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My i7 Hac Pro Success (Updated From Original Post)

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brokenjack
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Hi,

I've been scouring the forums and gleaning as much info as I can on building a new core i7 hackintosh. I'm a bit new at this, although I have successfully installed Tiger on an old P4. I'm a professional editor using an Avid DS Nitris system, and although it's pretty powerful, I find myself leaning over and banging out effects on my MBP with FCS3, specifically Motion 4, more and more. The clients are loving what I can do with that, coupled with some Blender 3D goodness. So the short story is, I needs(wants) mo' power. I've narrowed my hardware choices down to a few components. Can anyone assure me that these are the right components to start out with, and recommend the additional parts I need to get a working hack pro? The only thing I'll be running is FCS3, Blender 3D, and CS4 Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects. Hehe...I guess "only" sounds a bit silly, like I'll only be taking over the world.

Here is what I've decided on so far.
CPU:
Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor

Motherboard:
GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD5 LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard

Video Card:
SAPPHIRE Vapor-X Radeon HD 4870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail

Any recommendations for memory, and how much I can practically use?
Also any recommendations for hard drives, power requirements, etc?


I figure I can limp through a SL install from the Digital Dreamer guide. Just wanted to know if I'm starting out on the right foot.

Is there anyone out there who has used Motion 4 on a Hackintosh? It's actually not very stable on a real Mac. I found Motion ran better on my older iMac with the ATI card X1900 than the MBP with the nVidia 8800GT.

I also want to know how well it might handle editing DVCPRO HD footage from my HVX200.

Thanks for all the help!
This is a great site!

UPDATE 11/08/09

Well I went ahead and pulled the trigger on the parts from newegg. Here is how it breaks down:

CPU:
Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor - Retail
Reason for purchase:Wanted to be faster than the core2quad, but not on the bleeding edge. Successful hackintosh builds with this processor.

Motherboard:
GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD5 LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
Reason for purchase: Gigabyte brand seems to be the most compatible. Digital Dreamers script install posts for this particular board seem to be the best around.

Video Card:
SAPPHIRE 100279-1GL Radeon HD 4870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail
Reason for purchase: This was a hard one. I have always used nVidia with my past(way past) PC and Linux builds before switching to Mac(a real Mac, actually 2 real Macs). This might have been more of a gut decision because of stability issues with my laptop(MBP with nvidia) using Apple Motion vs. decent reliability with Motion on my iMac(with ATI). I realize that laptop video hardware is probably not a good comparison, but oh well. Also Mac Pros offer an upgrade to the 4870, and I felt like the 4870 would better suit my motion graphic needs. I've gotten mixed advice on this card, but at the end of the day you gotta choose, and I chose this one. Mother Mary help me in the upcoming install. I did go with the model that is just dual DVI instead of the HDMI, Etc. model.

Memory:
CORSAIR XMS3 12GB (6 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model HX3X12G1600C9 G - Retail
Reason for purchase: Was a combo deal with the motherboard. Have no idea what hexa channel means.

Here is the rest:
wishlist.jpg

I have gone over Digital Dreamers guide and I have a bit to go over again and again. I think things will make more sense during the install, so I'll hold off on posting my particular issues.

UPDATE 11/19/09

Everything works!
Well except my abit airpace(atheros) wlan card.
Have not tested sleep functionality. Don't really care.

Sound
Video with qe/ci and dual monitors running at 1920x1080

This sucker is really responsive.
I have not tested final cut studio yet, but I will report.

The install was so simple, I feel guilty
I did not use DD's method, but instead used lifehacker's snow leopard method and replaced the extra folder with the one from this post...It's Cybex's

I did learn a ton though from research and trial and error with DD's method, so a big thanks still goes out to him.
I never even asked any questions. I was going rogue.

anyway I will report back on final cut studio 3. I'm going to throw some redcam footage at it and see if it sticks.

there is no emoticon for the feeling "like it's Christmas" so I'll just leave it at that.

