My hackintosh lives..... in Macau! Soon to be in S.Korea

Hello, and I know I made a post earlier about the difficulties of sourcing quality components in S.Korea for building (DIY) computers. Well I just so happened to find a major outlet here in Seoul, called CompuZone. They have reasonable prices and deal in mainstream parts and components. Their prices are within 5-10% of what you'd expect to find in the US or Canada.
That's fair enough.

AS you may know, a number of MacOS users have split from the standard Apple crowd to produce their own more powerful machines utilizing a variety of off the shelf components, namely the 1155 and 2011 Intel sockets. In the past month or so some HUGE gains in compatibility have been had by a recent update in OSX 10.8.2.

you may get in touch with these Bad Apples here ( kidding...good Apples) not iSheep.
http://www.tonymacx86.com/home.php

I have obtained a GA-Z77X-UP5-TH Gigabyte motherboard and a i7 3770K unlocked processor (will overclock it to 4.3Ghz after everything is running correctly!)

My parts list:
GA-Z77X-UP5-TH Gigabyte motherboard
Intel i7 3770K (1155) processor
Noctua NH-D14 CPU cooler.
low latency (7 or 8 class) 16GB or 32GB of DDR3 1600Mhz ram
512GB SSD (Samsung)
2TB WD eSataIII Blue drive
~900W - Corsair Gold star PSU.
Graphics Card EVGA GTX690 /680? undecided... $1200 card.
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My brother in Macau, whom has access to more $$$ than I do, has taken my idea and produced a Hackintosh using the same board, and the idea of utilizing a 240GB SSD for the OS to boot on and a 1TB WD eSata III green drive to store the files on.
The boot time is simply incredible.
Even more so is that it seems to be benching over 15,000 on the geekbench application.

I have uploaded a video showing the build in Macau. Note the WIFI card in the video is a
480MB/sec WIFI card not a 300 as explained the in the video.
Also the Thunderbolt card mentioned is a FW800 port card. Thunderbolt is built into the Motherboard.
---> link.
http://www.ledmuseum.candlepower.us/Seoul_Lasers/IMG_1596.MOV

Nice and clean setup!

I have played with a hackintosh twice so far. One time it was a project at work, where I used a dell machine that our company had in every lab. It worked, but there was no lan drivers and I quickly lost interest after "playing" with OS for a bit.

The second time I have for fun tried to install maxosx on an old sony laptop that my significant other wanted to use for web browsing only. After about 10 attempts I got it up and running, but since a lot of the hardware was ofcource unsupported it was not a very functional machine. It was a fun sleepless night but ultimately I got Linux on that laptop and everyone lived happily ever after. It still works and is used for streaming videos on TV.

Cool... I love it when people experiment!!! +1 for you!

Well, now that the OS has been updated a lot of these issues you've mentioned no longer prevent the Hackintosh community from pushing forward.
Some major gains have been made.

The hack pro, in the video is a fully functional machine (Ethernet, Optical/Digital sound/ S/PDIF ..USB 3... all working fully. Even got the famed USB3.0 speeds too!) and is +3x the speed of the current MacPro line. That's not saying much since they are all Sandy Bridge machines. This computer kicks the crap out of the new MBPs as well in the performance department.

---> You coming back to the Hackintosh community?

Seoul_lasers said:

Cool... I love it when people experiment!!! +1 for you!

Well, now that the OS has been updated a lot of these issues you've mentioned no longer prevent the Hackintosh community from pushing forward.
Some major gains have been made.

The hack pro, in the video is a fully functional machine (Ethernet, Optical/Digital sound/ S/PDIF ..USB 3... all working fully. Even got the famed USB3.0 speeds too!) and is +3x the speed of the current MacPro line. That's not saying much since they are all Sandy Bridge machines. This computer kicks the crap out of the new MBPs as well in the performance department.

---> You coming back to the Hackintosh community?

Click to expand...

No, I have moved away completely onto linux a while ago. The latest hackintosh attempt was mostly to let my significant other have a taste of what it is like to have a macbook (or as close to it as I could get). She was considering buying a laptop and most of her friends recommended apple. She never liked it but was willing to give it a try.

Her Asus G73JH now runs dualboot Mint 13 and Win7. And her Samsung netbook runs ubuntu.

My Fujitsu E8210 runs Debian Squeeze and win7 in dualboot, and Asus G53sx-a1 runs Debian Wheezy (on it right now).

I like the look of Apple laptops but the OS is not to my taste unfortunately.

But I'd recommend anyone willing to try and run it on "IBM"-PC, it is fun to play with and you might like it, it also freaks people out when they see it

gillza said:

No, I have moved away completely onto linux a while ago. The latest hackintosh attempt was mostly to let my significant other have a taste of what it is like to have a macbook (or as close to it as I could get). She was considering buying a laptop and most of her friends recommended apple. She never liked it but was willing to give it a try.

Her Asus G73JH now runs dualboot Mint 13 and Win7. And her Samsung netbook runs ubuntu.

