Cindori Custom: Building an i7 Hackintosh

[Freakosuave]

I, too, am a newb headed off to college next year who is super excited about building a hackingtosh, but I can give you my 2 cents.

1. Yes. 6gb is plenty.
2. No flashing needed
3. I was unable to access your wish list. Are you sure it is public?

Oh shoot! haha forgot to make the wish list public. here is the new public list.. https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/MySavedWishDetail.aspx?ID=12785505 hopefully that works now! and thanks for the help

*edit* that link doesnt work yet. give me a sec to fix it!

 

[Freakosuave]

hack pro parts

so i tried to make that list of my parts public but it didnt work so instead ill list my parts here.

CPU: i7 920-2.66Ghz
HDD: 2 Samsung F3EG 2Tb drives (one system and media, one scratch disk for FCS)
Ram: GeIL value series 240pinn 6x2Gb DDR3 (downgrading to 6Gb most likely)
DVD: Lite-on 24x DVD writer black SATA model
Motherboard: Gigabyte-GA-X58A-UD5
GPU: XFX-HD 4890 1Gb 256-bit DDR5
CPU cooler: Thermalright TRUE black 120rev c. cooler
Case: Coolermaster Storm Sniper Mid-ATX tower
Thermal paste: Arctic Silver 5
PSU: Kingwin Mach 1 1000W psu

If im missing anything dont hesitate to suggest it!

 

[Rankrotten]

Rankrotten, what install program did you use?

I used one of my real macs to install 10.6 on a hard drive in an external docking cradle, updated to 10.6.2 and used Digital Dreamer's script from page 1 to install the bootloader and extra folder. I then booted it on the i7 build.

 

[Rankrotten]

64 bit update: sleep / shutdown / restart / audio / powermanagement all ok.

Changed the bootloader to asereBLN 1.1.9 and edited the DSDT for the i7 930 processor's -c and -p states with native power management in OSX - thanks to the guys at insanelymac. Only running fakesmc in /extra along with IOAHCIBlockStorageInjector for orange icons and LegacyHDA for audio. All other fixes are in DSDT with the bootoader handling sleep and shutdown. This means all kexts are both 32 and 64 bit compatible now.

Edit the boot.plist with kernel flag "arch=x86_64" and setting 64 bit HPET in BIOS and a quick reboot using this tool to check so we are good to go:


_______________________________________

Default @ 2.83GHz gives this result:

_______________________________________

Clocking the CPU at 4.01GHz we now have a score of:

_______________________________________


After running prime95 the temps only reach the high 78-79C mark, this is after maxing all four (+four virtual) cores for 11 mins at 4.01GHz:


This machine can run at 4.3GHz but I feel better with myself just throttling it back to 4.0 for daily use. In fact the default of 2.83GHz is so good I will probably keep it there for the near silent and cold temps it generates and have a BIOS preset for the faster speed selectable on startup when I need to crank out some video work in Handbrake or FCP.

 

[bbadalucco]

I have the same processor as you buy my "Bus Frequency" shows 772 Mhz and yours 4.8ghz...any idea as to why?

Mobo: EX58-UD5
CPU i7 930

 

[Freakosuave]

are the parts i have selected ok? i would like to plan in ahead. and would i need anything special to get wireless internet? i know i would need a bluetooth adapter for bluetooth..

 

[pierelerouge]

Help the NOOB!!

*

hi guys,
first of all i'm going to thank everyone for their hard work and willingness to help others. I am a NOOB and am going to be undertaking the daunting prospect of building my first hackintosh. I will be using my p.c for these things, in order of priority;
1. Music production (logic, reason, live and many plugins)
2.General home P.C
3. Some gaming
4. It'd be nice if i could dual boot in either OSx or Win7

I've done quite alot of reading on here and am really trying to make this as painless as poss getting myself to OSx10.6.3

Here's is a list of my planned build although i could do with some advise on a decent sound card and general advice on whether this will work and what probs/fixes i will encounter/need.

My Build

* Gladiator Intel i7 920 DO@ 4.00ghz overclocked bundle including Gigabyte GA EX58UD5, 6gb Patriot Viper 1600Mhz, ThermalRight VenemousX CPU cooler
* XFX ATI Radeon HD 4870 1024mb GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics card
* Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM
* LG 24x DVDRW Securdisc LightScribe Black Retail Kit - SATA
* Aria 52-1 card reader (not the most important think so if i should leave it out...)
* Fractal Design Define R2 Gaming Case Titanium Grey
* OCZ StealthXStream 700W Silent SLI/Crossfire Ready ATX2.2 Power Supply
* Sound Card suggestions please?????????
* Wireless/Ethernet suggestions please????????

