Hackintosh

[Shadowarez]

Hey everyone i been looking around for ideas on a hackintosh built aroud haswell or iv heard of ppl turning those intel nuc into a hackintosh. Wife wants a mac for god knows what reason but cant change her mind so thought id save myself 2000+ and build her a better faster cheaper mac.

 

[moocow]

TonyMacX86 is your best bet. If you follow their hardware guide completely, you will end up with a Hackintosh that install Apple software update without a lot of problems. From my research, there's 2 ways to do this:

1. Get your hands on an existing Mac and build the 10.8 install USB key.
2. Use iBoot Haswell disk and Snow Leopard 10.6 retail disk and build the 10.8 install USB key.

Apple still sell the 10.6 disk online but 10.7 and above is only available as an iTune download. If you're using Haswell you must use 10.8 because it's the only one that supports Haswell properly.

tonymacx86 - Home

Install Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard on Haswell Based PCs

tonymacx86 - Native Support for Intel Haswell CPUs in OS X 10.8.5

 

[Shadowarez]

Thank you I'll file those sites away and grab what works I have a old Mac but it can only use 10.5 lol IBM cpu I'll have to see if staples or future shop will let me do that with a Mac on display.

 

[moocow]

I'll buy you a drink if FS or Staples would let you build a 10.8 install USB, especially you need to use TonyMacX app to do it and it takes awhile. I think the iBoot option still require a video card to get it to work because only 10.8+ have Intel HD GPU support. I use an old 9800GT with my sister's Hackintosh (C2Q) rig, but I think any of the older Nvidia should work.

 

[Shadowarez]

Think I have a old 6600gt somewhere lol. Should be fun project once this i7 4960X ivy system is finally done lol

waiting 3 pieces to be released in Canada Asus Raidr pci ssd Rive Black Edition Motherboard and pair of R290X or Maxwell cards from Nividia.

 

[JD]

I'm not sure how much you expect to spend building this PC, or how tech savvy your wife is, but it may be worthwhile to just pickup a refurbished Mac instead. They can typically be had for <$1000 and you won't run into any issues with support or updates.

For that matter, even a brand new Mac mini starts at only $599.

To me, Hackintosh's are only good for experimental use, not as a daily driver. And if you wife wants a Mac, she wants an actual Mac. There's no way she wants a PC with OSX on it, that's just not part of the "lifestyle" :bleh:

 

[supaflyx3]

Building an OSX drive is quite easy. First you need vmware, and the vmware osx patcher, along with OSX 10.8 VMware images, these can all be obtained by googling. I've run OSX in a VM this exact way to build a flash drive.

 

[moocow]

Do not use Socket 2011 since support for it is pretty poor. Stick to the hardware list they have or you be wasting money. The main problem with Hackintosh is that you need someone who's tech savvy enough to service the machine if problem comes up. TonyMac actually flush out a lot of the problems already and makes it almost painless. Most problems I see on their forum are due to people using other hardware not listed, such as using Asus mobo instead of Gigabyte. Finally, someone manage to get a Gigabyte Brix to work so if that interest you, you could build your own Mac Mini, just use supafly's method.

 

[Shadowarez]

Yeah just need a Mac so she can play. Don't wanna invest 500% value of hardware if I can make a pc do same for alot less.

 

[MARSTG]

Every OS version has a hardware compatibility list and what motherboards are working right away. I would look at that and then go with a vanilla 10.6 Snow Leopard disc. You can also go before Haswell, I would look at a Sandy Bridge. AMD cards are better supported than nVidia in general with MAC OSX.

Here, a HCL List OSx86:HCL 10.6.8 - OSx86