Anyone here running a stable high end hackintosh?

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Ice2Cool

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Hey guys,

Been looking at getting another mac for my house. I currently have a macbook pro and love it. I was thinking of a Mac Pro, until I saw the prices - R28k - 38k! wtf!

So, I was intrigued by the idea of creating a hackintosh to specs very close to the Mac Pro so it could be as "stock" as possible? My idea is that I would prefer to use all the vanilla drivers instead of having to install my own ones.

Has anyone here done this? Hows the stabilitY? What specs are you running? How much did it cost?
 
I'm running a hackintosh, not the latest tech but pretty high end. It's a Q6600 Intel quad core @ 2.4ghz. 4gb RAM, my graphics card is an nVidia GTS 250 1gb. It runs really nicely.

It's perfectly stable and everything works, except sleep. But I've gotten used to not sleeping. However some motherboards do work, even with sleep enabled.

It is a little trickier than setting up a Mac, obviously, but with the right tools and hardware it can be pretty easy to do. I'd suggest a Core i5 or Core i7 build for you. All the information is at insanelymac forum and osx86 wiki. You just wanna pick the right motherboard, an Intel CPU and a supported graphics card. I can help you with that if you want.
 
you can find the sleep button plist file out there for your board. Since its ACPI, you can also modify a similar boards plist without much trouble. I think the interrupts are mostly the same.

i have a Core i5 Hackintosh with SLI Nvidia. Runs like butter. Updates and everything. one thing that is important is you need the RETAIL LEOPARD DVD (~R300)... not the one that came with your MacBook. It wont work.

In general Core i series chips and Gigabyte mobo's work well for hackintoshes. However, every install has its niggely bits, but well worth it when you finally boot to desktop.

Its pretty much : Burn latest chameleon bootloader to disk --> Boot from it. --> Swap disk with Leopard DVD when prompted. --> Hope and pray everything runs smoofly.
 
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Thanks synaesthesia - i read insanelymac quite alot a few days ago and found a thread called "Build your own CustoMac Pro". From there i got the hardware i think I should use. However, one issue I came across was with the graphics card. Apparently the ATI Radeon 5750 and 5770's have problems (which is what the actual Mac Pros use) on a hackintosh.

This is my prelim hardware, let me know what you think:

Motherboard - Gigabyte LGA1156 Intel Socket - GA-P55A-UD4P - R2509
Graphics - Gigabyte Nvidia Geforce 9800GY 1024MB GDDR3 GV-N8TSL-1g1 - R1499
CPU - Intel Core i7 860 2.8Ghz Processor - R3129
Memory - Corsair Dominator GT 4x2GB 1600MHZ DDR3 - R2949
Storage - Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB - R740
Optical - Samsung Internal SATA 22x DVD Writer SH-S223C - R259
Cooling - Thermaltake SpinQ VT Processor Cooler - R689 (Couldnt find a better one which is quiet but havent really put much effort into it)
Case - Antec P190 (I dislike this case - would much prefer to get a Mac Pro case) - R3200

Total Cost : R14974

I dont think ive left anything out?

Synaesthesia said:
I'm running a hackintosh, not the latest tech but pretty high end. It's a Q6600 Intel quad core @ 2.4ghz. 4gb RAM, my graphics card is an nVidia GTS 250 1gb. It runs really nicely.

It's perfectly stable and everything works, except sleep. But I've gotten used to not sleeping. However some motherboards do work, even with sleep enabled.

It is a little trickier than setting up a Mac, obviously, but with the right tools and hardware it can be pretty easy to do. I'd suggest a Core i5 or Core i7 build for you. All the information is at insanelymac forum and osx86 wiki. You just wanna pick the right motherboard, an Intel CPU and a supported graphics card. I can help you with that if you want.
Click to expand...
 
bleh69 said:
you can find the sleep button plist file out there for your board. Since its ACPI, you can also modify a similar boards plist without much trouble. I think the interrupts are mostly the same.

i have a Core i5 Hackintosh with SLI Nvidia. Runs like butter. Updates and everything. one thing that is important is you need the RETAIL LEOPARD DVD (~R300)... not the one that came with your MacBook. It wont work.

In general Core i series chips and Gigabyte mobo's work well for hackintoshes. However, every install has its niggely bits, but well worth it when you finally boot to desktop.

Its pretty much : Burn latest chameleon bootloader to disk --> Boot from it. --> Swap disk with Leopard DVD when prompted. --> Hope and pray everything runs smoofly.
Click to expand...

Thanks - I have the snow leopard retail dvd. The leopard dvd that came with my mac, even tho an upgrade, actually contains the full o.s. I created a hackintosh on a lenovo netbook with it - was quite nice although the screen was too small so windows would go off the edges, and the trackpad didnt work great. This was over a year ago so im not sure if there are new methods out yet or not. But i remember i did use chameleon.

Apparently theres some new methods out which allow u to use retail dvd vanilla install? havent done all the research yet tho.
 
Ice2Cool said:
Thanks synaesthesia - i read insanelymac quite alot a few days ago and found a thread called "Build your own CustoMac Pro". From there i got the hardware i think I should use. However, one issue I came across was with the graphics card. Apparently the ATI Radeon 5750 and 5770's have problems (which is what the actual Mac Pros use) on a hackintosh.