All this is just shy of a GRAND!! from Aria which looks pretty good to me but as i say i am a NOOB. Any help/advice is much appreciated!! biggrin.gif

 

[quantum003]

I actually finished my own first Hackintosh last weekend. Used a 2.93Ghz intel i3 processor, Gigabyte H55M mobo, and 6GB of DDR3. The whole kit and caboodle cost me $220 (but I already had the case and PSU).

It's not nearly as impressive as yours Cindori. But it's a start.

 

[bbadalucco]

*

hi guys,
first of all i'm going to thank everyone for their hard work and willingness to help others. I am a NOOB and am going to be undertaking the daunting prospect of building my first hackintosh. I will be using my p.c for these things, in order of priority;
1. Music production (logic, reason, live and many plugins)
2.General home P.C
3. Some gaming
4. It'd be nice if i could dual boot in either OSx or Win7

I've done quite alot of reading on here and am really trying to make this as painless as poss getting myself to OSx10.6.3

Here's is a list of my planned build although i could do with some advise on a decent sound card and general advice on whether this will work and what probs/fixes i will encounter/need.

My Build

* Gladiator Intel i7 920 DO@ 4.00ghz overclocked bundle including Gigabyte GA EX58UD5, 6gb Patriot Viper 1600Mhz, ThermalRight VenemousX CPU cooler
* XFX ATI Radeon HD 4870 1024mb GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics card
* Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM
* LG 24x DVDRW Securdisc LightScribe Black Retail Kit - SATA
* Aria 52-1 card reader (not the most important think so if i should leave it out...)
* Fractal Design Define R2 Gaming Case Titanium Grey
* OCZ StealthXStream 700W Silent SLI/Crossfire Ready ATX2.2 Power Supply
* Sound Card suggestions please?????????
* Wireless/Ethernet suggestions please????????

All this is just shy of a GRAND!! from Aria which looks pretty good to me but as i say i am a NOOB. Any help/advice is much appreciated!! biggrin.gif

Following are the parts I used along with Kakewalk...

GA-EX58-UD5
Corsair DDR 3 1867 (6gb)
i7 930
Intel X-25m G2 80gb
XFX 9500gt 1gb
Corsair HX 750
Corsair H50

If you start using sound cards and wireless cards thats where it starts getting tricky...especially for someone without experience...you may want to start simple and work you way into that, unless of course you need both of those things for your system to meet your needs.

Installed Kakewalk with a USB stick, then ran the software update and had 10.6.3 with EVERYTHING working on the first try. Not sure if I got lucky or if these are just the perfect parts to use?

I'd recommend this route

 

[Tom Sawyer]

This is just weird... i'm sitting on my new PC running a purchased copy of OX X 10.6.3 and it is RIDICULOUSLY fast. Needless to say the project has gone quite well thus far. I've got my i7 920 @ 4.0 ghz, my memory running at 1600mhz and the thing boots SO fast that I literally never see the circle animation I kid you not. I do have a 100gb SSD but my Mac Pro (Octomac 2.8ghz) had at least a couple trips around the circle before the desktop appeared!

Still... feels a bit strange as every Mac I've ever owned is was Apple hardware. If Apple offered an X58 based i7 workstation that performed like this at this I'd buy it... but they don't so here I am. I'm going to run this though the paces for a couple weeks. The 9800 GT OC is a nice little card, 10.6.3 was no problem. I do have a 4870 on the way though that should give me better gaming performance so I'll sell off the 9800 GT OC as soon as I have that up and running.

Any issues with running 2 4870's in crossfire? I'm sure OS X would ignore the crossfire bit but any issues with that?

I'm loving this...

 

[GMink]

This is just weird... i'm sitting on my new PC running a purchased copy of OX X 10.6.3 and it is RIDICULOUSLY fast. Needless to say the project has gone quite well thus far. I've got my i7 920 @ 4.0 ghz, my memory running at 1600mhz and the thing boots SO fast that I literally never see the circle animation I kid you not. I do have a 100gb SSD but my Mac Pro (Octomac 2.8ghz) had at least a couple trips around the circle before the desktop appeared!