UPDATE 11/22/09

Well I installed FCS 3, and FCP kept crashing during load up. Found out that FCP looks for "en0" device on the network. Well I had previously disabled the on board LAN in bios on the UD5 and saw that only the firewire network device(fw0) was listed in the system prefs network pane. I had heard of kernel panics with the onboard LAN enabled from another user using DD's method. Just for fun I decided to enable onboard LAN and yank that abit airpace $5 woot deal outta there. Everything is fine. FCP sees "en0" and it loads up and kicks major butt.

Also, I never thought working with motion graphics could be like this. My work will get the extra edge when working with Motion 4 etc. I had many layers of hi res stills in 720p animating in realtime in Motion. iLife seems to be ok, I don't use anything other than Gband, itunes, and iphoto. All seems to be ok. Have not done a 4k redcam color correct yet.

I bought a generic xbox/ps3/computer game adapter which is no more than a wireless ethernet bridge. Got internet, but I can't access my other "real" macs. They show up on the sidebar though. Internet seems a little slow.

Created a test install and did the 10.6.2 combo update. No problems. It has been reported that SleepEnabler.kext has given users kp problems. I never had it since I don't care about sleep(in both paradigms). Updated t.he apps and the download speed dramatically increased after the 10.6.2 update. Maybe a fluke? Still no shares.
geekbench.jpg
geekbench64.jpg

I think the original Extra folder link was wrong. I updated that link above as well.

UPDATE 11/24/09

Still no crashes. Final cut Pro works great editing with DVCPRO HD at 1080.
Screen recording with Quicktime X works great even when a bunch of apps are open
Adobe CS4 works great
Blender 3D works but sometimes I get artifacts in the screen redraws and user interface. This is not a hackintosh problem, but a Snow Leopard problem with Blender 2.49b. Same thing happens on my real Macs.
Line input works. Had a microphone hooked up to a mixer, and the mixer is going to the line in on the motherboard.
Firewire port works. Connected my HVX200 up to it and was able to pull files from P2 card as well as seeing a streaming image from the camera.
Only issues are:
Not being able to access other computers on the network. Have not tried to connect directly to ip address.
I might try this on my test drive or this
Sleep...Can live without it

The $64000 question is "Will the AJA Kona 3 card work in this rig?" Can't justify laying down the cash to do a test. Searches have come up empty. Best thing I saw was a post that said "it should work..."

UPDATE 11/27/09

Installed updated kext for onboard LAN with this installer
Internet "feels" better. Just seems more responsive. no, I'm just a dumb@$$ who wants to believe
I can access my Hack including screen sharing(dual monitor layout looks really cool) from other Macs but can't see those Macs from my Hack.(wait....only able to access my Hack once...bonour doesn't work)

UPDATE 11/29/09
Found out that I'm not running 64 bit. Should have checked System profiler earlier. Thanks to letsgetsilly for bringing me back down to earth. I noticed flag -x32 in com.apple.boot.plist so that should have let me know.

So the issues I have are:
Not running 64 bit
Not networking with other macs

UPDATE 12/06/09
Ran ifconfig installer from here to try to get bonjour to work. I did not remove any previous kexts, so I figured it would not work.
My new slogan "The deeper I go, the less I know"
I'm now like the little lost kid who is just staying put until someone finds me. i.e. I'm not trying to clean up what I have done until I get some advice.
Everything else seems to work though, including internet.

UPDATE 12/07/09

Bonjour Works!

Here's what I did per blackosx's instructions (thanks again):
Removed IONetworkingFamily.kext from my extra folder (dragged it to the trash)
Removed RealtekR1000SL.kext from /System/Library/Extensions that I had previously installed (dragged it to the trash)

Emptied trash

From previous ifconfig install:
Removed bonjour64 folder from /Library/StartupItems (sudo rm -R /Library/StartupItems/bonjour64)
Removed ifconfig from /usr/local/bin (sudo rm /usr/local/bin/ifconfig)

Now starting from scratch!
Rebooted...onboard LAN still worked.

Re-installed ifconfig from sonotone.(see previous update for link)

Rebooted

File and Screen sharing now work.
Thanks goes out to blackosx for helping me out, and sonotone for the Realtek Bonjour enabler installer.

