Hackintosh for Adobe Creative Suite 5

[rbilsbor]

Hey all,

 

I finished my Adobe CS5-specialized hackintosh build, and wrote a long and detailed article for how to build it (it's not only for CS5, however; it should help anyone build a hackintosh, regardless of their reasons). Here it is:

 

How to Build a Hackintosh

 

[You can find my original questions below]

 

I would REALLY love to hear from anyone who:

 

1. Is running the Adobe CS5 suite on their Hackintosh

2. With CUDA acceleration working in Premiere Pro CS5

 

If you've got a system up and running, I'd love to know your configuration so I can ensure mine will work! I spent a lot of time reading everything I could get my hands on here, and while I'm really, really excited to build my first hackintosh, it's hard to find people who are definitely using CUDA to its fullest on a Mac.

 

My own research has yielded the following setup:

 

Core i7-920

Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5

CORSAIR XMS3 12GB (6X2GB)

nVidia GTX 285

SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 1TB HD

 

I know this is the forum where everyone comes to ask for free advice so I'm not expecting too many responses, but I'm currently editing 1080p footage on a 4.5 year-old MacBook Pro and can't wait to upgrade... Thanks so much for ANY help you can give me!

[Mackilroy]

I don't use CS5, but I can guarantee your hardware will work very nicely for OS X, and the GTX 285 is absolutely supported by Adobe's Mercury Engine.

[TomCom]

Maybe a few people will be shocked to hear that, but Corsair memory has a high failure rate. Kingston, G-Skill and OCZ are better choice.

You should also consider an SSD for that kind of rig (C300?), a 600W PSU and a chassis with a good ventilation (double intake and exhaust, for instance).

The motherboard's as compatible as it can be, and so is the GTX285 with Snow Leopard.

[rbilsbor]

Thanks guys! Will definitely not get Corsair memory (I guess that's why it's cheaper...)

 

As for motherboards, I'd prefer to use the GA-X58A-UD5 due to its support for USB 3.0 (in the future, at least, when OS X supports it) and its wider availability. It seems to be a bit less compatible, but I'm hoping it will be more widely supported going forward, and the Kakewalk method seems to work somewhat...

 

Any recommendations for CPU cooling (air, not water-based)? I'm planning on overclocking the 920 to 3.2GHz, which I think doesn't require liquid cooling.

[Kabyl]

Nuctua NH-D14.

[d-track]

i tried cs5 full suite and it caused me to reinstall everything so as the OS.

it turned off vsync that caused screen tearing in every application even youtube videos.

tearing is my most hated visual. trashed the whole suite and still no vsync.

i havent tired cs4 after the OSX reinstall. if anyone has any tip, its much appreciated!

but have to mention this probably due to my graphic card wich is an intel gma950 onboard.

i checked the adobe site and the requirement is an opengl compatible card. and gma950 is one of them, and i use latest vanilla gma kexts (by dsdt). the same thing which is in the older macbooks.

[Scansterz]

I am running it. I agree, arduous to set up Premier Pro.

 

I can outline what I did since originally it did not work for me either.

So I said, I'll test it then. I took out an new 500gb HD and set up a new fresh install of OSX. (Did not bother with gigabit network, sleep only got audio working internally and thru firewire SaphirePro40... so I know things worked)

 

I only installed Premier Pro & CUDA. So I know nothing else is interfering (unlike like my regular mac... after installing and running things get 'layered' - for lack of better term and hosed up - for the correct term...

 

I ran the GPU sniffer and FINALLY the GPU sniffer said my video card was CUDA compatible... and picked up the name and placed it in that GPU text file inside the contents folder (you know which one if you were reading the posts here on how to set it up - I just don't have the name off the top of my head)

 

I restarted. Opened up a HD project (mine are 1280x720)... and it was there!

I did [later] install the rest of the Suite and it wiped out that text file, so I edited that again and it worked fine.

I noticed that I could render in the background and be working and editing in PP just fine...

 

EP45T UL3LR - EVGA 768mb 9600 GSO -4GB ram a few HDs - large...10.6.4 a few kexts...

 

NOTE: on that board I had to take out the two 1gb memory chips to make this work. When they were in the render would crash... once I figured that out the board and all has been stable. They have to be in the white slots.

HandBrake works in 64bit too now. I also set my kernel to load/run 64bit and on this machine I am NOT loading in everything and it's sister because I need it for Production and Music (Logic Pro - Final Cut etc...)

 

Things that are important is the gigabit speeds on the network since transferring a file around takes so much less time when that is running right. I'll set that up now - It broke since 10.6.4 - so if that does not work, I can now quickly rebuild this and leave it at 10.6.3... I don't care about sleep because that is the last thing I want it to do when I set it up to render.

[Z0ID]

Yes, works great !

 

10.6.4 retail install on a Asus P5B-e & Asus GTX 260 you have to run the system in 64 bit mode, download the latest GPU Drivers from here http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce-macos...f03-driver.html and the latest CUDA drivers from here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/macosx-cuda-3.1-driver.html . Browse in your PremPro App and locate the textfile cuda_supported_card.txt If you have a Cuda enabled Device (GTS 8400 - GTX 485) and its not in this list then you have to enter the correct name of your card here... and then badaboom prem runs video encoding without heavy CPU load ! Super computing for the masses^^

 

If everything works you see something like this in your log:

 

 

G´Luck

[rbilsbor]

Hey guys,

 

So this was my first Hackintosh undertaking and I'm happy to say it was 100% successful -- there were of course hoops I had to jump through and problems to troubleshoot, but I'm now running a Hac Pro that sleeps perfectly, that has sound working, it's totally stable, CUDA is working great in CS5, and overall it's very fast. Thanks so much for your help! I made some alterations based on your recommendations.

