- Feb 14, 2004
- 50,732
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I had seen a few threads here about installing OS X on PC hardware, so I decided to look into it. Neither thread has been locked and I PM'd the mods and they don't seem to mind, so here we go!
Background:
I love computers, projects, and tinkering in general and this looked like a fun challenge. Before you go off about yay/nay on Hackintosh, (1) I own many computers, both PC and Mac, from a G4 Cube to an Intel MacBook and (2) I purchased a full retail copy of Leopard for this project. This purpose of this project was not for resale and was only for personal use. Anyway, I've been running a highly modified Mac Mini as my primary desktop for quite some time and have thoroughly enjoyed it. I sold that awhile back but kept my home/work Mac Mini (which also has been beefed up a bit) because I love the small, quiet design.
However, I ran into a performance problem: I needed to run multiple VMs plus some hardcore Mac software (video, CG, etc.). Since my Core Duo Mac Mini was limited, that meant either upgrading the processor (up to $700 for the 2.33ghz Merom dual-core) or getting a 2ghz Core 2 Duo Mini so that I could take advantage of the unofficial 3gb ram cap. However, that still wasn't enough ram, so I looked into the Mac Pros. Wow - they started at $2,500 and quickly jumped up to over $5,000 when I started adding upgrades to the ram, hard drives, etc. That was way, way out of my budget. I also looked at iMacs, but I don't really care for them - I already have a nice 24" Dell HC LCD monitor anyway.
Enter the Hackintosh. The idea of running OS X on homebuilt PC hardware thrilled me...I could custom-configure my own hardware without having to get Chinese adapters for the SATA and IDE ports on the Mini, do funky power rigging, or spend money on expensive laptop-sized upgrades. But how well would it really work? After doing some extensive research, I discovered that if you choose highly-compatible parts, you could end up with an inexpensive yet extremely stable and powerful machine. (Note: only downside is no Boot Camp, but you can always dual boot!)
Resources:
The two places to go for information are the InsanelyMac forums and the OSx86 Project Wiki. You will also need to do a lot of googling to find compatible parts and information in general.
There are two primary compatibility issues with the Hackintosh system: the motherboard and the video card. There are only a handful of each that are more or less 100% compatible and that have been tested extensively by the Hackintosh community, so you need to be extremely careful about plopping down money for parts before doing the proper research. If you get the right parts, however, your machine can be as stable as a "real" Mac.
Choosing my Parts:
I just sold my 15" MacBook Pro, so I gave myself a budget of $1,500 for this project. If it didn't work out, I would at least have an extremely powerful Windows/Linux machine. If it did work out, then I'd have my dream - a Mac Pro "Lite". $2500 is out of the question for a computer for my budget, and adding up the parts I really wanted ($5115) was astronomical. So of course I set out with the goal of building the $5115 configuration within my budget
After doing a fair amount of research, I settled on the Intel Bad Axe 2 motherboard. It is a slightly older design, but extremely stable. The only downside of the board under Hackintosh is that it does not support Mic Input, which is fine because I have a USB microphone (compatible USB sound cards are available for like $6 on ebay). Actually before I go on, here is the Mac Pro I spec'd out at Apple:
Mac Pro: $5115
-Two 2.0Ghz Dual-Core Intel Xeons (drops the $2,500 initial price by $299)
-8GB (4 x 2GB) Memory
-(3) 500gb 7200rpm SATA hard drives
-256mb 7300GT video card
-16x SuperDrive
-Bluetooth
Here are the parts I got:
Hack Pro: $1301.65
-2.4ghz Quad-Core Q6600 processor (~equivalent to dual 2ghz dual-core Xeons)
-8GB (4 x 2GB) Memroy
-(3) 500gb 7200rpm SATA hard drives
-256mb 7300GT video card
-20x DVD burner with Lightscribe
-Bluetooth
-[Intel Bad Axe 2 motherboard, Cooler Master 690 case, 520w Corsair modular PSU)
Starting out, that's a a savings of $3813.35. Not bad at all! Now for installation...
Software Installation:
The basic idea behind Hackintosh right now goes like this:
1. Format using a boot disc
2. Install Leopard using a patched disc
3. Copy over an EFI emulator and some other files from a USB stick
4. Install my Sound Card driver
5. Download 10.5.1 updates like normal
I won't go into much detail here; if you want to read up on the full install process click here. As long as you've chosen compatible hardware and have done your prep work with the software ahead of time, the installation is very easy. It takes about 1.5 hours, mostly due to the fact that it takes like 20 minutes to boot up the patched discs. I should note that I do not condone or encourage illegally downloading Leopard...I used a full retail Leopard DVD for my installation. The additional benefit is that I know my Leopard installation is clean of any spyware-type stuff that might come from Internet downloads.
