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ekwipt

macrumors 65816
Jan 14, 2008
1,066
361
You'll be able to get the 460 working with that chipset, the only problem for me is running x99 you need two cards to get the latest ati cards running. SO far I just have a Nvidia 710 I think I'll delete the Nvidia drivers and just run the bare basic apple drivers and then run a 480 as my "main" card.... it's all a bit untested at the moment so be patient
 

pastrychef

macrumors 601
Sep 15, 2006
4,753
1,450
New York City, NY
I'm new to hackintosh and just ordered parts based on guides in tonymac site. They only thing different is I got a rx 460 gpu instead of nvidia. I should get everything next week. The question I have is how do I know that acceleration is working on my hackintosh?

Yes, as garnerx stated, it's quite obvious when you don't have acceleration. Another way to tell is by looking at the Dock. Usually, it has a gray background. When there's no acceleration, the Dock's background is white.
 

Fl0r!an

macrumors 6502a
Aug 14, 2007
909
530
Your new Hack will boot to black screen unless you configure iGPU=Primary. That's sadly how it is with new AMD GPUs, Kepler/Maxwell Nvidia would have been a better choice.
 

Synchro3

macrumors 68000
Jan 12, 2014
1,987
850
Well, after six years I ordered for the first time a new computer, to be exact a Core i7 7700K CPU and this nice Mini-ITX board with Thunderbolt 3 and full of other connectors: http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming-ITXac/index.asp , 32 GByte DDR4-2400-RAM and a PSU cooler.

I already have all other components (SSD's, PSU, Mini ITX Case 'Cooler Master Elite 130', Nvidia GPU etc), so it wasn't a big investment.

It's meant to be a Windows machine first, but I will begin with the hobby 'Hackintosh' when macOS starts support for Kaby Lake, building the xMac Apple never released.
 

pastrychef

macrumors 601
Sep 15, 2006
4,753
1,450
New York City, NY
Well, after six years I ordered for the first time a new computer, to be exact a Core i7 7700K CPU and this nice Mini-ITX board with Thunderbolt 3 and full of other connectors: http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming-ITXac/index.asp , 32 GByte DDR4-2400-RAM and a PSU cooler.

I already have all other components (SSD's, PSU, Mini ITX Case 'Cooler Master Elite 130', Nvidia GPU etc), so it wasn't a big investment.

It's meant to be a Windows machine first, but I will begin with the hobby 'Hackintosh' when macOS starts support for Kaby Lake, building the xMac Apple never released.

Welcome to the club!

Kaby Lake is still a bit new, but most of the major things are already working. It may not be as easy as setting up a Skylake system, but with a bit of work, you should be able to, at the very least, get very functional macOS system.

I suggest you start by reading the progress made here:
[NEW / TESTING] Intel 7th Generation Kaby Lake CPUs + 200 Series Motherboards in macOS | tonymacx86.com
 

Synchro3

macrumors 68000
Jan 12, 2014
1,987
850
Thanks!

Just for preparation, before Hackintoshing: I guess in UEFI Secure Boot has to be disabled, but what about Intel Platform Trust Technology? Disable too?

Some other things to prepare in UEFI?

UEFI.png
 

jblagden

macrumors 65816
Aug 16, 2013
1,162
641
Thanks!

Just for preparation, before Hackintoshing: I guess in UEFI Secure Boot has to be disabled, but what about Intel Platform Trust Technology? Disable too?

Some other things to prepare in UEFI?

View attachment 685951

Platform Trust sounds like it has something to do with Trusted Platform Modules. I'm not sure, but I think you'll want to leave that disabled. It might not matter, especially since, as far as I know, OS X doesn't support TPMs.
 
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shelt

macrumors member
Apr 12, 2007
92
100
NorCal
So...after years of waiting for even a hint that a high-performance Mac desktop sans monitor was coming, I threw in the towel. I built an i6700K/32GB/ASUS mATx/SSD (multi)/GTX 950 hackintosh. I hadn't built a machine since my pre-Apple days in the late 1990s. I figured if my hackintosh build was unsuccessful, I would cringe and go over to the dark side. Fortunately, I now have a "gold build" in Sierra 10.12.3 with everything (USB, Audio, Video, iMessage, etc) functioning perfectly -- I was very surprised! It took about 10 hours of construction, install and debug time.

Lightroom and Photoshop are my heavy uses (42 megapixel RAW images). I was getting by with a late 2014 27" Retina i5 iMac with fusion drive. I was pretty shocked by the performance delta:

(late 2014 i5 iMac vs i7 Hackintosh):

Geekbench 4: 11,250 vs 17,400 (before overclocking)
Cinebench 15 Rendering: 85 fps vs 116 fps (with a budget placeholder video card)
Import 10 RAWs to LR and convert to DNG: 58s vs 15s (!)
Export 10 full sized JPGs from RAWs: 74s vs 33s (!)

I was amazed by the Lightroom difference. I'm sure the SSD helped a bit, but the rendering times are amazingly better. I suspect the Nvidia GTX card helps a lot more than the AMD m290x, but I may do some more testing on that front. I double checked all of my settings as well. Anyway, all I know is it's a lot faster and that's very helpful.

