[Success Budget Build] 10.13.6 ASUS Strix B250G, i7-7700, GT 1030

Hey y'all,

My first successful Hackintosh build. This is an upgrade from my 8 year old Macbook Pro, 15" Late-2011. After being blocked from upgrading to Mojave, it was time to upgrade -- but upgrade within my budget and with an ability to expand my system.

Specs:

• ASUS Strix B250-G ($69 on sale)
• i7-7700 ($320)
• Gigabyte Nvidia GT 1030 Low Profile ($89)
• Corsair Vengeance RGB 8x2 ($125)
• Samsung 650 EVO Pro 256 gig ($87)
  
• EVGA 500w ($39)
• Cooler Master MasterLiquid Lite 120 ($39)
• Cooler Master Q300P mATX case ($60 on sale) Total: $828

Now, these specs weren't my intended build. I was building two machines at the same time and these parts were intended for the Windows build for a relative but a order mishap happened and I ended up building their Windows machine with the parts intended for me, which was supposed to be i7-8700 ASUS Prime Z370-A, which is an ATX board while the ASUS Strix B250-G is an mATX.

Needless to say, my liquid cooler is a little too big for the case, but whatever.

Building Process:

This is a vanilla build, as I did not trust TonyMac at all. I used Morgonaut's YT video and this sub's Vanilla Guide as a general guide on how to do the installation, but had to do some tweakings of my own since I was not installing Mojave as I could not get the Mojave installer onto my old Mac. I tried to download High Sierra, but it was only a 25mb version which I did not want to be forced to "install" on the USB and do something I don't want to happen to my MBP. I already had the Sierra installation in my Applications folder and used that to build this Hackintosh.

Kexts:

• AppleALC 1.3.4
• IntelMausiEthernet
• USBInjectAll
• BrcmFirmwareData
• BrcmPatchRAM2
• FakeSMC
• FakeSMC Sensors
• Lilu
• WhateverGreen

Boot:

• Clover_v2.4k_r4844
• Clover Configurator v5.3.0.0

When doing the initial install, I had to set the SMBIOS to iMac14,2 and Fake the CPU to Skylake in order for Sierra to install successfully onto the device. Setting the SMBIOS to my closest settings (iMac18,3) would not work as there was an error that the MacOS could not be installed on that version of Mac.

After installing Sierra, I proceeded to upgrade to High Sierra via the App Store. I figured that since the kexts are all up to date, there would be no issues. Luckily, there were none. I changed the SMBIOS to iMac18.3.

I installed the Nvidia web drivers that matched my version of 10.13.6 -- this is important, as any other web driver nearly bricked my Hackintosh and required many safe mode boots to wipe the bad drivers out. Also, WhateverGreen has the Nvidia kexts included so installing any extra Nvidia kexts would completely brick the installation. Booting via USB and removing the bad kext resolved that issue as well.

What Works

So far, everything that I use on a daily basis has worked without issue. Ethernet, USBs, Nvidia, Restart, Shutdown, iCloud all work. I do not use iMessenger so I am not concerned if it works or not, especially considering my job uses Slack and Google Hangouts anyway.

I have not tried sleep/idle, though I will test that and update this post with the results. I do not have Bluetooth installed, and I haven't tested the audio yet but if anything happens I'm sure those are quick fixes.

Other than that, I'm pretty happy with the build. I plan on upgrading the PSU, bumping the ram to 32gigs, and replacing the graphics card once my budget increases -- especially since I want to use Mojave -- but for now I'm happy with this budget build.