This is my prelim hardware, let me know what you think:

Motherboard - Gigabyte LGA1156 Intel Socket - GA-P55A-UD4P - R2509
Graphics - Gigabyte Nvidia Geforce 9800GY 1024MB GDDR3 GV-N8TSL-1g1 - R1499
CPU - Intel Core i7 860 2.8Ghz Processor - R3129
Memory - Corsair Dominator GT 4x2GB 1600MHZ DDR3 - R2949
Storage - Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB - R740
Optical - Samsung Internal SATA 22x DVD Writer SH-S223C - R259
Cooling - Thermaltake SpinQ VT Processor Cooler - R689 (Couldnt find a better one which is quiet but havent really put much effort into it)
Case - Antec P190 (I dislike this case - would much prefer to get a Mac Pro case) - R3200

Total Cost : R14974

I dont think ive left anything out?
Click to expand...
Pretty decent. I think you can save a lot of money and still have just as good a setup.
That's a really expensive motherboard, you can save at least R1000 on the motherboard alone. The RAM as well. Do you really need a fancy cooler like that? And the case, while nice, costs 3 grand. I saw a full G5 tower for sale for R3000! You can use that as a case!
 
Ice2Cool said:
Apparently theres some new methods out which allow u to use retail dvd vanilla install? havent done all the research yet tho.
Click to expand...

Yep, that's what I did (see sig for hardware specs.)
http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2010/04/iboot-multibeast-install-mac-os-x-on.html This IS the easiest way of doing things.

If you get the right board you can grab a DSDT from that site and it will be plain sailing for you where I had a few easy hoops to jump through, http://www.tonymacx86.com/dsdt.php (Browse through the database) & http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2010/07/custombeast-simple-personalized-post.html

Gigabyte is the way to go though ;)
 
Synaesthesia said:
Pretty decent. I think you can save a lot of money and still have just as good a setup.
That's a really expensive motherboard, you can save at least R1000 on the motherboard alone. The RAM as well. Do you really need a fancy cooler like that? And the case, while nice, costs 3 grand. I saw a full G5 tower for sale for R3000! You can use that as a case!
Click to expand...

Yeah it is expensive, I chose it after reading through the insanelymac forums. Apparently its one of the few boards that are supported off the bat because it has the older alc889 sound chipset. Everything is quite prelimenary though! Its a huge leap to invest 10-15k in hardware without knowing if mac os is going to work properly lol.
 
Nerfherder said:
I'm dying to find one.... if there is any one with a broken/fried machine who is interested in selling the case please contact me
Click to expand...

Theres plenty on ebay - just gotta import them and hope they get here and dont get damaned. Theyre quite expensive though, upward of R3k before importing costs.
 
Ice2Cool said:
Yeah it is expensive, I chose it after reading through the insanelymac forums. Apparently its one of the few boards that are supported off the bat because it has the older alc889 sound chipset. Everything is quite prelimenary though! Its a huge leap to invest 10-15k in hardware without knowing if mac os is going to work properly lol.
Click to expand...
I'll do some research and try help you with that. I've built, oh, like 10 or more hackintoshes. All have worked fine. Sleep may or may not work, so don't count on it. You can build an excellent hackintosh for way less than R10k. Anyway, G5 for sale here, I don't know if it's still available or what, but you guys might want it for case mods etc.
http://www.carbonite.co.za/f14/apple-g5-aluminium-tower-1-6ghz-2696/
 
Synaesthesia said:
I'll do some research and try help you with that. I've built, oh, like 10 or more hackintoshes. All have worked fine. Sleep may or may not work, so don't count on it. You can build an excellent hackintosh for way less than R10k. Anyway, G5 for sale here, I don't know if it's still available or what, but you guys might want it for case mods etc.
http://www.carbonite.co.za/f14/apple-g5-aluminium-tower-1-6ghz-2696/
Click to expand...

Thanks man - have you made a setup with a Core i7 yet? if so which board did u use? I would very much like for sleep to work!
 
No I haven't done Core i7 yet. However it can be done with great success. I'd suggest a Gigabyte X58-UD3R motherboard, it seems you can get sleep working with DSDT patching. Although many X58 and P55 motherboards work.

As for graphics, I'd suggest a 5770 at the moment, as it's also confirmed working. Again there are a lot of choices, nVidia is a pretty safe choice (except the GTX 460).
 
Thanks man - do these Core i7 boards run in triple channel or dual chanel? Trying to figure out how I should order the memory. I think theyre triple channel? If so, 3x2GB 1600mhz DDR3?
 
The X58 (socket 1366) are triple channel. The P55 (socket 1156) are dual-channel. Get the right socket CPU for your motherboard too.
 
Synaesthesia said:
The X58 (socket 1366) are triple channel. The P55 (socket 1156) are dual-channel. Get the right socket CPU for your motherboard too.
Click to expand...

Okay, so I think im going to go with a Core i5 instead. New Specs:
http://www.nivo.co.za/#wishlist/view/2782

I scrapped the cooler since the cpu's come with a stock one. Still not sure about the case. I desperately want something simple and clean and as quiet as possible. My old desktop pc used to sound like a jet engine and I dont want to repeat that mistake.
 
The GPU fan is often a big problem as well. Get a fan controller for it, or a 3rd party cooler. Have you considered an iMac? They're super quiet, and sleep is guaranteed to work.
 
While I love the iMac, im not sure how I feel about it being all in enclosed unit. I like the idea of being able to upgrade. And being a tinkerer, i like the idea of a hackintosh.

Ive tried a completely different approach and went with a MicroATX form factor which dropped the cost to around 10k which is reasonable. I still need to include other sundries like Wifi card and bluetooth dongle.

http://www.nivo.co.za/#account/wishlist/hackintoshcorei5microatx
 
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