On this episode of 5 THINGS, have you ever thought about using a Hackintosh?
Wondering how they perform?
Or maybe, just maybe, you wanna build one?
Fear not my tech friends, for on this episode, we've got you covered.
Hello and welcome to another episode of 5 THINGS – a series dedicated to answering the
5 burning tech questions that you have about technologies and workflows in the media creation space.
Plus, tech stuff I dig, and how it's used.
I'm still your host Michael Kammes.
So, uhhh, I understand you like Macs.
So do I.
So much so that today we're gonna choose the parts you need, build one, and see how it
performs against current Apple computers.
Let's dive in.
Why build one?
If you spend any amount of time following Apple, you've realized that they are a consumer
technology juggernaut.
Phones, tablets, watches, headphones.
This has led some to speculate that Apple isn't paying attention to the professional market.
"'Cause Apple doesn't care about us!"
[cough]
That is, Apple isn't making computers for those of us who need a lot of horsepower for creative
applications, and expandability to make the system more powerful than what the factory
model ships with...or what Apple deems us as worthy of.
We also need to look at the cost.
The Apple logo carries a price premium, and without much exception, Apple computers are
more expensive than their Windows or Linux counterparts.
And while I concede that a ready-to-roll machine should cost more than the sum of it's parts,
Apple tends to inflate this cost more than most.
Another reason to build a Hackintosh....is, well...
"because it's there!"
Because you can.
Well, physically, anyway.
I'm not a lawyer, and debating the legalities of building a Hackintosh is not my idea of
an afternoon well spent.
However, the tech challenge in and of itself is enough for some to dig in.
Lastly, owning a Hackintosh means you'll at some point you're gonna need troubleshoot
the build due to a software update breaking things.
If you don't build it yourself, you're not gonna know where the bodies are buried, and
you'll be relying on someone else forever to fix it.
For all of these reasons, I rolled up my sleeves, grabbed some thermal paste, and went down
the road of building my very own Hackintosh.
"Look before you leap."
When building my Hackintosh, this was my cardinal rule.
See what others had done before, what hardware and software junkies had deemed as humanly
possible, and follow build guides.
Although I was willing to build it, I didn't want it to be a constant source of annoyance
due to glitches, and then no avenue to search for answers if things went south.
Part of building a Hackintosh is being prepared for things to break with software updates
– and to only update after others had found the bugs.
I wanted to keep the tinkering after the build to a minimum.
More createy, less fixey.
The main site online for a build like this is tonymacx86.com.
The site has tons of example builds, a large community on their forums, and even better,
users who have done this a lot longer than me.
A great starting point is the "Buyer's Guide" which has parts and pieces that lend themselves
to the power than many Apple machines have.
A CustoMac Mini, for example, is closely related to the horsepower and form factor you'd find
with a Mac Mini.
As I tend to ride computers out for awhile, I decided to build a machine with some longevity.
"So this is the oldest personal computer in the world. Pretty historic junk."
"But the question is, 'what do you do with it?'"
Longevity meant building a more powerful machine, and thus as close as possible to a Mac Pro.
And wouldn't you know it, there is a section called "CustoMac Pro".
The downside to a machine as powerful and expandable as a CustoMac Pro is that it's
fairly large.
After I took inventory of all of the expansion cards I'd want to use, I realized I didn't
need everything that a CustoMac Pro afforded me.
The large motherboard in the system – known as an ATX board, was simply overkill and was
too large of a footprint for my work area.
I could actually go with something a little bit smaller and still have plenty of horsepower.
So, I looked into the CustoMac mATX builds.
M stands for Micro, and the micro ATX board would be similar to a full sized ATX board, but
a bit smaller.
I'd also lose some expandability with a smaller, micro ATX motherboard, but I could use the
same processor that I would use in a full size build – in this case, a Core i7-8700K,
and still get a decent amount of RAM (64GB) and have a couple of PCIe slots for a Graphics
card and future a 10GigE card.
I then went through the process of combing through the forums to see if there were any
guides or posts pertaining to the parts outlined in the CustoMac micro ATX section.
And wouldn't you know it, there was an extremely in-depth post that outlined each step in detail.