 

There are two things that aren't working great, however, so I'd like anyone's opinion on better options while I can still return/exchange parts. The two issues are:

 

1. I can't run my OCZ Gold OCZ3X1600LV6GK memory at 1600MHz. The system gets really unstable, it won't start up, Memtest gives me errors, etc. It works fine at 1079MHz, but that's not what I bought it for... any good recommendations for alternatives? It was on the Gigabyte's approved list, but I don't feel like it's reliable enough for me to recommend to other people (which I'll be doing once this system is stable). This stuff was cheap and I can't afford RAM that's twice as expensive, but let me know any alternatives...

 

2. The EW-7711UAn Wi-Fi adapter works, but it's far from ideal and for some reason I have to connect to a random open network before I can connect to my own WPA network every single time. It's really strange, but it won't connect to my network unless I create an ad-hoc one with my laptop and connect to that first. It's pointless and a time-waster, so I'm wondering if other people have good Wi-Fi solutions they're using? The Ralink WirelessUtility is also really ugly, but I've seen people have found a way around it on the forums here. Mostly I just need something that will connect the first time.

 

So -- RAM and Wi-Fi solutions, let me know yours! Thanks again, this world of Hackintoshing is great.

[Z0ID]

Wi-Fi solutions (...), let me know yours!

 

I personally prefer PCI Cards (Atheros based) in my HackPro to have the native osx tools available like the Menubar extension, and I also dislike the 3rd Party Wlan Tools... they are often a bit buggy and sometimes there are no 64bit versions available. And there is also a risk that OSX updates may result in a unpredictable state (sometimes it helps to install the driver again.., sometimes you have to recover old Kexts, sometimes nothing works..) but thats just my opinion.

Maybe there is a solution For Your Edimax USB Dongle Problem, have you ever tried the ZYDAS Driver (ZD12XX) ?

It supports the Edimax EW-7317UG Chipset and this one could be familiar with yours.

 

g`luck

[rbilsbor]

Thanks for the tip TeutonPE, which card in particular are you using?

[geiman]

i tried cs5 full suite and it caused me to reinstall everything so as the OS.

it turned off vsync that caused screen tearing in every application even youtube videos.

tearing is my most hated visual. trashed the whole suite and still no vsync.

i havent tired cs4 after the OSX reinstall. if anyone has any tip, its much appreciated!

but have to mention this probably due to my graphic card wich is an intel gma950 onboard.

i checked the adobe site and the requirement is an opengl compatible card. and gma950 is one of them, and i use latest vanilla gma kexts (by dsdt). the same thing which is in the older macbooks.

 

My Toshiba hack had an Inte 950 graphics chipset that gave me tearing issues. I used and EFI String to fix it though, kexts did not work as well for me. I think I used the one from the old OSX86Tools utility.

 

That ram issue sounds a little strange though... Do you have another OS installed that you experience the same problems when you RAM is at a faster speed? If not, run some tests from a linux live CD or something just to make sure you didn't get some faulty RAM; wouldn't be the first time. I'm pretty sure Ubuntu still comes with the MemTest utilities on its live cd.

[Z0ID]

Thanks for the tip TeutonPE, which card in particular are you using?

 

Hey rbilsbor,

I use a "TP-Link 54M Wireless PCI Adaptor" also known as TL-WN551G Ver1.5 with self modified Apple Atheros Drivers (64Bit) I had to integrate the Menubar Wifi Tool by myself but that wasnt very difficult (with a little help of the Pazifist Tool)... The card itself is very cheap 10-20 €/$ in the bay.

 

g`LUCK

[jiiseven]

Yes, works great !

 

10.6.4 retail install on a Asus P5B-e & Asus GTX 260 you have to run the system in 64 bit mode, download the latest GPU Drivers from here http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce-macos...f03-driver.html and the latest CUDA drivers from here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/macosx-cuda-3.1-driver.html .

 

Hi,

 

I tried those drivers with 10.6.4 and all I got was a scrambled screen and I was forced to reinstall SL. I have Asus P5Q-E and XFX GTX 260 - the card is working okay with modifications to com.apple.boot.plist. I'm however intrested in CUDA..:-)

 

How did you get those drivers working?

 

Thanks in advance!

[Z0ID]

Hi Dude

 

modifications to com.apple.boot.plist.

 

I think u mean u have inserted a GFX String ?

have u inserted the HardwareID`s into NVDANV50.kext/NVDAResman ?

and I have the GraphicsUpdate for Snow Leopard (HT4386) NOT installed

cause everything runs flawless. If nothing works upload your GFX String maybe there`s a problem.

[projekt k]

my system is on a ud3p with a core 2 quad with a NVidia 9 Series 512 MB graphics card and I run CS5. Runs extremely nice. As nice as a 8-12 core Mac Pro is, you realize when you build a hack pro how much you don't need that much power but how much more powerful your rig is compared to an iMac.

[Mr McNab]

I have the full CS5 "Master Collection" running without a hitch on my hackintosh, but I have no-idea if my GPU is doing any CUDA processing. I will be exploring this as soon as I have time.

 

My system:

MB: Gigabyte GA-G41MT-D3

CPU: Intel E6500

RAM: x2 2GB DDR3 (4GB)

GPU: Gigabyte GTS 250 1GB

 

I've been running Premier and Photoshop on dual monitors very nicely. I don't know anything about hackintoshing, just following beginners guides. I really haven't had any problems at all with the system, but I don't know how to check things like CUDA and so I need more help/research.

[rbilsbor]

I finished my build for Adobe CS5. I wrote a very thorough article that should help anyone looking to build a Hackintosh. I added it to my first post here as well:

 

How to Build a Hackintosh