Just finished my Z170 build description thread at tonymacx86.com for a ASUS MAXIMUS VIII GENE/I5-6600K/GTX 950 based system: Stork's Gene Build > ASUS MAXIMUS VIII GENE - i5-6600K - Gigabyte GTX 950
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The Hackintosh Thread
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Especially since Apple stopped the clone program and sues any company which sells Hackintoshes.
Especially since the new Mac Pro doesn't have any PCIe slots and has a non-upgradable GPU which is made for design instead of gaming. Even with the Classic Mac Pro, it was too expensive and more powerful than most folks need it to be. It would have been nice if Apple had a less expensive Mac Pro for around $1000-$1500. I realize the iMac is supposed to fit in there, but there isn't much in the way of expandability and it's a pain to open. The Mac Mini was pretty good until stopped offering a CTO GPU option. I was originally opposed to Hackintoshes, but then the new Mac Pro was released. And looks like it's legal as long as you own a legitimate Mac.
If you have a Solid State Drive, you’re going to have to skip Yosemite and either stick with Mountain Lion or upgrade to El Capitan because Yosemite doesn’t have any support for third-party Solid State Drives. That Solid State Drive issue applies to Hackintoshes and real Macs alike.In response to the Clover v. Chimera question - from what I'm still seeing the Chimera "golden builds" seem to have less overall problems. Clover users seem to have to trouble shoot a few more things.
As a general question - has anyone updated from Mt. Lion to Yosemite? I've been hesitant to do the update in case I've got a ton of troubleshooting. Seems hit or miss in terms of people have problems. Everything works flawlessly right now down to bluetooth, wifi, sleep mode, you name it. I was worried about mucking it up
Okay. The issue Yosemite had with third-party Solid State Drives is that it didn’t support TRIM. Sounds like Clover or Chimera took care of that for you. A lot of Mac owners who have third-party Solid State Drives could’t boot after upgrading to Yosemite.
You don't have to use TRIM. I have no idea what Clover or Chimera are. If you need TRIM then Disk Sensei (Trim Enabler TNG) can switch it on in a supported way through Apple APIs in both Yosemite & El Capitain.
I know you can use them without TRIM but unless they have garbage-collection built-in, they’ll be slow.
No, they won't "be slow", but performance may decrease over time without TRIM.
With 10.10.4, Apple provided the trimforce command to enable TRIM on third-party SSDs.
This only happened if you patched IOAHCIBlockStorage in a previous version of OS X (such as Mavericks) which doesn't enforce kext signing (obviously, modifying the binary will invalidate the kext's signature) and didn't revert it to stock before upgrading to Yosemite (which does enforce kext signing unless you use the kext-dev-mode boot flag). Since the kext isn't signed, it won't load, and as a result you won't have the AHCI driver loaded (and won't be able to boot from you SSD).
With 10.10.4+ you don't need to patch IOAHCIBlockStorage anymore, just use trimforce or TrimEnabler.kext (in a newer version of TRIM Enabler by Cindori, which is signed).
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I have finally given up on the Apple keyboard. I recommend Corsair K65/70/90/95 keyboard to go with your system.
Microsoft Sculpt. Don't go anywhere near that mouse but the keyboard is just the best.
This post is being typed on an Apple Extended Keyboard II...
Anyways, after a lot of going back and forth I built my new PC a few days ago and have been setting it up as a Hackintosh. I haven't used it a whole lot yet, but so far I'm very impressed by the performance. On the other hand, I had some difficulties getting it to boot reliably. I don't like that part of it - doing what appears to be the same thing, but getting different results.
I'm using an i7-4790K, Gigabyte Z97X-UD3H mobo, and 32 GB RAM, with a Cooler Master air cooler in a Fractal Design Define R5 case. Various other bits: wifi card, Bluetooth dongle, new Samsung SSD, Corsair RM850x PSU, extra case fan, etc. Total cost for all parts minus rebates was a little more than $800, taking advantage of Black Friday-Cyber Monday sales.