The installation is fairly painless, although a bit tedious, following the guide linked above. There are newer and "better" guides and software available out there, but EFI 5.2 is very stable and works great. If you need GTP/GUID partitioning, then you will want to go with a newer version such as EFI 8. You need a few discs and a thumb drive to get everything up and running, as well as a Mac running Tiger to build the patched Leopard DVD.
So how does it run? In a nutshell, ridiculously awesome. On Xbench your typical Mac Pro scores about 155; my Hack Pro scored 174. Just for kicks, I overclocked it to 3.0ghz and got an Xbench score of 200 (3ghz, by the way, is a $1,000 option from Apple, so we're up to $4,800 in savings haha). I've had it up for about a week and half and it has proved far more stable than any of my windows machines. I can run two XP VMs in Fusion with dual-cores and 2 gigs of ram each without any slowdown in OS X. Most apps open in 1 bounce, the larger ones in 2. Time Machine works great, Core Image and Quartz Extreme are fantastic, and overall it's an awesome experience. I won't need another computer for like 10 years! :laugh:
Final Notes:
With Hackintosh, you can finally fill in the gap in Apple's product line - the Mac Pro Lite. In fact, you can build a Quad-Core machine with 4 gigs of ram for $700 plus the cost of whatever hard drives you want ($170 BA2 board @ ZZF, $280 Q6600 @ Newegg, Rosewill case/psu $27 @ Newegg, 7300GT $60 @ Tiger Direct, $38 DVD burner @ Newegg, 2x2GB RAM $100 @ Newegg, + shipping ~ $700). That puts it in Mac Mini territory!
I have tested a 7900GT successfully and I'm currently running a 320mb XFX 8800 GTS I got used off this forum. All the cards (7300GT, 7900GT, 8800GTS) have worked great. I can also dual-boot into Vista to play games.
A note on PC EFI: PC EFI emulates EFI (like a newer BIOS, used on Macs) and allows you to run a "vanilla" unmodified kernel. Your computer shows up as a Mac Pro and allows you to download updates like normal from Apple Updates. 10.5.1 works, but I can't say what the future holds other than I'm sure the hackers will be on it if Apple breaks anything. Anyway, aside from hardware, this Hackintosh *is* a Mac Pro for all intents and purposes - even Apple thinks it is! Very clever! There has been talk of Apple doing a general release of OS X for the x86 market, but honestly I don't think that has a big chance of happening - OS X is stable because Apple produces all of their own hardware, so they don't have to support everything under the sun which can lead to unstability. There is also a rumor that Apple is releasing a more powerful Mac Mini come January/February, or possible a mid-range "Cube 2", so I am anxious to see that as well.
I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have.
Background:
I love computers, projects, and tinkering in general and this looked like a fun challenge. Before you go off about yay/nay on Hackintosh, (1) I own many computers, both PC and Mac, from a G4 Cube to an Intel MacBook and (2) I purchased a full retail copy of Leopard for this project. This purpose of this project was not for resale and was only for personal use. Anyway, I've been running a highly modified Mac Mini as my primary desktop for quite some time and have thoroughly enjoyed it. I sold that awhile back but kept my home/work Mac Mini (which also has been beefed up a bit) because I love the small, quiet design.
However, I ran into a performance problem: I needed to run multiple VMs plus some hardcore Mac software (video, CG, etc.). Since my Core Duo Mac Mini was limited, that meant either upgrading the processor (up to $700 for the 2.33ghz Merom dual-core) or getting a 2ghz Core 2 Duo Mini so that I could take advantage of the unofficial 3gb ram cap. However, that still wasn't enough ram, so I looked into the Mac Pros. Wow - they started at $2,500 and quickly jumped up to over $5,000 when I started adding upgrades to the ram, hard drives, etc. That was way, way out of my budget. I also looked at iMacs, but I don't really care for them - I already have a nice 24" Dell HC LCD monitor anyway.
Enter the Hackintosh. The idea of running OS X on homebuilt PC hardware thrilled me...I could custom-configure my own hardware without having to get Chinese adapters for the SATA and IDE ports on the Mini, do funky power rigging, or spend money on expensive laptop-sized upgrades. But how well would it really work? After doing some extensive research, I discovered that if you choose highly-compatible parts, you could end up with an inexpensive yet extremely stable and powerful machine. (Note: only downside is no Boot Camp, but you can always dual boot!)
Resources:
The two places to go for information are the InsanelyMac forums and the OSx86 Project Wiki. You will also need to do a lot of googling to find compatible parts and information in general.
There are two primary compatibility issues with the Hackintosh system: the motherboard and the video card. There are only a handful of each that are more or less 100% compatible and that have been tested extensively by the Hackintosh community, so you need to be extremely careful about plopping down money for parts before doing the proper research. If you get the right parts, however, your machine can be as stable as a "real" Mac.
