by "Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
Published 10/20/2017 at 00:03
by "Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
Published 10/20/2017 at 00:03
No Tags
STARS: 4
Well, the Hackintosh is home and running like a champ. The video card, an old GTX 670, is installed and driving a couple of large monitors without problems. The Windows 10 drive is also installed and the machine boots and runs Windows as it did before. The Mac hard drive was cloned to an SSD so it’s lightning fast, with things happening seemingly before I think about them.
Sure, others may have newer and faster computers, but I’ve got almost everything I’ve wanted in a desktop Mac and I’ve spent about $200 and used a bunch of parts I had laying around. Over time I’ll do a few upgrades, like a better video card (for Windows gaming), perhaps even an SSD for Windows, but in my style it will be with used, slightly out-of-date parts.
My trusty old Mac mini served me well for years, but was starting to show it’s age. With memory and an SSD it was holding its own, despite its advancing years, but I really couldn’t do anything to speed up the CPU or video, two things that are possible with a nice tower machine (although I’m sorta out of reasonable CPU upgrade options). Apple may be moving towards making machines with zero internal upgrade options, and this push is alienating hardware geeks like me. I’m just happy to have a decent alternative now.
"Chariotoflove" (chariotoflove)
10/20/2017 at 00:26, STARS: 1
Will you be able to go to High Sierra eventually, or are you frozen at El Capitan
"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
10/20/2017 at 00:36, STARS: 1
There shouldn’t be any problem upgrading the OS as long as the necessary tools are available. There’s plenty of stuff for Sierra, and I expect the High Sierra stuff to roll out in the next few weeks and months.
The OS currently shows my computer as a 2012 27" iMac, so as long as that machine is supported with OS updates this one will be as well. I can always change that assignment, however, and make Software Update think it’s dealing with anything I say.
Right now I’m still learning the whole Hackintosh thing, so I’m being very careful with this machine. I have a hard drive set aside with a working OS install, so I’ll have something to fall back on should I bugger up this machine somehow. Eventually I’ll start messing around with alternate OS installs, albeit on other hard drives. I have very little experience with Sierra so I might try that next just for S&G, and then try High Sierra once the bugs are worked out. By that time I expect to be an expert on this whole Hackintosh thing.
"Chariotoflove" (chariotoflove)
10/20/2017 at 00:40, STARS: 1
A 2012 will work. You should be set. Smart to ease into it though. Good luck.
"gmctavish needs more space" (gmctavish)
10/20/2017 at 01:09, STARS: 0
This is an interesting idea for whenever I need to replace my Mini....
"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
10/20/2017 at 01:20, STARS: 1
Given my experiences so far I’d certainly recommend it. You’ll want to keep a Mac around for drive formatting and tool setup and such. It’s nice having a mini for that purpose since it won’t take up much space when not in use. I’ll probably reuse my old mini as a media server for the Apple TV, and maybe for a little retro gaming and gruntwork background tasks; it’s not going anywhere, but it won’t be getting the workout it once did.
"Powershiftmedia-ResidentDSMGuru" (matt-powershiftmedia)
10/20/2017 at 05:47, STARS: 0
I’m not real familiar with what the hackintosh entails but my brother has done it. With that being said, I absolutely love my MacBook Pro, with the i7 and the kick ass MacOS it’s absurdly fast.
"random001" (random001)
10/20/2017 at 06:21, STARS: 0
What size SSD do you need for your winders drive?
"If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent" (essextee)
10/20/2017 at 06:41, STARS: 2
An SSD upgrade was the best thing I’ve ever done. That first bootup afterwards was on par with having sex.
"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
10/20/2017 at 06:57, STARS: 0
I figger that another 240GB drive, like the one I have for OS X, should be sufficient for now, leaving the option to upgrade to a larger drive later. Depending on what’s on CL I might even start with a 120GB if the price is right. And I’ll probably grab a 120 just to pop into the old mini; now that I’ve experienced it with an SSD I just can’t see myself using again without one.
