I build a Comet Lake Hackintosh and I can recommend it

[Schmages]

Four months ago it started, I got frustrated, day by day with my new toaster, my Macbook Pro 16". I bought the Pro because of work, to have a computer on the go which is powerful, which I can take with me to meetings and on business travel. However, now I am working from home, doing video calls, running Microsoft Teams (30% system load all the time), running VMs, pushing two 27" screens …
The Macbook was running hot, the fans working on full blast, that most of the time, and my biggest frustration is with it that Thunderbolt is not working right.
I got a Caldigit dock, the one everyone recommends, plugged in my two Displayport screens and all the other stuff you need when working from home, too. Long story short, a kernel panic a day. This all with a machine which cost me over 3400€. I hate Thunderbolt.

So, I figured, wrong use case for this machine, the new iMac generation is what I need. Fast processors and good graphics options. I checked the specs and the the one to get is over 4000€. Thank you Apple for the SSD spec options. I am not willing to invest 8000€ in the course of one year into new Mac hardware which is obsolete in two years because of Apple Silicone.

OK what to do? Let’s have fun and build a Hackintosh I thought. I was following the scene already since some time ago. The new hot stuff is OpenCore, together with a great video tutorial on Youtube it was rather easy to build my own machine specced to my personal needs:

• Intel i7 10700K Processor
• Gigabyte Z490 Gaming X Motherboard
• Crucial Ballistix 32GB of Ram
• Sapphire Pulse 5700 XT
• Sabrent Rocket 1TB NVME SSD

Here the link to the pcpartpicker website with my build.

Some careful spectator will notice that there is no Thunderbolt. Yes. No Thunderbolt. When I plug in Displayport, the screen talks Displayport with my HackMac, if I plug in an Ethernet cable, the net is talking directly with my Intel Ethernet chip on the motherboard, if I plug in USB, I have real USB chips on the board talking to my devices. I have even an USB 2.0 port, and my keyboard is directly connected to it.

The machine is stable, quiet, and even wake up works better than on my Macbook. I like it very much. I can recommend it.

[JohnAtl]

Can you make your list on pcpartpicker public?

I’m also curious what it says when you look at About this Mac.

[vco1]

I recognize your frustrations with Apple hardware. Quality is not what it used to be. And extremely expensive for what you get.

The fact that my 2017 MBP starts blowing air like crazy when I do any kind of video conferencing is absurd.

[Schmages]

I updated the link to pcpartpicker - should work now.

[Schmages]

[JohnAtl]

That’s impressive!

…

[rkaplan]

That is quite impressive and compares very well against a new Mac Pro. Granted the Mac Pro has additional capabilities as far as internal expansion and a multi-monitor/GPU configuration. But considering the cost that is notable value for the Hackintosh.

Can you purchase/license Catalina without buying Mac hardware? How common are hardware driver issues with a Hackintosh?

[vco1]

The more I think about it, the more I want it.

[Schmages]

To get the Catalina installer you need access to a Mac which can run Catalina. This is still a grey area but in my opinion better than to get it from a torrent website.

To avoid hardware issues it is best to follow the guides and to not think that you can outsmart everything by choosing cheaper or different components. This is especially true for the Motherboard and Graphics card. On the other hand there are Hackintoshes up and running even with Ryzen CPU but I would definitely advice to avoid these builds, especially Adobe Software behaves very strange on those machines.

[rkaplan]

@Schmages

To get the Catalina installer you need access to a Mac which can run Catalina. This is still a grey area but in my opinion better than to get it from a torrent website.

Seems to me if you have an inoperative Mac that you choose to repair with the hardware you bought, you are just continuing the licensing of macOS that you already have. Ditto if you purchase an inoperative Mac from someone else and choose to repair it.

[vco1]

What about Bluetooth? Is it working without issues? Did you install a separate BT module?

[rkaplan]

Related questions - once we have fully transitioned to ARM processors, will there still be a viable Hackintosh community? Will it be possible to source CPUs somewhere? I suppose an analogy would be iPhones- is it possible to source all of the parts including CPU to repair an iPhone that will still run iOS?

[webwalrus]

@rkaplan

Seems to me if you have an inoperative Mac that you choose to repair with the hardware you bought, you are just continuing the licensing of macOS that you already have. Ditto if you purchase an inoperative Mac from someone else and choose to repair it.

In theory - but there’s definitely some potentially sketchy software license stuff going on there. Kind of like the people who used to sell Windows OEM licenses that are intended to be “bundled with hardware” with a $5 mouse.

