Cindori Custom: Building an i7 Hackintosh

[Rankrotten]

u need usb keyboard m8.

Apple Aluminum USB keyboard taken from my Mac Pro

also spinning wheel, did you set Hard Disk Mode to AHCI in BIOS?

Yes, also set ESATA to AHCI instead of IDE

read my hackthread @ insanelymac, link in a post at page1 of thread. it covers some problems ppl had.

Based it on your thread m8. There is one picture link missing on it so can I confirm you used the Mac Pro to install SL on a hard drive, ran the scripts on it then transferred the disk to the hackintosh and there booted into SL, buildcache and update to 10.6.2. ?

The missing pic relates to using Disk Utility to restore the 10.6 DVD image to the target hard drive. Is this step necessary..?

 

[Phantom Gremlin]

commercial product as starting point?

Is there an off-the-shelf prouct from a "tier 1" PC manufacturer that can be used as a starting point? E.g. buy a Dell T3500 and replace the default video card and then everything works?

I admire everyone's acumen in assembling computers from kits of parts, but it would be much easier if they came "mostly" assembled from a reputable manufacturer.

Of course, I could just buy a Mac Pro, but that's a little pricey, isn't it?

 

[Rankrotten]

Where's the fun in that? By assembling all the components yourself it should aid in troubleshooting any possible problems that may arise in future. I've certainly had my eyes opened, in a good way.

 

[Phantom Gremlin]

Where's the fun in that? By assembling all the components yourself it should aid in troubleshooting any possible problems that may arise in future. I've certainly had my eyes opened, in a good way.

You're right. That's a great deal of the attraction of a Hackintosh. I'm just getting lazy in my old age.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

You're right. That's a great deal of the attraction of a Hackintosh. I'm just getting lazy in my old age.

To be honest, the tricky stuff doesn't come so much from the hardware side of things but rather the software side. The hardware bit's relatively easy, you just screw a few things in, plug a few cables in and be done with it. I'd suggest having a look over on the Insanelymac forums or the OSX86project wiki and put together a hardware setup that you know works. The gigabyte i7 board seems to be the best at the moment.

 

[Rankrotten]

Quick update; Got the install working and updated to 10.6.2 and all was well.

I'm using a Sapphire 4870 1024MB card I was intending to flash for use in the Mac Pro but never got around to it. Not sure if QE and CI is working on the hack so I applied the netkas QE_CI package for exotic cards. Kernel panic on restart and verbose mode points to the X2000 drivers being the culprit. Aaargh.

So I start again, formatting and reinstalling from the beginning. I think I know the insides of this machine more intimately than I do my wife..

 

[alent1234]

Is there an off-the-shelf prouct from a "tier 1" PC manufacturer that can be used as a starting point? E.g. buy a Dell T3500 and replace the default video card and then everything works?

I admire everyone's acumen in assembling computers from kits of parts, but it would be much easier if they came "mostly" assembled from a reputable manufacturer.

Of course, I could just buy a Mac Pro, but that's a little pricey, isn't it?

newegg sells bare bones kits

i've been building since 1998 and it's not fun anymore. today everything is on the motherboard except for the graphics. back then you had put all the cards in, sometimes you had to switch PCI slots due to issues.

hardest part is the 20 minutes it takes to screw the motherboard in the case and put the CPU in correctly since they have so many pins now. the P2 with the candy bar stick was awesome in how easy it was to install

 

[Rankrotten]

The stock PC Radeon 4870 seems to work OK in the hackintosh with default snow leopard drivers although there is no indication of CI or QE being enabled in graphics/displays tab of system profiler.

A question for Cindori, would there be any benefit in flashing a mac rom to the Sapphire 4870 for use in the hackintosh?

 

[Cindori]

4870 QE support is already inside OSX because Apple sells the card......
support can always be checked with Zeus


there is no benefit that I know of

 

[Rankrotten]

Thanks

 

[ddorbuck]

Hey guys, I believe I already know this answer but has anyone had any luck with running a ATI Radeon 5850 video card on your hackintosh? I know the 10.6.x os does not have native support for that chip set family yet but does it work at all? , like with a resolution locked at 1024x768 ?

I ordered a XFX HD585XZAFC Radeon HD 5850 1GB DDR5 Graphics Card for a good price and would love to use this in my new system. I have an older ATI 4870 which I know will work so all will not be lost if the 5850 has to go back.

Thanks. Doug

 

[Cindori]

it works at low res and no 3d accelleration. there is a thread about 5000 series at insanelymac.

 

[AZREOSpecialist]

Cindori, you should check out this EVGA motherboard. It supports dual Xeon 6-core CPUs for up to 12 cores like the as yet unreleased Mac Pro. Would anyone with a few extra grand laying around care to turn this into a dual-CPU hackintosh?

 

[pudrums]

Making a Hackintosh with this thing is very easy, because it uses the same chipset as the real Mac Pro. Only problem is that it has a special form factor (HPTX) and there's currently only one very ugly case available that supports this form factor.

 

[Rankrotten]

I need to change the hardware UUID on my Hack to match that of my Mac Pro so I don't have problems with software and iTunes authorizations. Anyone had any problems yet? I have changed the UUID in smbios.plist but it has not changed system wide.