(I had done all this twice and I still didn't get it to work. Reason was I kept installing ifconfig to (en0) and my cable was plugged into (en1). So watch out for that dumb mistake.)

Issues now:
No sleep...still don't care, but may get cocky and try to fix that, just to do it
no 64 bit...don't really feel like it's an issue, but I mention it.
still a noob

UPDATE 12/16/09

Seems like all the 4870 cards have vanished from the earth. It was brought to my attention recently, and damned if I couldn't find one myself on the internets.
I'm getting overclocking fever, and settled on getting one of these
I'll document(noob friendly) my experience in the future, so stay tuned. Looks like I might have to install Windows to do it (ugg), because a lot of the tools from various tutorials runs on Windows.

UPDATE 12/22/09

After pulling my hair out from the frustration of not being able to get ubuntu and Windows 7 to play nice and triple boot with my Hack, I finally figured it out.

Here is what I did:
Unplugged Mac OS X drive on SATA 0, and also 2 GUID media drives
Windoze 7 and Linux to be installed on 640GB drive plugged into SATA 1

Burned a copy of ubuntu 9.04 64 bit and booted it up. Installed ubuntu using the entire hard drive.
Rebooted the ubuntu disk and chose the live CD option (won't make any changes to the system)
Opened up Partition Editor from System/Administration (gparted) and shrank my ubuntu partition to allow 300GB of unallocated disk space after the ubuntu partition. After it finished It showed from left to right about 276GB ubuntu, 300GB of unallocated space, and about 24GB of swap(for linux). Did not format the unallocated space to NTFS. Gonna let Windoze do that.
Popped in my windoze disk and installed that to the unallocated space using the advanced option. If you have an upgrade disk and don't want to install a previous version, do not enter the serial number, and uncheck automatically activate windows. After installation, hit start button type regedit, say yes to the annoying popup, then click edit>find, and type mediabootinstall. Double click MediaBootInstall and change the number from 1 to 0. Click ok and close out the registry editor.
Click start again and type cmd. hold down ctrl>shift>enter.
type "slmgr /rearm"
close cmd window. Restart/activate/etc.

Great!, Windoze overwrote the linux boot loader. No problem
Booted my trusty ubuntu live cd
Opened up a terminal and did the following

>sudo grub
>find /boot/grub/stage1
"it will spit out a hard drive reference like (hd0,0)...use whatever it shows you in the next instructions"
>root (hd0,0)
>setup (hd0,0)
"you need to type (hd0,0) or whatever it showed you, not (hd0) which was what I had typed on previous attempts. typing setup (hd0,0) will install the boot loader to your ubuntu partition and not the MBR. If you do install it to the MBR, the penguin won't show up in your Chameleon boot screen and you will feel like nobody loves you.
>quit
>exit
Remove live cd,
Shut down. Plugged the drives back in.
Boot, and enjoy triple booting with chameleon.
Now if I could only get my ATI 4870 to friggin work with blender in linux. That will have to die another day.
I might have made a mistake in the previous instructions.
I ain't responsible if you frig up your rig. I'm a noob myself.

UPDATE 07/03/10

Updated to 10.6.4 No problems I can see!
Got sound
USB
Networking

Note *I am still not using any sleepenabler

I cloned my drive using SuperDuper then reinstalled the bootloaders using LifeHackers start to finish guide again, because I forgot how to do it(terminal method). For some reason my extra folder got changed, so I just copied it back over from my source drive.

Downloaded the 10.6.4 combo update and installed it on the cloned drive just to be safe. Actually I had a lot of updates piled up and installed them all.
Still rockin!

I've been doing some heavy duty motion graphics work with this rig, since I built it and I can confidently say that it delivers the goods.

The bad news...Linux won't boot up anymore which really sux, because I was doing a lot of blender 3d stuff there. I'm sure I can fix it, I've just been toooo busy with piles and piles of tv edit.

UPDATE 04/02/12

Well it's been about 2 and a half years, and I saw my Hack through to 10.6.8. I recently tried fixing some audio issues with it and I inadvertently hosed the system. I felt like it was the time to do a clean re-install. But why re-install Snow leopard, when there's Lion? Seems like folks are happy with the latest update, so I gave it a try. I'm now running 10.7.3, and it was the easiest install I've ever done.

