Hackintosh

From Eugene Eric Kim
Revision as of 23:32, 2 November 2018 by Eekim (talk | contribs) (Notes for Mojave update)

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

November 2, 2018

Upgrading to macOS Mojave.

June 22, 2016

I had a weird problem where everytime I shutdown, the computer would shutdown, then restart again. Turns out I was connected to the drive on my laptop, and the BIOS was set to wake on LAN. Turned that setting off, and all was good in my universe again.

June 20, 2016

Upgrading to OS X 10.11.5 (El Capitan). The main difference is switching from Chimera to the Clover bootloader.

  1. I created a new USB installer via Unibeast 6.2.0. I selected the UEFI Boot Mode and the nVidia graphic options (since I have an older card — essentially the equivalent of "GraphicsEnabler=Yes" on Chimera).
  2. I tested Clover by booting to the USB drive, then selecting my Yosemite installation.

It worked! Unfortunately, I didn't remove the old Chimera installation, but fortunately, Clover and Chimera can coexist just fine. I rebooted and ran the OS X installation. I then logged into my account and ran MultiBeast 8.2.3 with the following settings:

  • Drivers > Audio > Realtek ALCxxx > ALC898
  • Drivers > Misc > FakeSMC v6.16-313-g671f31c.1707
  • Drivers > Misc > FakeSMC Plugins v6.16-313-g671f31c.1707
  • Drivers > Misc > FakeSMC HWMonitor Application v6.16-313-g671f31c.1707
  • Drivers > Network > Intel > AppleIntelE10000e v3.3.3
  • Drivers > USB > 3rd Party USB 3.0
  • Customize > Graphics Configuration > Inject NVIDIA
  • Customize > System Definitions > Mac Pro > Mac Pro 3,1

June 19, 2016

Upgraded to a 4 TB Western Digital hard drive. Used rsync to transfer most of my data over. For some reason, rsync got tripped up several times by seemingly harmless looking files in Library, so I tarred up that directory and transferred it manually.

April 23, 2015

System upgraded to OS X 10.10.3. Had to rerun Multibeast in order to get my sound working.

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