Hackintosh

From Eugene Eric Kim
Revision as of 17:16, 9 February 2015 by Eekim (talk | contribs) (Updated MultiBeast settings)

I constructed a Hackintosh in April 2013. I had a lot of trepidation, as it's my first self-built machine, and Hackintoshes have their share of issues, but it was a very smooth project, thanks to the wealth of information on the Internet. I love the price / performance I'm getting, I love the expandability, and I love being all Mac!

I was also pleased to see that many of my software licenses from my MacBook Pro applied to second machines (e.g. Adobe Lightroom, Microsoft Office), so I didn't have purchase second copies!

Specs

Using CustoMac Pro Guide as a guide, I selected these components:

Total cost was less than $1,300, which is an absolute steal considering the specs. An equivalent Mac Pro would have cost triple this.

Log

February 8, 2015

Upgrading to OS X 10.10.2 Yosemite. It's a bit of a chore. First, I had to modify /Extra/org.chameleon.Boot.plist. I then had to reinstall from USB via Unibeast. To boot, I used "-x GraphicsEnabler=Yes".

I used DSDT Free, then set:

  • Audio > Realtek ALCxxx > ALC898
  • Disk > TRIM Enabler > 10.10.x TRIM Patch
  • Misc > USB 3.0 - Universal
  • Network > Intel > AppleIntelE10000e v3.1.0a

Under Customize, set "GraphicsEnabler=Yes".

September 25, 2013

Apple updated me to OS X 10.8.5, which broke sound, Ethernet, and Bluetooth. Ran Multibeast 5.2.1 and reinstalled sound, Ethernet, and TRIM. Those worked, but Bluetooth did not. Upgraded to Multibeast 5.5.1 and did the same upgrades. Again, all is fine, but no Bluetooth.

Tried this fix a few times, and got Bluetooth working. However, it's not clear that this was the problem. My Trackpad may have been connected to my laptop when I was trying to get this working, which may have prevented it from connecting to my Hackintosh. Regardless, all is well now.

April 3, 2013

Swapped in my Nvidia GEFORCE 9400GT from my Dell Inspiron 531. (I needed to swap it out of the Dell anyway, in order to convert that machine into a media center PC.) Initial research suggested I may have issues:

However, it worked out-of-the-box for me! Sweet!

Also swapped in my DVD-RW from my Dell. WIth the drive, it took forever for it to acknowledge a DVD, and I've had issues with eject. Basically works, though, just not perfectly.

April 2, 2013

Powered up the machine. No problems! Relatively quiet! Booted it off the UniBeast Mountain Lion USB drive I had created. Again, no issues.

Installed Mountain Lion. When rebooted, got the endless startup wheel. Rebooted in safe mode using "-x" boot parameter. Started up Mountain Lion just fine.

Went through Apple post-installation steps, then installed MultiBeast. Selected:

  • Drivers > Audio > RealTek ALC8xx > RealTek ALC898
  • Drivers > Network > hnak's' AppleIntelE1000e Ethernet
  • Drivers > Disk > TRIM Enabler > 10.8.1+ TRIM Patch

Installed 2 TB hard drive. Formatted.

Other SSD hacks from this post:

  • Set noatime flag for root partition
  • Moved User directory to HDD and created symlink
  • Moved /private/tmp to HDD and created symlink

February 2013

The CPU instructions said to apply thermal grease to the CPU before installing the cooler, but it looks like there was already thermal grease there. In any case, here's a guide.

The Corsair Obsidian 650D is largely self-explanatory, but there are things that took me a while to figure out:

See Also