In addition to:

http://tonymacx86.com/

I also used this guide:

http://www.mymac4music.com/category/main/hackintosh/hackintosh-tutorial/

 

 

UPDATE 07/24/14

Now running Mavericks. Everything worked first try on a clean install.

Running Adobe CC 2014 with no issues.

Upgrading video card to Geforce GTX 760

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LogicalUser
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From everything I've read you'll be far, far better off with a dual DVI video card instead of the DVI/HDMI/VGA combo card, at least if you want good compatibility & dual monitor support. Apple has used dual-DVI cards exclusively for the better part of a decade now, and I've seen people complaining about the Vapor-X cards by name, as well as someone else last week complaining about a DVI/VGA 4870.

 

 

also... "the MBP with the nVidia 8800GT"... how did you manage to shoehorn a 8800GT into a Macbook Pro?

Could we get some pics? ;)

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brokenjack
brokenjack
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also... "the MBP with the nVidia 8800GT"... how did you manage to shoehorn a 8800GT into a Macbook Pro?

Could we get some pics? :D

 

My bad...it's the GeForce 8600M GT that comes stock.

 

Thanks for the advice. I think I was just throwing darts at the different 4870 flavors.

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  • 3 weeks later...
brokenjack
brokenjack
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I'm glad to see you've got yourself a decent machine ;) How has Final Cut treated you in this transition?

 

 

When I first installed it, it kept crashing after the splash screen. I had disabled the onboard lan in bios, and OS X was id'ing the firewire lan device as FW0. Actually I disabled it because of what you said about kernel panics. After a bit of research, I learned that final cut pro looks for the first lan device as en0. I re-enabled onboard lan, and that fixed the issue. Actually, I just bought a wireless game adapter and hooked it up to bridge the internet out to my detached garage(man cave) and I'm writing this on the new system. Onboard lan hasn't given me any problems. The fact that I can now edit in DVCPRO HD now comfortably is the best. Haven't done any 4k color correction yet. I'm hoping the 1gb 4870 will handle it ok. I'm still in shock at how well the system runs. One issue I have discovered tonight was the lack of connection to my imac in the house. It showed up in sidebar, but haven't been able to connect. I got rid of the atheros card. No luck in finding anything that would make it work.

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brokenjack
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the onboard ethernet on many gigabyte motherboards requires a bit of fiddling to get working 100% with real macs with stuff like bonjour

 

oh, and I've read about some new Atheros wireless drivers for 10.6.2 x64 that might be useful, I believe they were over at netkas.org?

 

I'll fiddle with it in the future. If the atheros works that'll let me hook up my game adapter to my blu-ray player. Dumb question, but I'd like to clone my boot drive to do tests with updates and what not. What's the best method? Yes I'm too lazy to do a search right now.

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letsgetsilly
letsgetsilly
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I've followed your method and I'm running into a strange problem.

 

After following the lifehacker instructions on how to extract the Snow Leopard image onto the USB disk, I ran the custom install script that was also provided (instead of doing the manual terminal work).

 

Then, I deleted the "Extras" folder at the root of the USB disk and replaced it with the Extras folder that exists in this dmg.

 

When I boot off of the USB stick I am unable to see my hard drive in the "Select disk to install os x" screen in the installation wizard. Chameleon bootloader sees both my USB stick and the hard drive when I boot up, but the installer fails to completely.

 

I've reformatted my destination drive several times to a GUID partition, Mac OSX extended (journaled case-sensitive) without any luck of it showing up in the screen.

 

My instincts tell me that I'm missing some kind of driver for the SATA controller, but I don't know how to go about trouble shooting that.

 

Any suggestions?

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brokenjack
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I've followed your method and I'm running into a strange problem.

 

After following the lifehacker instructions on how to extract the Snow Leopard image onto the USB disk, I ran the custom install script that was also provided (instead of doing the manual terminal work).

 

Then, I deleted the "Extras" folder at the root of the USB disk and replaced it with the Extras folder that exists in this dmg.

