Any Successful Hackintosh Builders Here?

[tenders]

I’ve built a few Hackintoshes, at first little ones mostly for fun, and then in 2014 I replaced my desktop with an i7/4770 that I’m still using and quite happy with on Mojave. No graphics card - too much complexity. I followed a TonyMac build as closely as I could.

When the machine is working, it’s great, and I feel like I put one over on The Man.

But there have been many instances when the machine did not work, and required major afternoons/evenings/days of futzing with, for reasons that included:
* Messed-up installations of Clover
* System upgrades that went awry, usually from a major version upgrade, but sometimes from incremental upgrades
* Fiddling, diddling, twiddling with audio drivers
* Fussy USB ports
* BIOS setting confusion
* iMessage compatibility (which I did get to work flawlessly, don’t ask me how)
* AirDrop compatibility (which I did get to work, I think with a BT module swapout)
* HandOff - which I don’t think works, and that I don’t care about

In the end the effort, frustration, inconvenience vastly outweighed the cost savings, curiosity factor, and desire to have an upgradable desktop at a reasonable price. I probably have several more years of useful life out of this machine but I won’t do it again. If I were a system admin overseeing dozens of these machines I’d probably be good at it but I have just one and the learning curve/quirk accommodation just isn’t worth it.

[Lux Interior]

jdc wrote:
Problem is... Im right back to a nice 27" iMac price... and I still havnet put it together....

Then there is no problem. Get an iMac!

In my case, I have no need for color accuracy. Two old Monoprice 30" LCDs and a 28" 4K LCD that I already had are connected to my Hack.

[pinion]

I think the others have given you a great picture. I sitll use my 2011 MBP but I'm currently posting from my Dell XPS 9360. Easily hackintoshable and I'm posting from 10.15.2 right now. Everything but the SD card is working and I did have to swap the WiFi card. I'm happy with it and at $800 a year ago the price was better than a new 13" MBP. If I had the money I would get a real Mac in a heart beat.

[sekker]

Such gloom and doom!

Now is an IDEAL time to build a hackintosh. Why?

Apple has launched a functional terminal OS - Mojave. They will be supporting it for many years due to 32bit programs. And it's rock solid.

ALL of the hackintosh machines we built were primary computers or dedicated to tasks. They were terrific bang/buck. Sometimes you had issues with wifi or bluetooth, but getting a compatible card/dongle works well.

Buy a fully compatible motherboard, good graphics card, and a decent power supply. In the end, the hardware you buy can ALWAYS be repurposed into either Linux or Windows machines. My first hack was a dual core Pentium CPU, I recently rebuilt it with an SSD boot drive and windows 10 Pro - works great running Office 365 at our church. Started as a hackintosh Mac OS-based media center. Ended 10 years later as a daily driver using windows. Was used at least 3 other times in-between. At work, our video editing hack workstation made a series of terrific movie edits, then I replaced the boot drive to make a high-end windows box. Again, plenty of positive things to say.

However, I still think the most amazing bang/$$ right now is a 5k 27" 2017 iMac 'refurb' from our sponsor. Get quad core CPU, add a nice external monitor, and you have a fantastic workstation for under $2k.

[jdc]

Lux Interior wrote:
[quote=jdc]
Problem is... Im right back to a nice 27" iMac price... and I still havnet put it together....

Then there is no problem. Get an iMac!
In my case, I have no need for color accuracy. Two old Monoprice 30" LCDs and a 28" 4K LCD that I already had are connected to my Hack.
Yeah, as a print designer, color accuracy is something I cant really pass on. Just bought a new monitor calibrator in fact... My plan will be to sell of this iMac and drop it on something new. 2019 if they dont radically change the 2020 version. Im in no hurry...

Sure wish OS X could be installed on anything... like "Bootcamp" for PCs

[Lew Zealand]

If you're thinking of a Hack instead of an iMac, then just get the iMac. IMO the iMac gives you closest to what you should (at the low and mid end) for the $ Apple charges.