"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
10/20/2017 at 07:08, STARS: 1
I’m still using a 2008 MacBook Pro, which I love dearly, and would love to have something newer, and I will upgrade some day when I find one cheap enough. Despite having paid off the car last week, as a public employee I’m not exactly swimming in cash, and right now the newfound surplus needs to go towards rebuilding the 401k and things like that. I would prefer to have a genuine Macintosh, even another mini, but for now this beast will suffice.
"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
10/20/2017 at 07:11, STARS: 1
With startup times from power off to operational at less than a minute, I am absolutely stunned at the performance. When I boot to Windows, off of a hard drive on the same machine, the wait seems endless. SSDs everywhere!
"random001" (random001)
10/20/2017 at 07:22, STARS: 0
I think I have a 120 lying around. I mean literally lying around, doing nothing, the lazy bastard. Yours if you want it.
"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
10/20/2017 at 07:31, STARS: 0
I’ll gladly take that off your hands - thank you! You can reach me at (bandley3 @+ Gmail)
"FTTOHG Has Moved to https://opposite-lock.com" (alphaass)
10/20/2017 at 08:08, STARS: 1
Be very careful and make sure you know what you are getting into. Besides the fact that it is absolutely an EULA violation, commonly thought of as unethical, and depending on whom you ask borderline illegal - a lot of the OSX distributions floating around on the net have been hacked in ways that might break some of the security features. That’s not to say they are all unsafe or that anyone is going to come after you for having a Hackintosh, but just like any software you get through back channels there is a higher than normal risk of malware.
"FTTOHG Has Moved to https://opposite-lock.com" (alphaass)
10/20/2017 at 08:30, STARS: 1
Based on the hardware you have, you should be able to update for quite a while. OSX seems to be pretty tolerant of lower-end specs these days and unlike in the past Apple now seems to stop supporting systems before they get truly unusable speed-wise. Up until this year I was using a 2007 iMac on 10.10 that was perfectly usable once I did an SSD upgrade. The 12” MacBooks that they are selling now are fairly low-power compared to things like quad-core iMacs yet my MB feels pretty quick and I expect Apple to support it through at least 10.16 if they keep doing annual updates. So your machine here should be speedy for a while. That being said - Apple appears to be starting to limit some features to 2013+ Macs (unlock with Apple Watch comes to mind). It might be due to Bluetooth 4.0 but anyway the point is I wouldn’t be surprised if 10.14 is 2013+. So if there is a way to get your machine to ID itself as a slightly newer model it might be worth it.
"Steve in Manhattan" (blogenfreude01)
10/20/2017 at 19:21, STARS: 0
Was thinking of building one - never did it before, but videos make it seem pretty straightforward. Currently have a Mac Mini late 2012 (i7 chip) - any suggestions on helping it run cooler and keeping it alive longer? It’s not a bad little machine. Have we discussed this thing before?
"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
10/20/2017 at 19:58, STARS: 0
I haven’t actually built mine, but had a local expert set it up and configure it. When I have a day off I think I’ll pop in a different hard drive and try it myself now that I know what steps I missed the first time around.
I’m wondering if one of those USB-powered laptop coolers might do the trick. I just don’t know where the heat emanates from the mini; those laptop coolers work best on devices where the bottom of the machine is the hottest part.
We did discuss your mini when I first started the Hackintosh project, and you even offered to sell it to me when you upgrade; I hope you were serious about that. Even though this HP will be great for years, I still want a faster Mac mini and hope you’ll still sell me yours when the day comes. The Hackintosh is working great, but there are additional complexities in troubleshooting and repairing should something go wrong, things that are not an issue with a genuine Mac, hence the reason I want to keep at
least
one actual Apple machine in my collection.
"AC2 - The Now 15 Year Old Jalop" (ac-2-shoes)
10/21/2017 at 10:25, STARS: 1
I bought my 2010 white MacBook for $200 on sale from a site called Macofalltrades.com
Their prices are great and the computers are in great condition
"Powershiftmedia-ResidentDSMGuru" (matt-powershiftmedia)
10/21/2017 at 17:23, STARS: 1
Mine is a Mid 15 with an i7, 1TB SSD, dedicated graphics and all those bells and whistles. Screw paying the 17 prices. Got mine for just over a thousand online from a reputable seller. It’s excellent for video and tuning DSM Link lol