Is Hackintosh reliable?

[AndyNguyen]

Hi I'm a photography/videography student, and my school require me to use a mac, probably more for convenience sake cus everyone else is using mac. I have a macbook pro, which is good for bringing to school and back. But I like to have a computer at home, and my brother is selling me his computer, with el capitan installed on it.

 

Here are the specs:

i7 4790k

msi mobo

gtx 970

120gb samsung evo

850w evga psu

 

for $1000 Canadian which is pretty good deal

 

Im just wondering if hackintosh will be stable, cus I don't wanna be working on an image or video and the having the computer crashes and lose my work.

[shadowbyte]

I've hackintoshed my own PC, and it's more stable than windows

there is always the chance of a crash with either windows or OSX, but it's been like having an actual mac for me.

as long as OSX is on it's own drive, there's almost no reason for instability

[Pandry]

The hackintosh is stable (as much as I tryed)...

The only thing (for me) is that OSX was good to do video and photo editing once, now (for me) windows is better...

But anyway it is stable.

[79wjd]

It depends a lot on your hardware and and how difficult it is to get thigns working in the first place.

 

Understand you basically have to trick the OS into thinking your computer specs match those of a mac and then add kexts/drivers to add support for things that aren't natively/directly supported (GTX1080 for example). So, no, it's not particularly reliable/consistent. 

 

Although with that said, it's also not super likely to just crash while running a photo editor if the system is already stable. It's more of an issue of it having issues if you update the OS/change things. 

[Pandry]

Just now, djdwosk97 said:

It depends a lot on your hardware and and how difficult it is to get thigns working in the first place.

 

Understand you basically have to trick the OS into thinking your computer specs match those of a mac and then add kexts/drivers to add support for things that aren't natively/directly supported (GTX1080 for example). So, no, it's not particularly reliable/consistent. 

I used it for a while and once the driver are installed, for me, it worked well...(I've compared it with my father's iMac)

[79wjd]

Just now, Pandry said:

I used it for a while and once the driver are installed, for me, it worked well...(I've compared it with my father's iMac)

If you get it working/stable it's not likely to have an issue. It becomes a stability issue when you update/change things. 

[Zjurc]

Every time there is an update, even a slightest hotfix from Apple, there is a small chance that your entire setup is going to crash and all data will be lost. You just need to live with that risk if you want to use a hackintosh. 

[Master Disaster]

1 hour ago, AndyNguyen said:

Hi I'm a photography/videography student, and my school require me to use a mac, probably more for convenience sake cus everyone else is using mac. I have a macbook pro, which is good for bringing to school and back. But I like to have a computer at home, and my brother is selling me his computer, with el capitan installed on it.

 

Here are the specs:

i7 4790k

msi mobo

gtx 970

120gb samsung evo

850w evga psu

 

for $1000 Canadian which is pretty good deal

 

Im just wondering if hackintosh will be stable, cus I don't wanna be working on an image or video and the having the computer crashes and lose my work.

Your system is ideal for a Hackintosh and you will be able to achieve 100% stability and accuracy to a real mac. 

 

It's not an easy thing to do, it's easy to get it running but fixing all the little niggles takes time, patience and an account at tonymacx86 but once it's working it's great. The release of Sierra has finally allowed me to achieve 100% success with my Skylake build, it finally allowed me to fix the no sound after sleep bug and the 6 USB port limit. 

 

Btw asking how its done isn't allowed on here, head to tonymacx86 and ask your questions there instead

[Master Disaster]

54 minutes ago, Zjurc said:

Every time there is an update, even a slightest hotfix from Apple, there is a small chance that your entire setup is going to crash and all data will be lost. You just need to live with that risk if you want to use a hackintosh. 

Complete and utter nonsense. Since they switched the default bootloader from Chimera to Clover updating your Hackintosh has been EXACTLY the same as updating a real mac. I clean installed El Cap when it first came out and since then have in place updated to 10.11.1, 10.11.2, 10.11.3, 10.11.4, 10.11.5, 10.11.6 and finally 10.12 and not once have I had any issue larger than a broken audio kext which was due to a kext patch I put in place anyway. Deleted the kext & patch, rebuilt kext cache, installed new kext version (which didn't need the patch anymore) and I was back up and running. Even going from 10.11 to 10.12 I was up and running within 3 hours of the update finishing and that was purely waiting for the audio script to be updated for Sierra. 