Still... feels a bit strange as every Mac I've ever owned is was Apple hardware. If Apple offered an X58 based i7 workstation that performed like this at this I'd buy it... but they don't so here I am. I'm going to run this though the paces for a couple weeks. The 9800 GT OC is a nice little card, 10.6.3 was no problem. I do have a 4870 on the way though that should give me better gaming performance so I'll sell off the 9800 GT OC as soon as I have that up and running.

Any issues with running 2 4870's in crossfire? I'm sure OS X would ignore the crossfire bit but any issues with that?

I'm loving this...

I'm glad it all went smoth for you and your enjoying it!

I tried running 2x 4870's in my hack and could never get both of the cards to work in OSX. Only one would boot and the card's fan goes to 100% and is very loud! lol

I spent the first 2 days trying to get both cards working or at least be able to disable the fan on the card that doesn't boot up but never found a solution. I did find a couple of blogs about getting 2x Nvidia cards working but it would not work for the ATI.

I beleive that Spanky Deluxe tried to use 2x HD4870's without success too. At this point I'm just going to wait on the next generation of apple supported cards and upgrade then.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

64 bit update: sleep / shutdown / restart / audio / powermanagement all ok.

Changed the bootloader to asereBLN 1.1.9 and edited the DSDT for the i7 930 processor's -c and -p states with native power management in OSX - thanks to the guys at insanelymac. Only running fakesmc in /extra along with IOAHCIBlockStorageInjector for orange icons and LegacyHDA for audio. All other fixes are in DSDT with the bootoader handling sleep and shutdown. This means all kexts are both 32 and 64 bit compatible now.

Edit the boot.plist with kernel flag "arch=x86_64" and setting 64 bit HPET in BIOS and a quick reboot using this tool to check so we are good to go:

View attachment 222791
_______________________________________

Default @ 2.83GHz gives this result:
View attachment 222787
_______________________________________

Clocking the CPU at 4.01GHz we now have a score of:
View attachment 222788
_______________________________________


After running prime95 the temps only reach the high 78-79C mark, this is after maxing all four (+four virtual) cores for 11 mins at 4.01GHz:
View attachment 222790

This machine can run at 4.3GHz but I feel better with myself just throttling it back to 4.0 for daily use. In fact the default of 2.83GHz is so good I will probably keep it there for the near silent and cold temps it generates and have a BIOS preset for the faster speed selectable on startup when I need to crank out some video work in Handbrake or FCP.

Just ran a geekbench on my i7 @ 4.0ghz, 1600mhz on the DDR3 and got a 12228. As I started looking at your results, I noticed your bus frequency is 4.8ghz where mine is reported at 800mhz... Any thoughts on why that may be? I have to say overclocking has become WAY more complicated than back when I was into it (started with the first Pentium all the way through a Core 2 Duo)... QPI, UNCORE... etc...etc... But I feel good about hitting 4.0ghz and my mem at 1600mhz (which it's rated for)... appreciate any help you can give on why the FSB is showing so low.

 

[Rankrotten]

I think that's just a cosmetic glitch in your Geekbench as your QPI bus speed will be 4.8GHz. Open System Profiler and check the Processor Interconnect Speed under "Hardware" at the very top where it should say 4.8GT/s (GHz)

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I think that's just a cosmetic glitch in your Geekbench as your QPI bus speed will be 4.8GHz. Open System Profiler and check the Processor Interconnect Speed under "Hardware" at the very top where it should say 4.8GT/s (GHz)

I think your right as my bios settings are definitely not running an 800mhz fsb! Funny enough, I don't see a "Processor Interconnect Speed" under hardware... but just FSB Speed... 800mhz. Not a big deal, but seeing your score at the same speed is 1000 higher give/take... it does make me wonder.

My only outstanding issue is getting sound to work... have 888 but have yet to get it working under 10.6.3... certainly the price of admission on all this though.

 

[Rankrotten]

I think your right as my bios settings are definitely not running an 800mhz fsb! Funny enough, I don't see a "Processor Interconnect Speed" under hardware... but just FSB Speed... 800mhz. Not a big deal, but seeing your score at the same speed is 1000 higher give/take... it does make me wonder.

Use the 64bit version of Geekbench and also boot your mac in 64bit and retest if you are not already. Scores should be similar.