I never built a Hack from scratch, preferring the NUC as all you ned to add is RAM and Drive, ie: no parts that need drivers. I tried with a Dell Optiplex 7010 and failed and haven't tried again though my PC at home contains Hack-compatible parts. Maybe one day…

Even though the NUC is pretty easy, it was failure at the beginning if you don't follow the instructions precisely. ie: if it specifies use a USB flash drive, don't use a USB-SATA connected drive. Doesn't work.

Once I had it up and running, it worked great (Broadwell i7 NUC as the Minis of the time were uncompetitive). You need to wait until the forums online tell you you can upgrade to the next x.1 or security update as other more technically capable people will do the testing. You may not like that but it never led me astray. I retired it only after replacing it with a gaming PC. I have 2 other Kaby Lake NUCintoshes, one being my primary work machine for a year until they bought me a 2018 Mini. One is now a 10.14 testing machine. and the other is dual boot for very light gaming (PC) and data storage (Mac).

[Altered Horizons]

In my experience, the key to building a hackintosh is research. Go to tonymacx86.com and look over the builds. If you find one that suits you:

1. Makes sure the parts are still available.
2. Read and understand the build/install instructions.
3. Read through the thread(s) for that build and make sure you are aware of any problems/glitches with that build and if there are solutions.
4. If there are any unsolved problems/glitches with that build, decide if you can live with them.

Research is tedious, but if you don't do it, you're gonna pay for it in the end.

Two problems common to a lot of hacks is incompatible WiFi and Bluetooth. This is generally because the chips aren't recognized by macOS and and are soldered to the motherboard. Two solutions, use a motherboard that has a removable WiFi/Bluetooth card and use a compatible one or use a usb WiFi/Bluetooth adapter.

I'm a hobbyist and retired, so I have the time and inclination to hackintosh. While both my builds went fairly smoothly, getting everything right took some time, visits to tonymac and just plain problem solving. Now my builds work fine and need no further attention. While you can build a more powerful machine for less, you do need to figure in your time.

My first build was from scratch, using a Core i5 (Skylake) cpu. The known problem with this build was that sleep/wake did not work. Not a problem for me, since this machine was to be a server and never sleep. I replaced the WiFi/Bluetooth card with one that macOS likes and they work; although I'm using ethernet. It took some work to get Messages working, but some tutorials on tonymac helped. Now my house can text me if there is a problem. This machine currently runs Sierra and has been in operation since Aug. 2016.

For my second build, I decided to use an Intel NUC8 (Core i7 cpu). It currently runs Sierra, with Snow Leopard running in Virtualbox. This is destine to replace my main machine, a 2009 MBP (which I use as a desktop about 95% of the time). Had some glitches I had to work through, but it runs fine now. WiFi and Bluetooth don't work. I don't need Bluetooth and I added a usb WiFi adapter. I use ethernet in Sierra and WiFi in Snow Leopard; that way I can transfer files over the network between Sierra and Snow Leopard. Sleep works fine. I recently added Linux on an external drive. I've been running this machine for a year now.

[steveroberts]

Thanks all for some really thoughtful and helpful responses.

SR

[jdc]

FWIW, this is similar to the NUC I was looking at... 32 GB/1 TB/i7/Integrated GPU

[fauch]

I've been using one for years almost without a hitch (except for some occasional iMessage woes, but that is probably because I'm still running Mavericks).
One of these days I will update the OS but I'm just lazy and as they changed from Chimera to Clover after Mavs, and I'd probably have to do a clean install, I never bothered.

If you use one of the recommended builds from Tonymac it really is a breeze. They basically mimic hardware that Apple itself uses so it is compatible right out of the box. Even if not, most things can be patched with minimal difficulty. The initial install and config was the only part that was any more difficult than an actual Mac, and it really wasn't that hard. Once you have it up and running, you can usually just use the regular installer to update the OS.

I saved a LOT of money and basically got a Mac Pro caliber system for the price of a low end Mini and I have the PCI and RAM slots and empty drive bays. I doubt I would ever buy a proper Mac again, unless I really needed a MBP or something. Definitely not a desktop.