The Hackintosh Thread

[h9826790]

Apple used all aluminum heatsinks on the Mac Pros 1,1-5,1 so don't use the liquid metal on them!!!

Yeah, I needed 1.4v to get my i7-8700K to 5.1GHz. I felt that was too much and I backed it down to 5GHz and have been running it at that speed for close to 10 months now. Rock solid.

I mean the contact point, not the heatsink main body. That looks like copper to me.

 

[pastrychef]

I mean the contact point, not the heatsink main body. That looks like copper to me.
View attachment 796941

Oh wow. My memory failed me again... Yeah. it should definitely help temps.

 

[h9826790]

You can also use the liquid metal on your video card if the heatsink base is copper or nickel plated copper. I did it to my Vega 56 and saw very nice improvements.

May I know did you give these components any protection when you apply liquid metal to the GPU?

They looks very close to the chip. Even I have confidence I won't apply any liquid metal directly onto those electronic components. I am thinking may be I should apply some colourless nail polish to protect them.

 

[pastrychef]

May I know did you give these components any protection when you apply liquid metal to the GPU?
View attachment 798195
They looks very close to the chip. Even I have confidence I won't apply any liquid metal directly onto those electronic components. I am thinking may be I should apply some colourless nail polish to protect them.

Yes. I applied some clear nail polish on the components around the GPU die and HBM2. That should prevent any damage in the event that liquid metal leaks.

After doing this, I used undervolting and overclocking on my Vega 56 to bring performance to near or better than stock Vega 64 levels while still keeping temps at or below 80C. Keeping the temps at or below 80C is important because it prevents the Vega from throttling. I did this with a reference style cooler/heatsink.

 

[h9826790]

Yes. I applied some clear nail polish on the components around the GPU die and HBM2. That should prevent any damage in the event that liquid metal leaks.

After doing this, I used undervolting and overclocking on my Vega 56 to bring performance to near or better than stock Vega 64 levels while still keeping temps at or below 80C. Keeping the temps at or below 80C is important because it prevents the Vega from throttling. I did this with a reference style cooler/heatsink.

Thanks!

So far, both my RX580 and 1080Ti are both undervolted, and never need to work above 75C.

This liquid metal mod is quite unnecessary for me at this moment. But I may still perform the mod. Then OC the card and see how far I can push them.

Or further reduce fan noise is also a good idea.

 

[h9826790]

Thanks!

So far, both my RX580 and 1080Ti are both undervolted, and never need to work above 75C.

This liquid metal mod is quite unnecessary for me at this moment. But I may still perform the mod. Then OC the card and see how far I can push them.

Or further reduce fan noise is also a good idea.

Just take my time to apply liquid metal to RX580 and W3690. Success!

And now, with undervolt, even running Furmark, my RX580 won't go over 75C, and don't even need full fan. And I need 10min Furmark to make it achieve 75C temperature. The cooling is definitely more effective than before.

On the cMP, the effect is again very noticeable. The CPU now can hardly go over 76C with roughly idle fan (system ambient 33C). With AS5, it usually stabilised at 78C with fans spin up to around 1350RPM (my own fan profile). And that figure was with 30C system ambient.

Even I don't really need it, but quite happy now. Let the liquid metal do its job is better than let it sitting in my tool box.

The next one will be my Hackintosh's 1080Ti, but I really need some time to study how to open the PNY XLR8 1080Ti properly. It doesn't like normal card. e.g. It seems the backplate cannot be removed. An interesting card.


------------------------------------------

Update 1: 1080Ti also done. Crazy effective now. Can run Superposition @2000MHz and the GPU can just touch 71C. Again, that's 15C cooler straight away.

Anyway, learnt something. Those colourless nail polish works.

When I apply liquid metal. I usually apply it to the surface, then turn it upside down, and use the
syringe to suck out all excess liquid metal (the liquid metal will looks like stalactite if too much. So easy to determine).

However, this time, due to the fan connector is so tight. I don't want to pull it too hard just in case break it. So, the cooler was attached to the card all the way when I mod it. Therefore, it's not that easy to turn the card upside down. So, I skip that part, and just apply liquid metal like normal thermal paste application. Apply it, looks good, then put the heatsink back on.

But this time I am over confidence. The PNY cooler is really well manufactured. The gap between GPU and heatsink is really tiny. Even the liquid metal looks thin enough to me. Actually, still has little bit leak at the corner position (when I put the heatsink back on).

Therefore, some of liquid metal "touched" those resistors that right next to the GPU die.

I didn't know about it. Just re-assembly the Hackintosh and fire it up......no image. Change the output to use iGPU via motherboard HDMI, the Hackintosh still working, but the computer can't see the 1080Ti. Oh~ I may damaged it.

So, open it up again, and I see the leakage now. Then I use forceps and some tissue to remove the leakage, and try to put the heatsink back on a few times. Make sure nothing will spilt out and able to touch those resistor again.

Once finish, re-assembly the card (and the Hackintosh). The 1080Ti back to alive!