 

[GMink]

Just ran a geekbench on my i7 @ 4.0ghz, 1600mhz on the DDR3 and got a 12228. As I started looking at your results, I noticed your bus frequency is 4.8ghz where mine is reported at 800mhz... Any thoughts on why that may be? I have to say overclocking has become WAY more complicated than back when I was into it (started with the first Pentium all the way through a Core 2 Duo)... QPI, UNCORE... etc...etc... But I feel good about hitting 4.0ghz and my mem at 1600mhz (which it's rated for)... appreciate any help you can give on why the FSB is showing so low.

I would not be concerned with the FSB reading incorrectly.

I ran geekbench 32bit (free version) and got 12,880 with my rig at 4.3Ghz so your score is very much in line with mine.

You have to buy geekbench to run the 64bit version so I can't compare but IMO that is the difference with the scores posted by Rankrotten. If he has time to run the 32bit geekbench that would shed some light on it.

 

[tag1]

So all of my parts arrived today and as I was watching sn0le's hackintosh videos, I was wondering two things.

1) Is Empire EFI a better install method than kakewalk?

2) For my notcua NH-D14 cooler, should I be using different thermal paste than the one that comes with it. Sn0le uses the stock cooler with the i7 920, but chooses to scrape off the paste on the stock cooler and use the Artic thermal paste.

 

[Rankrotten]

Just ran a geekbench on my i7 @ 4.0ghz, 1600mhz on the DDR3 and got a 12228.

Ran geekbench 32bit (free version) and got 12,880 with my rig at 4.3Ghz so your score is very much in line with mine. You have to buy geekbench to run the 64bit version so I can't compare but IMO that is the difference with the scores posted by Rankrotten. If he has time to run the 32bit geekbench that would shed some light on it.

Geekbench 32bit @ 4.01GHz 12377 which is right in line with both your results.

 

[GMink]

Geekbench 32bit @ 4.01GHz 12377 which is right in line with both your results.

Thanks for the update

 

[Rankrotten]

Another small update:

Replaced the stock Corsair H50 fan with a pair of Scythe Gentle Typhoon 1450 fans, in push-pull exhaust configuration, and it has dropped the load temperatures down by almost 10C
The Corsair fan was not loud as such but had a certain tone, the pair of GTs are now totally silent in operation. All I can hear now is the Radeon 4870 fan spinning away so that will be next on my hit-list...

 

[nanofrog]

2) For my notcua NH-D14 cooler, should I be using different thermal paste than the one that comes with it. Sn0le uses the stock cooler with the i7 920, but chooses to scrape off the paste on the stock cooler and use the Artic thermal paste.

The Noctua comes with better paste than what's used on the stock Intel cooler, and will work rather well. Much better than the crud that comes on the stock unit (and it's applied in strips, not over the entire surface area).

 

[GMink]

Another small update:

Replaced the stock Corsair H50 fan with a pair of Scythe Gentle Typhoon 1450 fans, in push-pull exhaust configuration, and it has dropped the load temperatures down by almost 10C
The Corsair fan was not loud as such but had a certain tone, the pair of GTs are now totally silent in operation. All I can hear now is the Radeon 4870 fan spinning away so that will be next on my hit-list...

I'm thinking about going with the H50 vs the megahalums I'm running now. I don't think it will improve temps but I know it should be much quieter for the same OC.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Geekbench 32bit @ 4.01GHz 12377 which is right in line with both your results.

Ah excellent... I would imagine the 64 bit version would make a little difference.

Just got through with a Win 7 setup on a 2nd drive (OS X got the SSD of course)... and pulled a 25922 in 3DMark06... Not bad...

my 4ghz OC has been rock solid thus far... Of course, my right pulls 520+ watts while under full load and my lights dim, so not too green!

 

[GMink]

Ah excellent... I would imagine the 64 bit version would make a little difference.

Just got through with a Win 7 setup on a 2nd drive (OS X got the SSD of course)... and pulled a 25922 in 3DMark06... Not bad...

my 4ghz OC has been rock solid thus far... Of course, my right pulls 520+ watts while under full load and my lights dim, so not too green!

did you mean 3dmark05??

 

[Tom Sawyer]

did you mean 3dmark05??

Nope... 3dmark06. But... a little bit different video card setup than my original 9800 gt oc...

That score was with 2 4870's in crossfire.

Unfortunately the fan on the 2nd card runs WIDE OPEN the entire time I'm in OS X... and I'm there more than win 7... so have pulled one card and am going to sell that off as well as my Sparkle 9800 GT OC.

I still get a somewhat respectable 18409 with a single card.