 

When I boot off of the USB stick I am unable to see my hard drive in the "Select disk to install os x" screen in the installation wizard. Chameleon bootloader sees both my USB stick and the hard drive when I boot up, but the installer fails to completely.

 

I've reformatted my destination drive several times to a GUID partition, Mac OSX extended (journaled case-sensitive) without any luck of it showing up in the screen.

 

My instincts tell me that I'm missing some kind of driver for the SATA controller, but I don't know how to go about trouble shooting that.

 

Any suggestions?

 

Did you hit any key when the lizard shows up? Hmmm... I'd do the manual terminal work, if I were you. I'm a bit of a noob myself, but he lays it down pretty simply. I chose not to use "case sensitive" when formatting for fear of conflict with Adobe products. Try this Extra folder it's from this post

 

Could be a bios setting as well? I don't know. I don't want to give you any bad advice.

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brokenjack
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Can you please indicate whether or not your system is running in 32 bit or 64 bit kernal and extensions through system profiler -> software?

 

Thanks!

 

 

I guess this is what you wanted? It's weird, but I get a geekbench 64bit score that's noticeably higher. I guess I ain't runnin no 64 bit. Most of my extensions say 64bit. BSDKernal says 64 bit(yes) but the one underneath BSDKernal6.0 says no. The same with IOKit and IOKit6.0--Libkern and Libkern6.0--Mach and Mach6.0 respectively. Also System6.0 says no. Everything else says yes except for my keyboard driver.

 

Question is. Can I safely remove the -x32 flag from com.apple.boot.plist in my Extra folder?

64bit.jpg

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brokenjack
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Thanks for the reply. Your setup appears to be the same as mine.

 

I suppose there is only one way to find out if removing the -x32 flag will have an impact.

 

I'm in the same situation. I'll post back if/when I bite the bullet.

 

Even my real Macs aren't running in 64 bit.

Apple will probably get an update out there to bring everything up to 64 bit.

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letsgetsilly
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Sorry, I didn't have a chance to check out changing the flag. I'm not sure where the OP is referring to the flag, but my guess is that it was in his com.apple.asdf(cannot remember the name). I didn't see a flag in there for mine.

 

My hackintosh is out of my hands now so someone else will have to perform the experiment.

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brokenjack
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Will you please tell me where you found your bootloader from? I can't find one for the Gigabyte UD5 motherboard anywhere.

Are you talking about a CD? All of the extra files and info you need are in the first post if you're following lifehackers guide. The lifehacker guide tells you where to download the bootloader files and how to setup your thumbdrive to boot from. Then replace the extra folder from Cybex.

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brokenjack
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I am using a similiar setup, so your guide is really nice.

 

Can you link to the exact lifehacker guide you used? Thanks

 

Also what bios version should I use?

 

 

My rig, soon finished

 

 

7.JPG

Lifehacker guide

I think I updated to f7e? can't really remember, but I don't think it was the bleeding edge latest release.

 

Case looks cool(literally). You going with water cooling?

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letsgetsilly
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How hard was it to let it go? Did you like OS X?

 

I think there is some debate about 64bit, but I would assume FCP would run faster. I have no idea.

 

Check out this link

 

 

Yes, it was hard to let it go. There was so much more we had to learn about each other :whistle:

 

I literally went from not knowing anything about Macs to building one and becoming comfortable in the environment. The terminal stuff is still a bit over my head, but I really love the interface. So simple and easy to navigate. I now can understand the love for macs.

 

My next computer I purchase will without a doubt be a hackintosh/win7 hybrid. Maybe in a year or so.

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brokenjack
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Yes, it was hard to let it go. There was so much more we had to learn about each other :D

 

I literally went from not knowing anything about Macs to building one and becoming comfortable in the environment. The terminal stuff is still a bit over my head, but I really love the interface. So simple and easy to navigate. I now can understand the love for macs.

 

My next computer I purchase will without a doubt be a hackintosh/win7 hybrid. Maybe in a year or so.

 

Yep I made the switch 4 years ago after apple started using intel chips. I use to bash Macs for reasons I can't understand now.

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