbench 5 scores?

Sure! Here's mine (stock speeds on RAM and CPU, no overclocking at all):

 

[amgff84]

Sure! Here's mine (stock speeds on RAM and CPU, no overclocking at all):

And here is mine! Seems the K is good for a little extra even without OC. Could also be a number of other things, but who knows.

 

[amgff84]

Ha! I just picked up a 4790 and seems good. This is basically just a fancy web browser as I don't do anything on it but that. I also game, but I do that through GeForce Now so there is no load. In fact, I am using GPU's from that era as well. As long as it runs Monterey as well as it does, then I'm good. I'm curious if we should compare Geekbench 5 scores?

Okay, so I thought I was good at Hackintoshing because I could spend hours trying to get one going, but after a failed OC update recently I broke something and literally destroyed my EFI and spent 3 days trying to get my specific setup going again. Finally though, I got it working mint, sleep and all. I think I will leave it at OC 066 and Big Sur until I have to change it. It was on Monterey prior, but this is fine.

 

[pshufd]

Okay, so I thought I was good at Hackintoshing because I could spend hours trying to get one going, but after a failed OC update recently I broke something and literally destroyed my EFI and spent 3 days trying to get my specific setup going again. Finally though, I got it working mint, sleep and all. I think I will leave it at OC 066 and Big Sur until I have to change it. It was on Monterey prior, but this is fine.

I'm happy to give up on it as it was work to set it up and then some amount of work to maintain it. Every once in a while, one of my setups would just die too and I'd just build another one from scratch or restore from backup.

 

[amgff84]

I'm happy to give up on it as it was work to set it up and then some amount of work to maintain it. Every once in a while, one of my setups would just die too and I'd just build another one from scratch or restore from backup.

I can understand where you are coming from but I like the ecosystem as a whole too much. I love my MacBook, but I prefer desktops. I built this which is close to a low end 2013 Mac Pro, because the real thing was too much. I had a Mac mini, but sold it. I prefer PC components but I am open to a Mac mini again, but I really want to see where they take ARM at this point. I would hate to drop coin on one just to find out the next generation is twice as fast.

 

[pshufd]

I can understand where you are coming from but I like the ecosystem as a whole too much. I love my MacBook, but I prefer desktops. I built this which is close to a low end 2013 Mac Pro, because the real thing was too much. I had a Mac mini, but sold it. I prefer PC components but I am open to a Mac mini again, but I really want to see where they take ARM at this point. I would hate to drop coin on one just to find out the next generation is twice as fast.

I make my living using my hardware so I get what I need to earn a living. If I have to replace it in a year, or two or three, then so be it.

 

[Flint Ironstag]

Hi, years ago I read that whenever Apple released a new OS update, users of Hackintosh could not just update their OS the way Mac users did. They had to spend a lot of time to repeat the Hackintosh procedure to set up a new OS again. Is it still the same now?

FWIW, I paid Hackintosh Experts $99 for lifetime support. Have only had minor issues (lost connection to PS2 keyboard, does not sleep, only recognizes 2 of 4 GPUs in external chassis)- all of which I keep putting off because the box is flawless otherwise. Hit them on WhatsApp and somebody responds pretty fast. Throughout all of Big Sur, I ran software updates willy-nilly with nary a hitch. I will need their assistance for Big Sur.

I had an iPad pointed at the screen in a WhatsApp chat with them for the portions they couldn't remote control. Took a little over 2 hours I think. Will probably build up another Z840 and have Morgonaut do a proxmox on that one for a general purpose box: Plex / background hash cracking / VR / multiple OS.

Nice single scores (those already posted). Why doesn't Geekbench have multi-GPU support?? cheap feature to omit.

 

[amgff84]

FWIW, I paid Hackintosh Experts $99 for lifetime support. Have only had minor issues (lost connection to PS2 keyboard, does not sleep, only recognizes 2 of 4 GPUs in external chassis)- all of which I keep putting off because the box is flawless otherwise. Hit them on WhatsApp and somebody responds pretty fast. Throughout all of Big Sur, I ran software updates willy-nilly with nary a hitch. I will need their assistance for Big Sur.

I had an iPad pointed at the screen in a WhatsApp chat with them for the portions they couldn't remote control. Took a little over 2 hours I think. Will probably build up another Z840 and have Morgonaut do a proxmox on that one for a general purpose box: Plex / background hash cracking / VR / multiple OS.

Nice single scores (those already posted). Why doesn't Geekbench have multi-GPU support?? cheap feature to omit.

View attachment 1920964

That's great! I must say though, Your best with just one GPU. macOS supports one GPU, anything outside of that is going to be tricky to get running or maintain. Sleep might magically work if you use a MacPro SMBIOS, that's what worked for me, but keep in mind the GPU needs to have support in MacOS. A USB keyboard might help the sleep too, and try different keyboards because I had one that killed sleep and no matter what, sleep would not work until I replaced that keyboard. Hope my tips help!

 

[Flint Ironstag]

That's great! I must say though, Your best with just one GPU. macOS supports one GPU, anything outside of that is going to be tricky to get running or maintain. Sleep might magically work if you use a MacPro SMBIOS, that's what worked for me, but keep in mind the GPU needs to have support in MacOS. A USB keyboard might help the sleep too, and try different keyboards because I had one that killed sleep and no matter what, sleep would not work until I replaced that keyboard. Hope my tips help!

MacOS supports multiple GPUs - at least up to 4 without fuss.

 

[amgff84]

MacOS supports multiple GPUs - at least up to 4 without fuss.

You can put in 2, 3, or 4 and it might recognize them, but crossfire is not supported so I don't know exactly the benefit, if you care to explain. I'd be tempted to get another GPU if that is the case.