So, those nail polish works, nothing really breaks. And I am a happy Hackintosh user again

 

[StellarVixen]

This is in the consideration these days:

Motherboard: Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming WIFI

CPU: Intel i7-8700K

RAM: 32GB DDR4 3000 MHz

GPU: (if Nvidia releases the damn drivers) RTX 2080

SSD: 1TB Samsung NVMe (probably not Pro, but Evo).

Others, like case and PSU, I'll see...

 

[Minxy]

I'm seriously considering a Hackintosh. Looking at parts and everything. If anybody can help I have a couple of questions:

How important is it to have Thunderbolt 3 or USB 3.1 Gen 2? Are these necessary for using a 5K monitor or multiple displays? (I might get an Ultrawide monitor, 4K, or least likely 5K monitor).

I understand that a lot of time will be require to put it together, but I'm concerned that once the system is made I will regularly have to spend hours on it to keep it working. Is the process of updating system software only necessary when updating Mac OS or when updating 3rd party software?

 

[pastrychef]

I'm seriously considering a Hackintosh. Looking at parts and everything. If anybody can help I have a couple of questions:

How important is it to have Thunderbolt 3 or USB 3.1 Gen 2? Are these necessary for using a 5K monitor or multiple displays? (I might get an Ultrawide monitor, 4K, or least likely 5K monitor).

I understand that a lot of time will be require to put it together, but I'm concerned that once the system is made I will regularly have to spend hours on it to keep it working. Is the process of updating system software only necessary when updating Mac OS or when updating 3rd party software?

I've never done a build with Thunderbolt and I don't have a 5K monitor to test. I only know what I've read from others' experiences. For 5K, you can use two DisplayPort cables and it will work.

Lots of users have multi monitor setups. That should not be a problem.

You can just do updates to the hackintosh aspect of your system when there's a new macOS update.

 

[Luap]

Behold! The Hackintosh Nano.

So I just got one of these. It is a LattePanda Alpha. Im a n00b to hackintoshing, but I had this done in an evening and it works surprisingly well! It has a dual core M3 CPU and 8gb of ram onboard. I believe it is largely the same chipset as a 2016 Macbook. So it isn't a high end Hackintosh by any means, but it is very useable indeed.
I put Mojave 10.14.1 on it, and it Geekbenches around 6000 or so (Stock. More to be had with tweaks, apparently)

So far everything works, Except:
1, Onboard wifi. Easily fixed with a cheap USB wifi dongle.
2, Onboard sound is slightly iffy, in that you can have it work via HDMI, or the 3.5mm output, but not both. I usually use USB audio devices anyway, so this isn't an issue for me.
3, Onboard SD card slot.
4, Onboard 64gb eMMC storage (Only on the 864 model). OS X won't recognise this at all. However, it is still useful for a Windows install (Mine came with Win 10 already installed there).

Thanks to Novaspirit Tech on Youtube for the guide

 

[pastrychef]

I upgraded my hackintosh today from an i7-8700K to an i9-9900K. Still tweaking my overclock but everything is looking pretty rosy so far. Details of my delidding job and opinions can be found here and here.

 

[pastrychef]

Last week, I picked up a little HP T730 Thin Client. I didn't really buy it for the purpose of hackintoshing but since I had it on hand, I wanted to see what hackintoshing an AMD APU based system was like...

I ended up following a guide on YouTube and was up and running within about an hour and a half. Basically, it's just installing macOS and then running a script to replace the kernel and prelinkedkernel with patched ones. Not very difficult at all.

How does it run? Well, keep in mind that this is a Thin Client and the AMD APU wasn't meant to break any SETI@home records and at the $200 that I paid, I didn't expect it to be (my new i9-9900K alone cost 2.5x more). That being said, I would say performance to be somewhere between an i3-5005u and an i5-5200u. One of the coolest things about this little box is that it has a PCI-e slot. I ended up plugging in an old Nvidia GT 630 that I had laying around because the built-in IGPU had no driver support in macOS.

All the basic stuff has been working fine; audio, ethernet, USB, etc. Currently sleep isn't working but I haven't looked in to a fix. With such low TDP/power consumption, it's not a big deal if I leave it on. I haven't encountered anything else that doesn't work yet. Although, I haven't really tried too many things.

It's only about 9"x9"x2" so it's pretty tiny and it's great for some browsing, YouTube viewing, etc. The low TDP is very nice too. For hackintoshing, Intel based systems are still a much better choice but running on AMD is possible...

 

[iToph]

Hey Guys,

I just wanted to share my first hackintosh experience with you.

What is it?

- Corsair one pro ti (7700k, 16gb ddr4, 1080ti, 480gb m2, 2tb hdd)
- macOS high Sierra
- Dual Monitor via DP & HDMI

What works?
- iMessage (out of the box)
- AppStore (out of the box)
- sleep/wake
- nearly everything else

What does not work?
- WiFi
- Bluetooth (it says working, but it isn’t, and i don’t know where to get a kext)
- LAN is super slow, shows about 5 MBit while my MacBook Pro gets 400k (don’t know how to fix)

I’m extremely satisfied with this setup. It works just like you’d expect a Mac to work - in a small and good looking form factor.