 

I do recommend you don't update on day 0 and wait for a while to see what other users are reporting, that's just sensible. 

[Zjurc]

21 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Complete and utter nonsense. Since they switched the default bootloader from Chimera to Clover updating your Hackintosh has been EXACTLY the same as updating a real mac. I clean installed El Cap when it first came out and since then have in place updated to 10.11.1, 10.11.2, 10.11.3, 10.11.4, 10.11.5, 10.11.6 and finally 10.12 and not once have I had any issue larger than a broken audio kext which was due to a kext patch I put in place anyway. Deleted the kext & patch, rebuilt kext cache, installed new kext version (which didn't need the patch anymore) and I was back up and running. Even going from 10.11 to 10.12 I was up and running within 3 hours of the update finishing and that was purely waiting for the audio script to be updated for Sierra. 

 

I do recommend you don't update on day 0 and wait for a while to see what other users are reporting, that's just sensible. 

But that is just your story, and this is exactly the type of gamble dealing with a hackintosh. Some people are just destined to have it much worse, like laptops or AMD processor builds. But some people will have 100% support because their components are really popular with the hackintosh community. Both sides exist. 

 

Hackintoshing for me was a pain because I have an unpopular LGA2011 motherboard which isn't impossible it just made things rather difficult.

[Master Disaster]

12 minutes ago, Zjurc said:

But that is just your story, and this is exactly the type of gamble dealing with a hackintosh. Some people are just destined to have it much worse, like laptops or AMD processor builds. But some people will have 100% support because they don't have some odd build and the components in their system are really popular with the hackintosh community. Both sides exist. 

People who have incompatible builds cannot install in the first place so wouldn't have a problem with updates. FTR AMD CPUs are not supported without hacking the kernel to death which makes the system very unstable indeed. 

 

If you can install the OS then your totally fine when it comes to stability. The only issue people have is hardware support for hardware which Apple don't use which is exactly why tonymac keep an up to date hardware compatibility database but even that doesn't cause instability, it just doesn't work exactly like if it had no windows driver installed. The single exception to this is Maxwell GPUS where you have to set a special boot flag in order to boot until you install the Nvidia GPU driver and even that's now fixed with Clover v3766 and Sierra. 

 

Of course R9 400 series and GTX1000 series are not supported at all because there's no apple hardware which uses them. There's a hacky way of tricking the OS to see your R9 4 card as an R9 3 card but it's well, very hacky. 

 

OP has the perfect build, MSI Z97 board, Haswell CPU and Maxwell GPU are all in the perfect build buyers guide (infact pretty much any Haswell/Broadwell system is now considered a perfect build) 

 

You shouldn't give advice on a topic you clearly know very little about. 

[Mug]

Haven't built a new mackintosh for a while but when I built one it was all about gigabyte motherboards. I'd recommend going with that tbh.

[TheOskar57]

From my own experience it all depends on you hardware, I tried to do It with a Pentium E5500 and a Radeon HD 6570 a few years ago, went pretty horrible with the drivers and stuff, finally gave up.
After a few years when I got my 4690K+7870 I tried again, this time everything went A LOT easier, it all depends on hardware,

right now I have Triple Boot with Linux Mint 17.2+Windows 10 Home and Hackintosh El Capitan 10.11 (too lazy to update), and everything is working like a charm!

[leodaniel]

15 hours ago, AndyNguyen said:

Hi I'm a photography/videography student, and my school require me to use a mac, probably more for convenience sake cus everyone else is using mac. I have a macbook pro, which is good for bringing to school and back. But I like to have a computer at home, and my brother is selling me his computer, with el capitan installed on it.

 

Here are the specs:

i7 4790k

msi mobo

gtx 970

120gb samsung evo

850w evga psu

 

for $1000 Canadian which is pretty good deal

 

Im just wondering if hackintosh will be stable, cus I don't wanna be working on an image or video and the having the computer crashes and lose my work.

No, at least not from my experience. I mean the OS works great if you choose your Hardware correctly (check out different hackintosh forums and compare the user experience, it's worth the time!).