Choosing my Parts:
I just sold my 15" MacBook Pro, so I gave myself a budget of $1,500 for this project. If it didn't work out, I would at least have an extremely powerful Windows/Linux machine. If it did work out, then I'd have my dream - a Mac Pro "Lite". $2500 is out of the question for a computer for my budget, and adding up the parts I really wanted ($5115) was astronomical. So of course I set out with the goal of building the $5115 configuration within my budget
After doing a fair amount of research, I settled on the Intel Bad Axe 2 motherboard. It is a slightly older design, but extremely stable. The only downside of the board under Hackintosh is that it does not support Mic Input, which is fine because I have a USB microphone (compatible USB sound cards are available for like $6 on ebay). Actually before I go on, here is the Mac Pro I spec'd out at Apple:
Mac Pro: $5115
-Two 2.0Ghz Dual-Core Intel Xeons (drops the $2,500 initial price by $299)
-8GB (4 x 2GB) Memory
-(3) 500gb 7200rpm SATA hard drives
-256mb 7300GT video card
-16x SuperDrive
-Bluetooth
Here are the parts I got:
Hack Pro: $1301.65
-2.4ghz Quad-Core Q6600 processor (~equivalent to dual 2ghz dual-core Xeons)
-8GB (4 x 2GB) Memroy
-(3) 500gb 7200rpm SATA hard drives
-256mb 7300GT video card
-20x DVD burner with Lightscribe
-Bluetooth
-[Intel Bad Axe 2 motherboard, Cooler Master 690 case, 520w Corsair modular PSU)
Starting out, that's a a savings of $3813.35. Not bad at all! Now for installation...
Software Installation:
The basic idea behind Hackintosh right now goes like this:
1. Format using a boot disc
2. Install Leopard using a patched disc
3. Copy over an EFI emulator and some other files from a USB stick
4. Install my Sound Card driver
5. Download 10.5.1 updates like normal
I won't go into much detail here; if you want to read up on the full install process click here. As long as you've chosen compatible hardware and have done your prep work with the software ahead of time, the installation is very easy. It takes about 1.5 hours, mostly due to the fact that it takes like 20 minutes to boot up the patched discs. I should note that I do not condone or encourage illegally downloading Leopard...I used a full retail Leopard DVD for my installation. The additional benefit is that I know my Leopard installation is clean of any spyware-type stuff that might come from Internet downloads.
The installation is fairly painless, although a bit tedious, following the guide linked above. There are newer and "better" guides and software available out there, but EFI 5.2 is very stable and works great. If you need GTP/GUID partitioning, then you will want to go with a newer version such as EFI 8. You need a few discs and a thumb drive to get everything up and running, as well as a Mac running Tiger to build the patched Leopard DVD.
So how does it run? In a nutshell, ridiculously awesome. On Xbench your typical Mac Pro scores about 155; my Hack Pro scored 174. Just for kicks, I overclocked it to 3.0ghz and got an Xbench score of 200 (3ghz, by the way, is a $1,000 option from Apple, so we're up to $4,800 in savings haha). I've had it up for about a week and half and it has proved far more stable than any of my windows machines. I can run two XP VMs in Fusion with dual-cores and 2 gigs of ram each without any slowdown in OS X. Most apps open in 1 bounce, the larger ones in 2. Time Machine works great, Core Image and Quartz Extreme are fantastic, and overall it's an awesome experience. I won't need another computer for like 10 years! :laugh:
Final Notes:
With Hackintosh, you can finally fill in the gap in Apple's product line - the Mac Pro Lite. In fact, you can build a Quad-Core machine with 4 gigs of ram for $700 plus the cost of whatever hard drives you want ($170 BA2 board @ ZZF, $280 Q6600 @ Newegg, Rosewill case/psu $27 @ Newegg, 7300GT $60 @ Tiger Direct, $38 DVD burner @ Newegg, 2x2GB RAM $100 @ Newegg, + shipping ~ $700). That puts it in Mac Mini territory!
I have tested a 7900GT successfully and I'm currently running a 320mb XFX 8800 GTS I got used off this forum. All the cards (7300GT, 7900GT, 8800GTS) have worked great. I can also dual-boot into Vista to play games.
A note on PC EFI: PC EFI emulates EFI (like a newer BIOS, used on Macs) and allows you to run a "vanilla" unmodified kernel. Your computer shows up as a Mac Pro and allows you to download updates like normal from Apple Updates. 10.5.1 works, but I can't say what the future holds other than I'm sure the hackers will be on it if Apple breaks anything. Anyway, aside from hardware, this Hackintosh *is* a Mac Pro for all intents and purposes - even Apple thinks it is! Very clever! There has been talk of Apple doing a general release of OS X for the x86 market, but honestly I don't think that has a big chance of happening - OS X is stable because Apple produces all of their own hardware, so they don't have to support everything under the sun which can lead to unstability. There is also a rumor that Apple is releasing a more powerful Mac Mini come January/February, or possible a mid-range "Cube 2", so I am anxious to see that as well.
I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have.
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