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Hi everyone, I have been using 17" Mid-2010 i7 3.66 GHz MacBook Pro for over 8 years. I wanted to buy a new MacBook Pro or a desktop Mac since forever but Apple's new computers got more annoying and expensive year by year. I forced myself to get persuaded and buy a new Mac for a very long time but postponed it each time due to my hopes on Apple releasing a reasonable Mac computer with its features and price. No chance, Apple kept disappointing me. However, I never wanted to give up on MacOS X although some features of Win10 was also tempting. So, what could be the ultimate solution? Building a dual-boot Hackintosh! A powerful one... Last month I got my nerves up to build my first Hackintosh. Indeed, it was going to be my first PC build from scratch. In theory, I knew how to build a desktop PC from scratch but had never practiced it and I had no idea how to do the Hackintosh installation. I started researching about the compatible parts on forums. I checked the golden and successful builds to take references. Then I came up with my list and double checked the compatibilities on PCPartPicker. Also posted a thread in a forum to get the list approved by the experienced members of the forum. I purchased the following components;MOBO: ASUS ROG MAXIMUS XI HERO (non wi-fi) CPU: Intel i9-9900k Processor CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X72 Liquid CPU Cooler RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V Black Series 64GB (4x 16GB) DDR4 2800Mhz GPU: Sapphire NITRO+ AMD Radeon RX VEGA 64 8GB Video Card System Drive: 2x Samsung 970 EVO 1TB M.2-2280 SSDs (Separate M.2s for MacOS/Win) Storage: 2x Seagate Barracuda 3 TB 3.5" 7200RPM HDD (Separate Hard Drives for MacOS/Win) Case: NZXT H700i ATX Mid Tower Case Power Supply: EVGA 850 GQ - 850W 4K Monitor: BenQ PD3200U Wifi-bluetooth PCI-E card: BCM943602CS (https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B00MBP25UK/?tag=tonymacx8603-21) After I built the PC I first installed the Win10 to test the parts. When installing windows I removed the M.2 Drive (to be MacOSX system drive) and HDD (to be MacOSX storage drive). After testing everything in Win10, I removed the M.2 drive and HDD of Win10 and put the empty M.2 and HDD for Hackintosh Installation. After I did a lot of research I ended up doing a Vanilla installation. I followed the great YouTube video of Teresa (Morgonaut) during my installation. I think her videos are great, I will soon join her Patreon to make a donation. (Teresa, if you are seeing this post; thanks a million!) The first obstacle I encountered was the “freeze issue” at “2 min remaining” while installation of the Mac OS X Mojave. Then I overcame it by adding OsxAptioFixDrv-64.efi driver to the CLOVER/drivers64UEFI folder. Then the installation was complete and pretty much everything looked like working! I was expecting more obstacles until I saw an almost fully working Hackintosh. https://i.redd.it/mr7s1yvph0b21.png https://i.redd.it/7348o5bsh0b21.png After the installation, the first problem was the sleep function. It did not work properly. When I tried to put the machine to sleep it took too much time for fans and drives to turn off and when I tried to wake the system, the screen was only black. I changed the darkwake to 1, disabled the “Power Nap”, “Wake for network access” and disabled the CPU Graphics Multi-Monitor in BIOS settings. Now the sleep function works properly. It goes to sleep faster and wakes up without any issues. All back and front USB ports work well. There are no random ejects or anything like that. Sound worked without any additional tweaking than using Lilu and AppleALC. However after I put the Windows drives back, run the Windows and return back to MacOS, the sound was gone. I solved this issue by removing the Realtek Audio driver in Windows and using the “High Definition Audio” drivers instead. I tried both iMac18.3 and iMacPro1,1 models for SMBIOS. I was not able to observe any performance difference and Geekbench results are pretty similar to each other. In which of these SMBIOS setting would you recommend to stay? Sapphire Nitro+ RX Vega 64 had no issues with fan speed. However, I used the VG Tab and tweaked the fan speed settings as I like. I’m not sure if I should go with the native macOS drivers without using the VG Tab settings. What do you guys think? The biggest issue in this Hackintosh build is the COIL WHINE NOISE of the Sapphire Nito+ RX Vega 64. When I put stress on the GPU I get some coil whine noise (not terrible) on higher clock rates. However, the same stress test in Windows does not make the coil whine noise even on higher clock rates. I was not able to find a proper solution to this. The noise stops if I lower the clock rate of P6 and P7 to 1350 Mhz via VG Tab but doing this (under-clocking) lowers the performance score of the GPU. So I decided to keep the clock rates at their standard settings. Does anyone know a solution to this problem? If there is no, does this coil whine thing would wear the GPU? Regarding the NZXT h700i case, I had to disconnect the fans from the “smart hub” and attach them directly to the motherboard because the company does not offer a CAM software for Mac OS. I optimized the fans in BIOS and they work fine. There are also two cosmetic issues that don’t have to be solved but I would be happy if I can. The first cosmetic issue is the Processor name on About My Mac screen. It is shown as “Unknown”. I tried all the tricks that I could find online but nothing worked. The second cosmetic issue is the screen resolution of the Clover Boot Loader. It is really low so it does not look good on a 4K monitor. Again, I tried all the possible solutions I found online but nothing worked. So pretty much everything works perfectly including;
I haven’t tested the USB C port as I don’t have any accessory to test with. I tested the Adobe CC software (Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects) and challenged the system with extremely demanding tasks on high-resolution images and 4K video. No crashes or freezes. Beast worked great! Geekbench CPU score is much better in MacOS compared to Windows. The GPU result (compute) is slightly better in Windows but looks quite similar. GEEKBENCH TESTS: Geekbench CPU test (MacOS X Mojave) Geekbench CPU test (Windows 10) Geenbench OpenCL (GPU) test (MacOS X Mojave) Geekbench OpenCL (GPU) test (Windows 10) CINEBENCH TEST: https://i.redd.it/r7ugigfii0b21.png DRIVER AND KEXT FILES IN MY CLOVER FOLDER: https://i.redd.it/qzlcrgdoi0b21.png https://i.redd.it/qxp1avoni0b21.png After all, I'm in love with the result even though I haven't tweaked (over-clocked) the CPU and GPU yet. From now, I am looking forward to getting some recommendations from the experienced members to improve the performance of this Hackintosh build. It would be great if you guys let me know if I can do anything extra to make it even better. Thank you! [link] [comments] |
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