My Fujitsu E8210 runs Debian Squeeze and win7 in dualboot, and Asus G53sx-a1 runs Debian Wheezy (on it right now).

I like the look of Apple laptops but the OS is not to my taste unfortunately.

But I'd recommend anyone willing to try and run it on "IBM"-PC, it is fun to play with and you might like it, it also freaks people out when they see it

Click to expand...

I am no fanboy of Apple, but I personally like their OS for stability and simplicity. Out of curiosity what do you not like about MacOS ? Is it the complexity of the programming languages.....
or the lack of crossfire support on GPUs...
like to know.

Seoul_lasers said:

I am no fanboy of Apple, but I personally like their OS for stability and simplicity. Out of curiosity what do you not like about MacOS ? Is it the complexity of the programming languages.....
or the lack of crossfire support on GPUs...
like to know.

Click to expand...

I felt that it was a bit too restrictive for my preference and overly simplistic.

I did not get into the hardware support aspect of it much unfortunately.

Indeed you are one of many that feel OSX is too restrictive. That being said, in there are work arounds to many of those restrictions.
One thing that is still lagging is the support for Crossfire on GPUs. Mostly because of the MacPros still running SandyE bridge and outdated boards.

---> With the addition of OpenCL into MacOS 10.8 I expect we'll see this support coming shortly. The ability of offloading normal processor work to a graphics card can really push the performance into new reaches. 2 Cards in crossfire with OpenCL !! Wow!!

Unfortunately my school requires students to buy a Macbook, which are quite overpriced and restrictive. I didn't have a reason to throw my laptop away and get a Mac, so I simply turned it into a hackintosh.

It was pretty difficult because it didn't have native support for the hacked Lion Kernel. Only after a couple of reinstalls did I figure out that I needed to swap out the mach_kernel with that of a Snow Leopard system.

After a couple more reinstalls, it's now up and running.

It's quite sad to see my SSD equipped laptop booting faster than friends' Macbook Pros.

The battery life is the only pitfall though: about three hours, but I limit the charge capacity to 80% so it's even shorter. :beer:

ryansoh3 said:

Unfortunately my school requires students to buy a Macbook, which are quite overpriced and restrictive. I didn't have a reason to throw my laptop away and get a Mac, so I simply turned it into a hackintosh.

It was pretty difficult because it didn't have native support for the hacked Lion Kernel. Only after a couple of reinstalls did I figure out that I needed to swap out the mach_kernel with that of a Snow Leopard system.

After a couple more reinstalls, it's now up and running.

It's quite sad to see my SSD equipped laptop booting faster than friends' Macbook Pros.

The battery life is the only pitfall though: about three hours, but I limit the charge capacity to 80% so it's even shorter. :beer:

Click to expand...

There is a reason why Macbooks are as expensive as they are, and not because they happen to use the same processors as PCs. The Hardware (motherboards) are all specifically designed to meet the demanding tasks that they will have to perform. As of recent, all the New Macbook pros run SSD in a variety of sizes up to 786GB. Again, since they are Apple SSD stick format drives, you'll be paying a premium for that as well. Btw, I've notice that all the new Samsung ultrabooks are going the same direction as Apple. Thin and non-user upgradable.
Only going up to an entry level i5 and 8GB ram with Intel Graphics 4000 (300 some odd MBs of VRAM) shared with the System memory.
Again the scores on Geekbench shows that the MacBook Air slightly outperforms it due mainly inpart by a faster SSD.

It's funny that your school would "force" students to buy a Macintosh (Macbook Pro) computer
in a very non Mac country without an official Apple store. Didn't realize that...

Seoul_lasers said:

There is a reason why Macbooks are as expensive as they are, and not because they happen to use the same processors as PCs. The Hardware (motherboards) are all specifically designed to meet the demanding tasks that they will have to perform. As of recent, all the New Macbook pros run SSD in a variety of sizes up to 786GB. Again, since they are Apple SSD stick format drives, you'll be paying a premium for that as well. Btw, I've notice that all the new Samsung ultrabooks are going the same direction as Apple. Thin and non-user upgradable.
Only going up to an entry level i5 and 8GB ram with Intel Graphics 4000 (300 some odd MBs of VRAM) shared with the System memory.
Again the scores on Geekbench shows that the MacBook Air slightly outperforms it due mainly inpart by a faster SSD.

It's funny that your school would "force" students to buy a Macintosh (Macbook Pro) computer
in a very non Mac country without an official Apple store. Didn't realize that...

Click to expand...

Yeah, our school did get a little discount of getting the Apple Care package for free. However, I presume it was more advantageous to them to offer the extended warranty instead of a $250 discount.

In addition, it seemed like Apple wanted to get rid of their old Macbook Pros so they offered the one-generation-old 13 inch MBP's to us. One thing I love about them is their battery efficiency. Most easily survive though 5-7 hours of school, while I need to have the charger with me all the time.

