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Comment by aroch | Hacker News Reader

I run several hackintoshes + real Macs as my primary work machines and personal use. Getting Facetime/iMessages to work is relatively straight forward and easy if you'd like them (even easier if you have a real Mac too).

Machines:

Dual Xeon | 64GB RAM | GTX960 | 4x4TB HDD, 3x5000GB SSD

(My oldest) Core i5 | 24GB RAM | GTX 680 | 3x4TB HDD, 150/250/500 SSDs

Intel Nuc i3

I'm happy to answer any questions!

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Since you've built a few, you likely have a good idea of what hardware is compatible.

Most guides I've seen are very incomplete or don't list specific models of everything -- or if they do, it's only for a specific point release.

At a glance do you think this hardware would be good for now and future versions of El Cap + Sierra when it eventually ships?

I built this back in 2014:

MOBO: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157...

CPU: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JIJUBAS

RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231...

GPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487...

SSD: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KFAGCWK

HDD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236...

PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817207...

Microphone: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16836431...

(Mic and overall audio performance is very important to me due to recording courses, podcasts, etc.)

Should be fine, you may need to update the bios on your mobo, but other than that looks good

Thanks for the reply. How confident would you be in it?

For example, if this is your primary work station for completing somewhat time sensitive things (books, courses, weekly podcasts, etc.) would you feel comfy?

What type of worst case scenarios are we looking at if an update fails?

For a hackintosh, there's no such thing as comfy, only minimally scary. The worst case scenario is that your system becomes unbootable and/or data loss. Being able to live with these possibilities is a requirement for hackintosh ownership.

I'm not saying you shouldn't do it, just that there is no guaranteed safe path and you'll always be at risk for an update borking your system. The best you can do is make maximally informed decisions and prepare for the worst. And ideally have your hackintosh be a secondary machine that can die at any moment without screwing up your life.

It's a great hobby project but (like others have said here) it's something you do because it's a fun and interesting ongoing challenge. There's really no context for anyone in which building a hackintosh is a rational choice made for purely pragmatic reasons. FWIW, I wouldn't consider saving money a pragmatic reason- the ongoing time and risk involved will always exceed whatever money has been saved, unless your time has little value and you have nothing to lose (which admittedly is the case for some hobbyists or students, but good luck getting anyone to admit that :).

Unbootable without being able to revert it without formatting?

I put together the above for around $750 over 2 years ago. A somewhat equiv. MBP is like $2,750 (and would still be worse in nearly every aspect spec for spec).

I value my time and sanity but some of these stories make it seem like if you have a good combo of hardware it's an hour or 2 per year just to handle some updates and a bit of chaos. I think I'm willing to trade that to save nearly $3,000 since for me it would be buying a MBP vs hackintoshing my current machine.

The problem and cause of hesitation is due to it being my only machine capable of doing my primary work.

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