Next, I cross referenced the parts listed with reviews online, and I also consulted
various communities and folks to get some independent opinions.
This caused me to change a few things up, like getting quieter fans, a more stylish
case, and a few minor tweaks.
At this point, I was fairly convinced the parts and accompanying guides and forum posts
were going to be enough to point the way, so I pulled the trigger and bought the parts.
As the build was going to be massively based on the work that others had done before me
I purchased the parts via the site's referral codes.
Sure, I paid a little bit more, but let's support the community, eh?
I'll post the exact specs of the machine at 5thingsseries.com, along with the prices,
as well.
Now that the parts were ordered, it was time to prep the MacOS installer.
A computer won't do much for most of us unless it has an OS.
In order to get the MacOS onto a non Apple machine, we need to prep the OS appropriately.
Step 1 is to download Sierra or High Sierra from the app store on another Apple computer.
Step 2 requires us to download a Mac app called Unibeast.
Unibeast will take the MacOS installer, and place it on a bootable USB stick along with
an app called Clover, which contains the files needed to allow the OS to install on non Apple
hardware.
For Step 3, we need to format a USB stick for the OS to be on.
Make sure it's formatted as MacOS Extended (Journaled), and make sure the partition size
is relatively small.
Unibeast recommends a 7GB partition.
Larger sizes, like newer 128GB, 256GB or even larger sticks, just won't fly – partition
them into a smaller size.
I also recommend a USB 3.0 stick, it'll make things go a little bit quicker.
Launch Unibeast for Step 4 and follow the prompts to select the USB stick, as well as
various options for install – such as the Clover EFI Boot type (which I'll go into in
a minute) and inserting legacy graphics drivers into the install if necessary.
Then, let Unibeast create your installer on your USB stick.
A note about the EFI Bootloader config: When your Hackintosh boots, it looks for an EFI
partition.
The EFI partition contains basic system drivers and options.
If your EFI folder is borked, well, so will your build.
This is where Unibeast, Clover, and your hardware need to be in sync.
As you'll see later on in the video, my EFI folder during the USB stick build was no bueno,
and caused a bunch of issues.
Now that we have our MacOS installer prepped, let's get to the hardware build.
Day 1 of the build, and I'm here at Key Code Media.
It's Saturday. No one's here. So they let me build the machine with the caveat that I tell everyone that
they do not condone the building of a Hackintosh and that Apple is a valued partner to KeyCode Media.
All right. Here's all my gear but I'm missing one thing.
Alright now that I'm caffeinated let's get to work.
First thing is to get the side and top panels off of the Corsair Air 240 case.
That way I can start installing the parts and pieces and started threading cables to the right place
so they can attach to the internal components and motherboard as easy as possible.
First thing you're probably wondering is why you don't have a blazer on, to which I would respond "It's the weekend, brah."
Second of all we've got the power supply unpacked we've got the case unpacked, and
first thing to do is install the power supply in the case. If do that first that means that can maneuver the cables around
everything else they put inside there so I traditionally do that first..so let's get that installed.
For the power supply I went with the Corsair RM750.
This power supplies a little bit overkill for the build as it stands today.
However I intend to install a 10 GigE card to the future plus some existing spinning hard drives.
I also anticipate needing to install more fans as the system grows.
The 750 has plenty of Jacks from which you can run power to all of these devices.
So now that the power supply is installed I'm going to flip the case over to the second compartment
and we're going to retrofit the fans with more quiet ones and then we'll get into the ooey gooey good stuff
of the motherboard and GPU and CPU.
So as they poured over the parts list I made a few changes namely I chose different fans.
Noctua fans are known for being exceptionally quiet and there are only a few dollars more than traditional fans.
So even at first glance you can see that these fans are completely different.
The Corsair fan right here is hard plastic. You'll see it's a bit flimsy
and to hold it to the case is actually screw holes that go through here through the fans to the case
which could cause vibration after a while.
The Noctua fans are a lot sturdier and see there's rubber on the sides and also instead of screws that go through
there are actually rubber grommet that we would put through and that of course will cut down on vibration
We've got the 120 millimeter fan installed ...the rubber grommets are kind of a pain.
Make sure you have needle nose pliers to actually pull them through the fan.