What you won't get is the Apple Ecosystem experience! If you want a pc that just works either go with windows or buy a mac. All the iMessage stuff and Handoff is a complete mess. I got it working, but you will have to update all the time, change stuff everytime Apple change some security features. Especially if you are a student, you don't want to mess with this kind of time consuming problems! The only reason I personally use a mac, is the seamless ecosystem experience which saves me a lot of time and just works! 

Making a Hackintosh is fun and should be your hobby, but you need a lot of time. I would never recommend anyone to do this on his main machine! 

Also, ask yourself, do you really need this pc or can you rely on your MacBook Pro?

[VerticalDiscussions]

You need ECC and redundancy in that machine now! Gonna be a big pain to get it working tough, if at all :p!

[Yoinkerman]

can't believe i'm the first to say $1000 isn't any sort of deal for that

[WkdPaul]

17 minutes ago, Yoinkerman said:

can't believe i'm the first to say $1000 isn't any sort of deal for that

that's in Canadian peso dollars, we do pay a premium, a simple search will show you that brand new, these parts without a case, PSU and Windows will be above $1200...

 

 

 

Also, to everyone else, as stated in the CS, hackintosh discussions aren't allowed on the forum;

 

Quote

Talking about piracy in general, broad details, is acceptable however the posting or discussing pirated/hacked/cracked or otherwise nefariously obtained content is not. This includes Windows content, games, hackintosh, etc. Also discussions regarding ways to avoid or block legitametly installed monitoring/tracking software or the like is also not allowed.

 

The reason we are leaving this thread open is simply because people are talking about stability of a hackintosh, so fo rthis thread to stay open I would ask everyone not to go into any details about compatibility or some form of troubleshooting, same goes for links that would lead to details about how to accomplish such a project, thanks for everyone's understanding!

[Yoinkerman]

Yeah I'm canadian too.  If $1000 used on $1200 of stuff is a good deal to you then idk what to say.

[WkdPaul]

Like I said, I quickly looked and CPU, Mobo, RAM GPU and SSD will cost over $1200 plus taxes ... So it's missing Windows, a case, a PSU, a HDD and probably more, add all that and, depending where you are in Canada, loads of taxes and brand new that's probably closer to $1600-1700.

 

Here, roughly the same build but with only a 1TB HDD (OP didn't mention storage but I assume it's at least 1TB), without peripherals and with a cheaper RX480 rather than a 970 (a 970 would bring the price close to $1550), and it's just over $1400 (plus taxes);

http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/stLTM8

[lieder1987]

Like others have said it will depend on your hardware, but I have had a mackintosh for the last three years and it is a breeze 99% of the time. I never have any issues when doing stuff once I am booted up, but getting setup originally / and sometimes with updates it is a bit annoying. If your hardware is compatible it should be a good experience.

[Zodiark1593]

From the comments here, it would appear a hackintosh should be easily feasible, especially as you're only doing this for a class, and have little interest in the ecosystem. However, it would be wise to maintain a regularly updated mirror of your OS and files. In the event OSX wants to break, you can revert. 

[Master Disaster]

12 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

From the comments here, it would appear a hackintosh should be easily feasible, especially as you're only doing this for a class, and have little interest in the ecosystem. However, it would be wise to maintain a regularly updated mirror of your OS and files. In the event OSX wants to break, you can revert. 

Carbon Copy Cloner

[mrchow19910319]

If you do plan to use a Hackintosh as your daily driver. 

Enable time machine and use an external drive to back up.

Then you are good to go. 

The chance of  crashing while you are working at something is extremely low. 

 

On 9/30/2016 at 6:48 PM, Mug said:

Haven't built a new mackintosh for a while but when I built one it was all about gigabyte motherboards. I'd recommend going with that tbh.

Same here. 

[Hackentosher]

-deleted-

[airdeano]

8 minutes ago, Hackentosher said:

-snip-

umm no we cannot support any of the practices as per our Community Standards:

10 hours ago, wkdpaul said:

Also, to everyone else, as stated in the CS, hackintosh discussions aren't allowed on the forum;

 

The reason we are leaving this thread open is simply because people are talking about stability of a hackintosh, so for this thread to stay open I would ask everyone not to go into any details about compatibility or some form of troubleshooting, same goes for links that would lead to details about how to accomplish such a project, thanks for everyone's understanding!