I've taken the GTX 970 from my Mac Pro and am plugged into the same Dell P2715Q 4K display. Desktop animations seem much smoother, and so far no flickers like I occasionally got with my Mac Pro. I even get boot screens (wasn't sure what to expect in that regard).
I'm running 10.10.5 and Clover. I followed the instructions on TonyMac's site for this combination, which is actually just a plain Clover install (neither Uni nor MultiBeast are used). I plan on giving it a month and if I can get it working reliably, I'll be selling my two Mac Pros. Otherwise, I'm confident that I could get back most if not all of what I paid for the parts on Craigslist.
Geekbench results are attached.
Anyways, after a lot of going back and forth I built my new PC a few days ago and have been setting it up as a Hackintosh. I haven't used it a whole lot yet, but so far I'm very impressed by the performance. On the other hand, I had some difficulties getting it to boot reliably. I don't like that part of it - doing what appears to be the same thing, but getting different results.
I'm using an i7-4790K, Gigabyte Z97X-UD3H mobo, and 32 GB RAM, with a Cooler Master air cooler in a Fractal Design Define R5 case. Various other bits: wifi card, Bluetooth dongle, new Samsung SSD, Corsair RM850x PSU, extra case fan, etc. Total cost for all parts minus rebates was a little more than $800, taking advantage of Black Friday-Cyber Monday sales.
I've taken the GTX 970 from my Mac Pro and am plugged into the same Dell P2715Q 4K display. Desktop animations seem much smoother, and so far no flickers like I occasionally got with my Mac Pro. I even get boot screens (wasn't sure what to expect in that regard).
I'm running 10.10.5 and Clover. I followed the instructions on TonyMac's site for this combination, which is actually just a plain Clover install (neither Uni nor MultiBeast are used). I plan on giving it a month and if I can get it working reliably, I'll be selling my two Mac Pros. Otherwise, I'm confident that I could get back most if not all of what I paid for the parts on Craigslist.
Geekbench results are attached.
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Dunno. It might have given me a better starting point. (Though I did download the recommended Clover config.plist file from TonyMac.) It seems to be working better now. I've gone several reboots without a failure.
The areas where Hackintoshes sometimes have problems - ethernet, audio, sleep and wake - are all working fine. (I had to install extra kexts for ethernet and audio.) App Store works and FaceTime and iMessage appear active (haven't tested yet). I ran system update to download the latest Yosemite security fix, which installed without any problem.
Great keyboard feel and look. However, I've had one stop working altogether and three with intermittent connectivity issues, drops, etc. - that's batting zero. And that's not counting the two 7000 wireless keyboards I trashed due to similar issues. I'm sure they just outsource these "accessories" to the lowest bidder and don't really give a crap. Their hardware quality control sucks. Wish they had a bluetooth version.
Microsoft Sculpt. Don't go anywhere near that mouse but the keyboard is just the best.
Sorry, back to topic.
As I wrote above, it seems to be working very well now. But as I was setting it up earlier, I had repeated boot attempts where the boot (black screen status bar or verbose mode) seemed to finish but the login screen never came up. That was the main issue.
I also had difficulties figuring out the boot order options in the motherboard BIOS. Even with just a single drive in the machine there were multiple choices and from the names it wasn't obvious which ones to choose. Admittedly it's been a while since I've had to work with a system BIOS.
That's really why I've gone back and forth with building a Hackintosh for a while. I really like tinkering with hardware but setting up BIOSes and bootloaders doesn't have quite the same appeal.
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Ive really been wanting to build a hackintosh but I've been holding off because it seems like a major PITA to get working correctly.
Seems like you may have both legacy and efi mode still turned on you should be choosing the efi: .... option when you select your device. There should not be many options to choose from for booting with only one drive connected. Main thing is you do not want to choose the p0: or however it is named, been a while since I have seen that screen, if you have not turned off legacy boot.