I smell a sense of litigation over the new Samsung Series 9. :crackup:

Was that your brother speaking in the video? :beer:

ryansoh3 said:

Yeah, our school did get a little discount of getting the Apple Care package for free. However, I presume it was more advantageous to them to offer the extended warranty instead of a $250 discount.

In addition, it seemed like Apple wanted to get rid of their old Macbook Pros so they offered the one-generation-old 13 inch MBP's to us. One thing I love about them is their battery efficiency. Most easily survive though 5-7 hours of school, while I need to have the charger with me all the time.

I smell a sense of litigation over the new Samsung Series 9. :crackup:

Was that your brother speaking in the video? :beer:

Click to expand...

Indeed that was my brother on the video.
Actually my brother and a couple of his students in Grade 12 put that hackintosh together as part of their technology (ICT) course in Macau. The school is based on Alberta curriculum.
That's good that your school got Applecare for free.
Apple care is $360.00 for 3 years. Very expensive, but worth it. I know I have repaired several things on this "insurance".

An aside, in Europe, Apple must make concessions for EU consumer regulations that clearly state 2 years coverage from point of delivery.
http://www.apple.com/uk/legal/statutory-warranty/

Everywhere else it is 1 year, including Canada. EU consumer law is pretty good for the consumer.

Actually I would have taken the older 17" i7 2.7Ghz -turbo 3.4Ghz MPB as they are moderately upgradable. Also stock with a 650M 1G graphics and I can replace the Optical drive with a
Samsung 512GB SSD and RAID0 it with a primary SSD to get 800-900MB/Sec read and write!
Actually would bench faster than the current model.

Well I finally got my HAckintosh up and running!! :drool:
I got more components on Saturday at the only official retailer in Korea, a Corsair 600T White edition, A Samasung 840 series 250GB SSD, 2x8GB Samsung 1.35v rated ram PC12800, and a Silent pro PSU.. that's the only one they had.
I also additionally purchased a Noctua NH-D14 which I'll use one I get everything running at optimum.

Took me about 2 hrs to assemble and load the system on.
The Samsung SSD was dead out of the box. Could not write files to it at all. (It had been formatted for Apple GUID partion map in HFS+)
Disappointing.​

bump!!
Read please. This project just took a very interesting turn! Now just got a 512GB SSD, Samsung 840 pro. Very expensive but after seeing the R/W speeds on these drives, I thought, what the hell. These are the fastest drives on the market. Also running as my file drive is a WD Black Caviar 2TB 7200RPM. These are very good performers and have an average speed of about 137-140MB/Sec.
stay tuned!!

More updates coming today.
I have a bunch of tweeks and system mods done that will be documented and uploaded on this post.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------:thanks:

Have you had any crashes, hardware incompatibilities or kernel panics?

I was running out of space and deleted my hackintosh partition on my laptop.

ryansoh3 said:

Have you had any crashes, hardware incompatibilities or kernel panics?

I was running out of space and deleted my hackintosh partition on my laptop.

Click to expand...

Well my biggest problem is that the hacked bootloader Unibeast doesn't run with OSX 10.8.3 and keeps missing the fakeSMC.kext. This completely bricks booting up. Grrr...
My Brother is sending me a Mountain Lion patched USB that he is using.
Then I'll do my patching.

I did however run Windows 7 and do a PC health test. Everything is running fine.

Here is a pic of Bios running F11 at 4.6Ghz with a Ram speed of 1866 with 9.10.9.24 timings. 37-41c max. My Ram is Green 30nm 1.35v Samsung 8GB x2 DIMM. These are VERY hard to get! They can overclock to 2400Mhz at Cass 11/12 timings.
PC heath check was indicating I could go up to 2133Mhz at Cass 11 with a Processor freq of 4.9Ghz before I hit 75-80c. I'll pass thanks not interested in pushing it this hard. I'm using the Gigantic engine block aircooler the Noctua NH-D14.
I did boot into OSX 10.8.2 but I forgot to check Integrated graphics header and ran into problems while using VGA. Didn't work. I also added the wrong profile and it tried to set me as using a Sandybridge processor and the sleep wake function failed.

All the ports work under OSX including the HD-Audio/ S/PDIF at 192Khz, All USB3 headers/ USB2 headers, eSATA3, Gigabit Ethernet, Firewire 400, mic input, headphone jack.
Thunderbolt is supported but doesn't run the same way that Apple's does. Not hot pluggable. Other than that.. most things are the same.
Got full 1920x1200 res on our 55" LG TV without HD4000 running

Well, a major update on the Hackintosh.
I managed to get the computer out of it's stock performance. Without a Graphics card I am able to get a 64bit score of 16,200 Geekbench, and a 32 bit running around ~13,800-14,200. That's roughly the same score as an Intel Xenon 3680 8Core stock.

Cinebench score is 25.5FPS at a score of 7.5-7.7, which is well above the typical stock i7 3770K. This is using intel 4000 graphics.

Next part of the project will be the Wireless lan and the graphics card.
The booting is still being injected via a usb stick.