 

[pastrychef]

Hey Guys,

I just wanted to share my first hackintosh experience with you.

View attachment 809112

What is it?

- Corsair one pro ti (7700k, 16gb ddr4, 1080ti, 480gb m2, 2tb hdd)
- macOS high Sierra
- Dual Monitor via DP & HDMI

What works?
- iMessage (out of the box)
- AppStore (out of the box)
- sleep/wake
- nearly everything else

What does not work?
- WiFi
- Bluetooth (it says working, but it isn’t, and i don’t know where to get a kext)
- LAN is super slow, shows about 5 MBit while my MacBook Pro gets 400k (don’t know how to fix)

I’m extremely satisfied with this setup. It works just like you’d expect a Mac to work - in a small and good looking form factor.

You will likely need to swap out the Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card for a compatible one for Wi-Fi to work.
What kind of NIC does your computer have? Are you using the correct driver for it?

 

[iToph]

Hey, the only information I can give you:



Im more then a noob in terms of hackintosh lol

 

[pastrychef]

Hey, the only information I can give you:

View attachment 809180 View attachment 809181 View attachment 809182

Im more then a noob in terms of hackintosh lol

It looks like you have the right driver for your ethernet. Not sure why you are getting slow speeds.

Your Bluetooth needs some work... Please see here: https://github.com/RehabMan/OS-X-BrcmPatchRAM

 

[iToph]

It looks like you have the right driver for your ethernet. Not sure why you are getting slow speeds.

Your Bluetooth needs some work... Please see here: https://github.com/RehabMan/OS-X-BrcmPatchRAM

Okay. I tried and I tried and I tried, but I just can't get it to work. So I thought a bluetooth dongle (CSR) might solve the problem - but it didn't. I think the main problem is, that MacOS recognizes the internal bluetooth as working and prevents bluetooth from the dongle.

I tried it with bootflags to disable the internal bluetooth -> not working

any ideas?

 

[pastrychef]

Okay. I tried and I tried and I tried, but I just can't get it to work. So I thought a bluetooth dongle (CSR) might solve the problem - but it didn't. I think the main problem is, that MacOS recognizes the internal bluetooth as working and prevents bluetooth from the dongle.

I tried it with bootflags to disable the internal bluetooth -> not working

any ideas?

I need more info. What kind of Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card are you using? Which kexts are you using? Have you made an SSDT for USB?

 

[iToph]

okay, don't ask me why, but my internal bluetooth started working today. I installed parallels for app-testing purposes and decided to play a bit with the bluetooth dongle. So I tried to connect the internal BT and the dongle to windows, both worked. When my internal bluetooth was connected to windows, the dongle worked on MacOS. But after a complete restart of my hackintosh things got very strange: macOS started to recognize my internal bluetooth - and now it seems wo work like a charm without any help of the dongle.

lol

 

[hajime]

Hi, if I want to install Mac OS in a PC as a virtual machine, should I do it under Windows 10 or Linux? Which implementation of VM software is more efficient, reliable and have better performance?

 

[kazmac]

Dave Lee recently built a slightly compromised Hackintosh....

 

[GoldfishRT]

Dave Lee recently built a slightly compromised Hackintosh....

It’s still one of the cooler builds I’ve seen.

But that case is so not worth it lol. It’s gorgeous but the point is to save money Dave lol.

 

[kazmac]

It’s still one of the cooler builds I’ve seen.

But that case is so not worth it lol. It’s gorgeous but the point is to save money Dave lol.

Going this route is far beyond me, but I also like that case. Of course, he’s saving for the modular Mac Pro.

 

[Haswell]

It’s still one of the cooler builds I’ve seen.

But that case is so not worth it lol. It’s gorgeous but the point is to save money Dave lol.

Agreed!. ~400 for a case is outrageous! The point of a hackintosh is to save money!

 

[pastrychef]

It’s still one of the cooler builds I’ve seen.

But that case is so not worth it lol. It’s gorgeous but the point is to save money Dave lol.

Agreed!. ~400 for a case is outrageous! The point of a hackintosh is to save money!

When I built my hackintosh, it was more about getting a machine with features and performance that I wanted than about saving money.

I could have easily gotten a top of the line iMac for the amount of money I spent on my build.

150 Z370-G (Wi-Fi AC) motherboard
515 i9-9900K
750 64GB DDR4 3400 RAM
350 Vega 56
100 NH-D15S heatsink
100 Noctua fans
100 case
100 SeaSonic 850W Gold power supply
100 10GBase-T NIC
40 BRCM94360CS2 with M.2 adaptor and pigtail antennas
100 one three bay 3.5" drive hot swap cage and one two bay 2.5" drive hot swap cage.
------
$2405

I actually paid well over $350 for the Vega 56 because I bought at the height of the crypto mining crazy (couldn't deal with the buggy Nvidia drivers anymore), but that wasn't fair so I just put $350. The rest are very close estimates based on my memory.