Hacker News Reader

Comment by strombourg | Hacker News Reader

Had you built a hackintosh before? Any major negative experiences with compatibility / updates?

Been running hackintoshes since 2007 or so. Mostly smooth sailing. Off the top of my head:

- It's all about making it easy for yourself. In short, motherboard and GPU choice change the experience from 'almost effortless' to 'never gonna work'. Get a $20 USB external soundcard to get rid of any audio configuration quagmires. Get the most compatible, widely used motherboard and Nvidia GPU, so you can get support on Tonymac should you need it. Stick to wired Ethernet to avoid meddling with bluetooth and wi-fi if you can. Everything else (PSU, CPU, RAM, hard drives and case) isn't an issue.

- The tradeoff is time invested into initially understanding how it all fits vs. money saved and increased knowledge of how MacOS ticks (a good thing regardless, if you're a power user). How much time depends on how much of a PC tinkerer you are already. If you already built PCs and tried getting Linux distros going it's gonna be second nature.

- You'll still need to check out Tonymac when a point update comes out for tips and warnings. The easiest solution is to install the fully up to date next-to-last MacOS version (install El Capitan 10.11.6 now that we are in the Sierra cycle, for example) and keep it going until you're forced to upgrade. Staying a generation behind, both in hardware and software, is the safest strategy. Hackintosh and being on the bleeding edge don't really mix.

OTOH, being on the bleeding edge of MacOS and being productive never really mixed :)

In fairness I've been running Sierra just fine on my Hackintosh, though I did wait until 10.12.1. If I recall correctly the first version had issues with the Nvidia Web Drivers (some strange bugs) but they've long since been resolved.

I would agree with the overall sentiment though and add that even on a legitimate Mac it's usually a good idea to hold back a bit on updating. I work with audio a lot and it's common for audio units (and Pro Tools if you use that) to break initially.

Audio user here too. I just updated to 10.12.4 yesterday on a test install and it went without a hitch, but only because I checked Tonymac and updated Clover beforehand, which I wouldn't have done otherwise. And I'm on a old GTX 650 Ti that doesn't need the Web Drivers. Meanwhile my main 10.9.5 work install keeps gloriously chugging along.

Yes I had a previous hackintosh running for a few years in parallel with the Mac Pro. It's actually quite simple but it requires a bit more patience, especially during updates. It's mostly a case these days of doing the update, rebooting in 'safe' mode to install the binary third party nvidia driver, then reboot again and voila.

Also, some of the original setup requires a bit of tinkering with drivers to start with (especially if you use 'recent' hardware) but it's really not more complicated than installing linux these days (and then fiddle a bit with the settings).

It was the updates, and the time they took, and all the details to remember that eventually led me off of running a Hackintosh after 1.5 years. That and Windows 10 is more than good enough for me, especially as a desktop.

Fellow hackintosh builder here. It's totally doable. If you're able to run Linux and able to understand concepts like kernel modules, you'll be perfectly fine.

To get solid bluetooth support I bought a card from http://www.osxwifi.com/ , which makes peripherals like the magic trackpad work smoothly.

For me it was just too much work to keep it up to date. But then I don't have the big power requirements, but really need/want a separate monitor. These days I probably could get away with a Mini.

I've built one before. Updates involved losing sound. To get it back run an installer and restart.

Odd kernel panics used to happen once every 3 months. Black text would scroll down the screen and you have to hard reset the system.

I would keep a legit backup around but the power/price ratio cannot be beat. I'm looking at building another soon.

I generally recommend that people building hackintoshes get an external USB / Firewire / Thunderbolt soundcard. That way you're pretty much guaranteed to get official macOS drivers that'll work without issues.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com