 

[hajime]

Cindori, you should check out this EVGA motherboard. It supports dual Xeon 6-core CPUs for up to 12 cores like the as yet unreleased Mac Pro. Would anyone with a few extra grand laying around care to turn this into a dual-CPU hackintosh?

Since we are unable to get volume discount on the Xeon CPU, will the system end up more expensive than a similarly configurered upcoming MacPro? I guess for the Hacintosh, the CPU and motherboard are upgradable in the future. For the MacPro, we are more or less stuck with whatever it comes with. Also, since no Mac is using the EVGA motherboard, USB 3.0, SATA III and the Xeon 5680, will Snow Leopard recognize and allow us to use these new parts?

 

[Dr.Pants]

Regarding the EVGA board -

We are proud to present the EVGA Classified SR-2... Now you can experience... overclocked multithreaded performance by way of Dual 1366 sockets....

So there's an overclocking dual 1366 board. This is good news, despite the price; at least performance can be squeezed out of it. Looking forward to hearing more about this.

Also, since no Mac is using the EVGA motherboard, USB 3.0, SATA III and the Xeon 5680, will Snow Leopard recognize and allow us to use these new parts?

The EVGA motherboard methinks has the X58 chipset (or DP boad equivalent), so that part's covered more or less. The SATA III and USB 3.0 controllers are vendor dependent (i.e., those vendors need to make OSX drivers, most likely for a macPro expansion card). Doesn't stop some enterprising fellows from writing kexts, though.

 

[AapNootMies]

Thanks heaps Cindori! I am going to replace my PowerMac G5 with an i7 Hackintosh now.

 

[sgunes]

Is there an off-the-shelf prouct from a "tier 1" PC manufacturer that can be used as a starting point? E.g. buy a Dell T3500 and replace the default video card and then everything works?

I admire everyone's acumen in assembling computers from kits of parts, but it would be much easier if they came "mostly" assembled from a reputable manufacturer.

Of course, I could just buy a Mac Pro, but that's a little pricey, isn't it?

I do not think that there are any Tier one OEMs building systems that are easily hackintoshed without major change in hardware.

I am looking into Cyberpower as they let you use the Gigabyte EX58A UD7 board. See my thread here.

 

[ddorbuck]

Hey all. I just want to post that I installed osx fine to my new Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R with an Intel Core i7 - 930 cpu using a ATI Radeon 4770 video card. I used the kakewalk package. All went well except the somewhat common no sound identified after the system booted. A lot of searching into kexts got me going by replacing a few system kexts files then the audio worked. (wow what a mess the kexts world is ! :> ).

My one question is, is it common to have the memory speed showing as incorrect when you go into the about this mac on a hacked pc running osx?
I recently updated my bios to one of the latest versions and did a few minor tweaks like increase the mhz for the cpu to 3ghz from the stock 2.66.
I did not touch the memory timings. My memory is 6 gigs of OCZ triple channel DDR3 running at 12800.

Thanks for any info. Doug

 

[Cindori]

The about this mac window does not read your clock speeds

 

[hosko]

Would I be able to run the 6 core i7-980X Extreme in OSX using the Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD5.

I can build a computer that would operate insanely well for about half the price of a Mac Pro. I was going to get a Mac Pro however I'm starting to think the Hack approach will do me well. Lets just hope Apple or anybody releases the Radeon HD5870 for OSX, that is a killer card and I'm buying it even if I can only use it in Windows.

 

[Rankrotten]

Would I be able to run the 6 core i7-980X Extreme in OSX using the Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD5.

There's no reason it won't work superbly. The motherboard and processor combo will be fine and OS X will treat it as a six-core Xeon.

Been using my hack for the past few days and really pounding it to see if it took the strain. Well not only did it laugh at all my pro apps it is running at an average of 10C cooler than my Mac Pro ever did at idle and as much as 19C cooler at full tilt using all the cores according to iStat Pro. Very impressed.

 

[sgunes]

Would I be able to run the 6 core i7-980X Extreme in OSX using the Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD5.

I can build a computer that would operate insanely well for about half the price of a Mac Pro. I was going to get a Mac Pro however I'm starting to think the Hack approach will do me well. Lets just hope Apple or anybody releases the Radeon HD5870 for OSX, that is a killer card and I'm buying it even if I can only use it in Windows.

Yes you can. The Gigabyte website has more info about it.

I would recommend the UD7 as the UD5 seems to have slight compatibility problems if you try to kakewalk it.

 

[Phantom Gremlin]

Well not only did it laugh at all my pro apps it is running at an average of 10C cooler than my Mac Pro ever did at idle and as much as 19C cooler at full tilt using all the cores according to iStat Pro. Very impressed.

But is this a true Apples to Apples comparison? (Sorry, couldn't resist being goofy.)

Specifically, the Mac Pro is said to be very very quiet (no personal experience, I don't own one). So if your hackintosh cranks up the fan speeds, it should indeed keep the cores cooler, that will happen at the expense of noise. But I grant you that a drop of 19C is quite impressive.

How loud is your box?