My experience with Hackintosh is that because you are, by definition, doing something that Apple isn’t keen on you doing, you run the risk of any random system update breaking your system and/or introducing instability.

Per the OP’s statement:

@Schmages

I am not willing to invest 8000€ in the course of one year into new Mac hardware which is obsolete in two years because of Apple Silicone.

Per the PC Part Picker, in my experience OP is out about €1452.64 for hardware that may or may not be upgradeable (at least not without additional hacking away at the OS) to the next version of macOS in a few months, let alone two years down the road.

If that’s not OP’s experience in a few months, that’s super-cool - and congratulations are in order for some nice cost savings.

[rkaplan]

@webwalrus

Per the PC Part Picker, in my experience OP is out about €1452.64 for hardware that may or may not be upgradeable (at least not without additional hacking away at the OS) to the next version of macOS in a few months, let alone two years down the road.

Don’t get me wrong -I am an incredible Apple fan and currently own a Mac Pro at home, two iMacs in my offices, a Macbook Pro for travel, and an iPhone.

That said, buying from Apple isn’t without risk either. In January 2020 I bought a new “future proof” Mac Pro - only to now realize that after Apple shifts to ARM, it is possible that some features of a future OS such as running iPad apps on a Mac might not be available on Intel Macs. That would be stunningly annoying for me to have invested what I did in a new Mac Pro only to find that 2-3 years later it is not fully capable in the Apple environment.

Yes one must be more careful than ever to do system backups if upgrading the OS on a Hackintosh. But the cost savings are immense and seem to me to easily outweigh the risk of incompatibility with future OS upgrades - especially if a top of the line Mac Pro can fall victim to the same issue.

[memex]

@webwalrus

Per the PC Part Picker, in my experience OP is out about €1452.64 for hardware that may or may not be upgradeable (at least not without additional hacking away at the OS) to the next version of macOS in a few months, let alone two years down the road.

This is the other side of building an hackintosh: you must find yourself with a well specced windows machine when the next update comes.

But, Mac hardware cost is something that is becoming hard to justify in the real world… even factoring in a 1500€ screen (apple/LG 5k monitor is 1300/1400€ so we’re staying safe here) the hackintosh is still 1000+ € cheaper.

Leaving aside that iMacs are not upgradable, if you want a discrete gpu you’re stuck with certain models and so on.

We’ll see what apple silicon will bring to the table, in terms of costs and performance.

[Schmages]

Today I got my combined Bluetooth and Wifi card delivered. I installed it and it just works. That was the last bit I needed. Handover, iMassage, and Airdrop working fine.

[Schmages]

I don’t think that Hackintoshes have a long term future. In general, we are moving into the direction of fully integrated chip solutions. However, I think that we are in the golden sunset of the Hackintosh. The tools for x86 are robust and stable for years to come till Apple abbondons the x86 platform completly. That will be worst case in 4 years.

Now I have a box with very good x86 hardware. I can do with it what I want. The last option is to put a BSD or Linux on it, build a server or whatever.

[Schmages]

@webwalrus

Per the PC Part Picker, in my experience OP is out about €1452.64 for hardware that may or may not be upgradeable (at least not without additional hacking away at the OS) to the next version of macOS in a few months, let alone two years down the road.

I started the work on the Hackintosh after I got confirmation that at least Big Sur will run on these machines. I don’t know if after Big Sur there will be a x86 release, that I accepted as a possibility.

But regarding software updates I most point out that at least my mindset changed over the last years. Every update introduced a lot of annyances and instabilities. So I wait till we see a stable release. Heck I thought to put Mojave on the machine because of all the Catalina crap.

[Topre]

@Schmages

Today I got my combined Bluetooth and Wifi card delivered. I installed it and it just works

I find it interesting that in the product title, they said that this card is macOS Hackintosh ready… oh wow!

[Jacob_Silver]

Awesome! I’ve been running a hackintosh for about 6 years now and it works great. It’s a desktop machine, everything is wired. I use ethernet, a wired keyboard, wired mouse, etc. Old school. Even thunderbolt works great. I’ve upgraded the motherboard/processor/graphics card a few times throughout the years. It usually takes a bit of time to do system upgrades, but it really isn’t so bad once you get the hang of it. I wouldn’t recommend it to most users, but i’d think anyone on the MPU forums would have no problem getting a hackintosh up and running.