I have no illusions that this will require a fair bit of maintenance, but I'm very comfortable with that. And....I have lots of backups!
 

macmee

Suspended
Dec 13, 2008
835
1,110
Canada
Is anyone running a 480 without issues? Last I checked the sleep and tearing problems were making it not worth it but I just saw Apple updated Sierra which apparently helps fix some issues with the 460. Wondering if anyone's noticed improvements with the 480 as well.
 

Synchro3

macrumors 68000
Jan 12, 2014
1,987
850
Initially, my i7-6700K was thermally limited too. I ended up delidding it and using CoolLaboratory Liquid Ultra between the die and the IHS. This lowered temps a lot!! Then, I experimented with different thermal compounds between the IHS and the Noctua heatsink. Eventually, I ended up using CoolLaboratory Liquid Ultra here too. The difference was very big and immediately noticeable.

The other thermal compounds I tried were Gelid GC Extreme and Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut. Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut was slightly better than Gelid GC Extreme but, in my opinion, it did not make enough of a difference to justify the price.

CoolLaboratory Liquid Ultra is amazing!! It is leaps and bounds better than the other two that I tried. It is expensive and requires care to apply but it's well worth it. My system runs so cool now, the fans almost never ramp up.

Ok, just realized hat I have do delid the i7 7700K CPU...
 

pastrychef

macrumors 601
Sep 15, 2006
4,753
1,450
New York City, NY
The temp improvements from my delid was amazing. If you are comfortable performing the procedure and are willing to take the risk, you can be rewarded with a far, far more efficient running CPU.
 
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garnerx

macrumors 6502a
Nov 9, 2012
623
383
I found this delid tool, seems a very safe way: http://rockitcool.myshopify.com/products/rockit-88
That does seem easy. I'm amazed that if such a little thing as better paste inside the CPU package can make such a big difference - as much if not more than adding water cooling, a giant heatsink, improving the airflow inside the case, etc - why doesn't Intel add it at the factory? It would make sense on the K series chips, would probably be a big selling point for enthusiasts, and would mean they could have higher stock clock speeds.
 

Synchro3

macrumors 68000
Jan 12, 2014
1,987
850
That does seem easy. I'm amazed that if such a little thing as better paste inside the CPU package can make such a big difference - as much if not more than adding water cooling, a giant heatsink, improving the airflow inside the case, etc - why doesn't Intel add it at the factory? It would make sense on the K series chips, would probably be a big selling point for enthusiasts, and would mean they could have higher stock clock speeds.

Because an Intel-bean counter wanted to separate professional CPU's from consumer CPU's. Since Skylake they don't solder consumer CPU's (which cost nevertheless $370).
 
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garnerx

macrumors 6502a
Nov 9, 2012
623
383
Because an Intel-bean counter wanted to separate professional CPU's from consumer CPU's. Since Skylake they don't solder consumer CPU's (which cost nevertheless $370).
Solder? I had to google that, from what I can gather solder is only necessary if you're going to be using sub-zero cooling. At normal temperatures liquid metal compounds like the Coollaboratory stuff seem to be acceptable.

There are other things to distinguish pro / consumer CPUs, aren't there? More cores, PCIe lanes, bigger cache, different type of RAM, etc. Do people even overclock the pro stuff? Still, I guess Intel must know what they're doing...

edit: So I read some more about it, because I'm very tempted to try, given the simplicity of that Rockit de-lidder. What I (think I) learned:

Solder is the absolute best thing to use, but it's difficult and requires plating the inside of the CPU heat spreader in order for it to bond correctly.

Liquid metal or similar gives much higher performance than the stuff Intel uses, but it degrades over time and will eventually need to be replaced.

The basic paste that Intel puts inside the heat spreader is cheap but lasts a long time. It degrades slightly over the first year or so but after that will give consistent performance for the life of the equipment.

Then there are people who de-lid the CPU and attach the cooler directly to the die, which is a whole other world of crazy...
 
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Synchro3

macrumors 68000
Jan 12, 2014
1,987
850
So I built my i7 7700K-PC with the ASRock Fatal1ty board. My first PC built by myself, up and running (no overclocking). :)

Geekbench 3 indicates 70% higher single core and 20% higher multi core results than Mac Pro with Xeon W3690.
Geekbench 4 indicates 80% higher single core and 30% higher multicore...

Installed Windows 7 and Windows 10, next OS X...

CPU temps: 33° Celsius idle, 50-60° 4K gaming, 85° stress testing

i7 PC a.jpg i7 PC b.jpg

Unigine Heaven i7-7700K.PNG Unigine Valley Extreme i7-7700k.PNG
 
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garnerx

macrumors 6502a
Nov 9, 2012
623
383
2017-02-06.png
Very nice, and a sensible choice with the 980Ti. I just tried the same benchmark (older CPU, newer GPU) in Windows, got a slightly higher framerate but then I can't use the graphics card at all in Mac OS.

2017-02-06.png
 

Synchro3

macrumors 68000
Jan 12, 2014
1,987
850
2017-02-06.png
Very nice, and a sensible choice with the 980Ti. I just tried the same benchmark (older CPU, newer GPU) in Windows, got a slightly higher framerate but then I can't use the graphics card at all in Mac OS.

Yes, GTX 1080 is 30% faster than GTX 980 Ti, your benchmark matches with this comparison: http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-980-Ti-vs-Nvidia-GTX-1080/3439vs3603

But GTX 980 Ti is almost as fast as GTX 1070: http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-980-Ti-vs-Nvidia-GTX-1070/3439vs3609, and OS X compatible....
 
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