Hackintosh Build

exaudium · March 20, 2019

Hey all!

I am planning a build soon of a Ryzen Hackintosh inside an old G5 case. I wanted to share my proposed build before starting with purchasing to double check everything would work on macOS and to get some feedback. There are a few things that I need some guidance on so would appreciate some help.

So, the proposed list is as follows:

CPU - Ryzen 5 1600X

MB - B450 (haven't decided)

RAM - 32GB Corsair LPX

Storage - Intel 660p 1TB + generic 7200rpm 2TB HDD (Summed as a Fusion Drive)

GPU - Need guidance

Case - PowerMac G5

PSU - be quiet! Pure Power 11 400w

From scouting parts on eBay and Gumtree, I estimate the build is going to cost around £650 or $860, if I allocate around £90 for a GPU. This includes a cpu cooler, fans, but not any ATX conversion kits for the case.

I will be using this machine for audio production and office tasks. NO gaming whatsoever.

I need some help choosing a video card - I use a 21:9 monitor as my main monitor, and would like to add 2 more 1080p displays alongside. What video card would you suggest? Ideally would like to spend as little as possible as graphics are not a high priority. Just need something that can run 3 1080p monitors. Nothing special.

Can anybody tell me if Fusion Drive is the best way to achieve decent speeds from a SSD/HDD set up? I've seen video with Optane and StoreMI among others, and would like to know what the best way to maximise performance from an HDD is. As far as I can tell, tiering seems to be a better option than caching, but would love some suggestions. Would a RAID setup be beneficial at all?

The next thing, which is a big one, is Thunderbolt. As my interface uses Thunderbolt (v1), I require a thunderbolt port. I've seen Level1Techs implement this on Threadripper, and there are other resources suggesting that despite Thunderbolt 3 not being officially supported on Ryzen, a Titan Ridge add in card seem to be basically plug and play (despite hot-swapping not being available. No problem though). Has anyone managed to get this to work on macOS? Here is the reference article: https://egpu.io/forums/builds/thunderbolt-3-amd-ryzen-5-2400g-gtx-108032gbps-tb3-aorus-gaming-box-win10-1803-theitsage/

Finally, is there anything in the parts list that won't with macOS?

Would love to hear thoughts and comments! :)