@soundGH2 I have two ML servers built around Z68 boards and i5 Sandy Bridges. They never go down. Most reliable servers I've used.

I just want to make it clear that I build Hackintoshes for a variety of reasons - to own a higher performance Mac Pro than Apple currently offers at a fraction of the price, to deploy media servers and centers, and at home to provide family members with tiny and silent Mac workstations hanging off the back of the monitor. But I go into it fully accepting that I am where the buck stops if something goes wrong. I've been doing this long enough to not have this happen very often but the fact is OSX keeps evolving and you have to keep up with it. This is why it's folly to have someone build you a Hackintosh if you don't know how to design, build, and repair them yourself. It's not the same as building a Windows PC. The friend who builds you a Hackintosh today will not be your friend tomorrow when you've pestered him every time you run Software Update and ankle your rig again.

@jleo

RE that inane provideocoalition article, a better title would be "In Which The Inexperienced, Tech-Unsavvy Author Lets An Air Quotes Friend Build Him An Air Quotes Work Computer With El Agua Pumping In And Out Of It, Almost Comically Bad Cable Layout Implying So Many Worrisome Things About The Builder I Don't Have Room Here To List Them All, And An Optical Drive So Ass-Cheap Its Power Supply Burns Up And Takes The Whole System Down With It". The article actually has almost nothing to do with Hackintosh and everything to do with why it's never a good idea to have a friend build you a work computer you plan to make the centerpiece of your livelihood.

At the very least, I hope the takeaway here from the article is you should absolutely, positively not consider a Hackintosh unless YOU are the one who builds, maintains, and is ultimately responsible for its uptime.

Oh really? I didn't know that. That's interesting. You're saying Mac TB ports are also not hot swappable? Because my older ASUS-based build was.

I'm holding out hope that Gigabyte fixes this in a firmware update once/if Apple releases their new Mac Pros with similar support.

@soundgh2 @ninetto TB works but isn't hot swappable--that's not working "fine" to me but acceptable if you're just leaving a video card plugged in all the time.

How the Hackintosh Suddenly Caught Fire

Anarchy amid the abdication of Mac Pro

By Mark Christiansen

http://provideocoalition.com/mchristiansen/story/how-the-hackintosh-suddenly-caught-fire

@ninneto No need to worry so much about smbios.plist, it's a pretty harmless choice as long as you stay with the MacPro and iMac plists. As I said, MacPro3,1 is the most generic, but won't optimize performance for more modern GPUs and CPUs. One of the later MacPro or iMac plists will get you faster benchmarks and rendering times. And I'm not definitively saying SSDT is a scam, just that it had zero effect on my i7-3770K/Gigabyte Z77/Radeon HD5870 system properly set up and OC'd in the bios. YMMV.

@ninetto I know all about that SSDT generator on tonymac. I tried it, tweaked it, got it as perfect as the terminal edits allow, and I didn't see any performance difference whatsoever vs. no SSDT at all.

I think that forum is a valuable resource but it does have its pockets of fringe tweakery that chase things that don't really matter. Building a successful Hackintosh is all about adding extra code to trick PC parts into booting OSX, and then behaving just like an Apple only faster. I prefer to add only the bare minimum to vanilla OSX to get everything working properly and nothing more. I try new developments like SSDT, but sometimes they fall into the category of things that only help incomplete installations. If you choose your hardware wisely and add the right kexts and plists, you don't need little bits of gum and twine all over the place. I remember the days when Hackintosh meant fake kernels and distros and all kinds of Apple code blocking. The resulting machines were touchy and prone to failure every software update, completely unfit for a work machine. That's a proof of concept game, not a professional tool.

If you see better performance with SSDT, more power to you. I didn't, and the more I read that thread the more I feel they're chasing something that's more of a bandaid for suboptimal builds than necessary part of a fully optimized Hackintosh.

@ninetto No SSDT file is needed if you're using an Ivy Bridge CPU. SSDT is only for earlier Sandy Bridge chips.

MacPro3,1 is the system definition for an early 2008 Mac Pro. It's the most generic of the smbios.plists, so it tends to "just work" with most combinations of board, CPU, and GPU.

The downside to using MacPro3,1 with a modern set of parts is Apple has continually updated their OS to optimize performance for certain CPUs and GPUs that came later than 2008, and often you'll get a faster machine with a more current system definition like iMac12,2, iMac13,1, or even some of the later MacPro models.

My advice would be to take the tonymac user builds with a grain of salt. They're starting points, not the last word.

Only wierdigan had was turning off wake on TB in the Bios to stop the constant reboots (a la Wake On Lan) other than that performs same as my other Macs speed wise - be aware one of the TB ports is for drives and the other for displays on that board .

I'm using one TB port as a display adapter port and got a Apogee Symphony on the other one, working a treat so far.

@driftwood A fiver cheaper, you kill me.

RE smbios.plist - I did the same as you initially, going straight for iMac13,1, but at least with my HD5870 I wasn't seeing the GPU performance I should have. The system worked, but FCPX didn't fly as the hardware in place would suggest. I went through MacPro defs and then finally hit upon iMac12,2 as being the magic def for my system. Curious whether yours shows the same difference. Try both with Cinebench and see what FPS they give you. With the HD5870, iMac13,1 got me in the mid30s while 12,2 got me 57.

I agree the jury's still out on Fusion. I'm leery of any drive arrangement that spreads imminent failure around multiple drives so if any one of them tanks it's goodnight Irene. At least with SSD boot and HD user individual drive failure is sandboxed. I'm also unconvinced of any performance advantages Fusion has vs. an SSD/HD setup like ours. I've played with new Macs which have Fusion drives and the only advantage I can see is cosmetic, there's only one drive icon. I have great respect for Apple's hardware engineers but so far I don't see the point of Fusion aside from just visually hiding the 2-drive arrangement from users who've grown up with single drive environments.

RE mSATA - I don't know if there are any speed benefits vs. 2.5" form factor, I just got a good deal on the Mushkin and since the Gigabyte board had mSATA I thought I'd try it. As it turns out the mSATA slot is only 3GB, so I put the Mushkin in a Syba mSATA-to-SATA adapter and now it's hooked up like a normal 2.5" SSD to one of the board's 6GB SATA ports. Not sure I've ever noticed a performance difference between 3GB and 6GB but the adapter was 12 bucks. I know it's killing you I spent a twelver on that.

I haven't touched TH yet. Have you? A. my board doesn't have TH ports, and B. I don't have any TH peripherals. Honestly, I don't see TH in my needhouse. I'm a simple guy, thanks to you and Vitaliy. IV2-filled SD card goes in the slot, Private copies to the desktop, 5DtoRGB transcodes to ProResHQ, FCPX copies the pre-optimized files over. Hacked GH2 and i7 Hackintosh are a match made in heaven.

@Shaveblog +1 on the 212. Wonderful piece of equipment.

@Shaveblog Already using it as a imac 13,1. Yeah, I know about the higher specc'ed the model is set in smbios the more you can overclock, faster gfx, and the ability to utilise the hackintosh closer to vanilla Mac features. No issues with sleep, sppedstep, etc... dream setup :-)

Render speeds are insane!