[OpenCore] 1st Hackintosh build completed successfully, 99% working for less than $300!

After a few weeks of gathering hardware that was:

  • Inexpensive
  • Compatible
  • And better than my wife's MacBook Pro (Minus the CPU, her's is a generation newer Broadwell, but still mobile vs. desktop)

I spent the last few days getting the "HackinMacAttack" running and brought to life (Yes that's what I'm calling it).

My wife refuses to use Windows if she can help it, and I wanted to sink my teeth into a Hackintosh for a long time (tried and failed with an old Optiplex 790 I had that installed but was quite... jerry-rigged thanks to a certain website's guide and proprietary hardware).

So I spent some time during my furlough keeping my eyes open for compatible hardware (and reusing some hardware I had lying around) and decided to give it a go. I primarily used the Dortania OpenCore guide, which was great, but had to spend sometime educating myself a little further when it came to USB mapping and Kext/Plist creation. All in all not terribly difficult, but not without some trials.

The hardware I used -

CPU: Intel i5-4670K Quad-Core

Mobo: MSI Z97S SLI Krait ATX

RAM: 8GB 2X4GB (Soon to be upgraded) Ballistic Sport DDR3-1600 9-9-9-24

GPU: Sapphire Nitro+ RX470 4GB

Ethernet: Realtek 8111 via MoBo

Wifi/Bluetooth: Fenvi T919

Keyboard/Mouse: Cheap "Macally" Keyboard from Amazon, Magic Mouse 2, Wired Logitech Mouse for Troubleshooting

PSU: Seasonic X-Series 650W Gold (Yes I know it's old... Recycling isn't always pretty) that I had to replace the fan in

Storage: 256GB Silicon Power SATA SSD only for the time being, getting a free HDD from a friend in a few days

Case: Rosewill Challenger ATX Mini-Tower

WORKING

  • Apple Services (iMessage, Handoff, iCloud, etc.)
  • WiFi/Bluetooth worked OOB
  • Graphics Acceleration
  • All USB ports (after mapping) (Everything counted as 15 with the external ports and the internal port used by bluetooth)
  • Sound over HDMI (Not sure if I got lucky or what but seemed to work OOB)

Not Working

  • Sleep is weird - it was working, though would only wake via the power button. Now it will wake but will freeze thereafter. I feel like it worked better prior to messing with CPU Power Management or the USB Mapping
  • Volume Control via the OS (Might be because I'm going through HDMI)
  • Have not tested onboard audio ports, but my wireless headset and monitor speakers work flawlessly so I'm not too concerned about that for my use case.

ISSUES

So this is the only issue that's annoying, though easy to fix. Randomly something happens between the OC UEFI and the BIOS, and the BIOS forgets how to see UEFI partitions. It didn't happen with Windows, and seems to be fine with normal use of macOS. However during testing, these things would cause the computer to stop seeing UEFI (Windows or macOS):

  • Hard Resetting/ShutDowns almost 100% results in the issue
  • Inserting a USB key when in BIOS
  • Clearing the NVRAM via OC
  • Booting into the OS from the USB key (like OC crashed due to a setting being messed up and having to restore using the USB key)
  • Most recently it failed after changing a BIOS setting, but that was after a failed sleep cycle where I had to hard reset so I'm not sure that's the issue
  • Other random times that I haven't pinned down

It seems during normal booting and use, it's been "Set and Forget". Start getting a little frisky with messing around and it pops up. The only way to reset the system is a full CMOS clear by pulling the battery. Certainly not difficult, but annoying and at some point I'll try to get to the bottom of it.

Other than that - I'm posting this from the Hack, while listening to YouTube in the background, and I've put some work into it over the weekend.

The tinkering won't end I'm sure...

submitted by /u/SHBazTBone
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