The motherboard is what I spent the most time researching.
I went with an Asus Z370 as it could take the same processor as a larger motherboard.
It also gives expendability for the future.
So right now I'm being limited by two things.
First I don't seem to have screws for the motherboard. It doesn't appear the motherboard came with screws,
they should have come with the case, but I can't seem to find the screws that came with the case.
I'm also out of coffee.
No.
No.
Too big, dammit.
No.
No.
No.
Too big.
So after a half hour of searching I found enough screws throughout the shop to get the motherboard in.
They're all kind of a mismatch of orphan screws
but it's all in there.
Okay here's the processor, the Intel Core i7-8700K.
it's their latest model and their reviews online have been great.
All right now time to put the processor in...
Now the processor is in we want to put the heat sink on so we can cool the processor down.
I went with the other Noctua part, the NH-D9L. Now I had the option to go liquid cooled.
But anyone that remembers the old Mac G5 - the leaks that happened - would never want to repeat that.
So the heat sink has a fan inside of the heat sink as opposed to over it.
So I messed up. Apparently the heat sink needs to have a backing plate which comes through these holes here...
and unfortunately these holes can't be accessed from the other side of this case.
So I have to pull up the motherboard. Put this underneath, then put them on the board back in.
So I'll be back in a bit.
Okay the motherboard is out. Now I can place the bracket through the rear of the unit.
Since the motherboard is already out I'll just finish installing everything here.
Let's put in our brackets.
We need some thermal paste between the heatsink and the processor.
Then we can screw the heatsink over the processor.
Now I can put the fan into the heatsink.
Okay so now we have RAM. I wanted to go to 128GB but going with a smaller motherboard means I had to rethink this.
So I went with 64GB which I'll install in pairs.
I'm kind of excited to try this as my boot drive. It's an M.2 NVMe.
It's essentially an SSD but instead of plugging it into a traditional SATA port
it has a faster port on the motherboard for read/write speeds in the thousands of megabytes a second.
They do however get mounted kind of funky here vertical to the motherboard.
As for the graphics card I went with the GeForce GTX 1070, as I plan on using it for CUDA acceleration in Adobe apps.
All right all the parts are in. Graphics card is in. Processor, RAM, heatsink, fan. Let's fire it up and see if it works.
Fans started.
GPU fans are going.
Rear fan is going.
"Flux capacitor...fluxxing."
No smoke... no flames.
Lights on the motherboard...
and look at that!
Looks like we're getting something on the screen.
Now here we have the Asus motherboard bios which are going to configure according to the install guide recommendations on the website.
So I've made all my changes. I've got my bootable Mac USB stick.
We'll put that in the back of the machine here...now will save the BIOS changes and we'll restart.
And now now we have the moment of truth.
The Mac USB stick is in, and it's booting...
Well that's promising.
And there we go!
With the machine built and no smoke coming out, it was now time to dig into the Mac OS.
So here we are with build day 2.
Back at Key Code for day two.
I'm reminded by a text that KeyCode does still not condone this build. So there you go.
It's day two and I'm back at it. Yesterday we got the machine to boot and today we're going to troubleshoot Mac OS issues.
Let's dive in.
Oh Shit.
That's not right.
Is that the wrong driver?
Shit.
I told the Clover installer when I built the USB stick to install Nvidia drivers...maybe chose the wrong ones.
I suppose I can download the ones from the website. Let's give that a shot.
Shit.
Looks like the Ethernet drivers weren't installed, either.
Are the wrong drivers installed?
Maybe I should have made a hackin-watch or a hackin-phone?
Is it too late to have a donut?
Is it too early for whisky?
What if C-A-T really spelled DOG?
What the Hell!?
Did I choose the wrong career?
Is this an EFI partition problem?
Did Han Shoot first?
So, is goofy a dog or isn't he? I mean he walks a dog and wears pants.
[Music-Starship "We Built This City"]
[Record Scratch]
Alexa no Jefferson Starship while building a Hackintosh.
Alexa: "I won't play any of that weak ass Starship shit any more"
If the graphics drivers aren't loading, what else isn't loading?
Microwaves are too slow.
I'll probably have to edit the Config.plist file.
Did I turn off the stove?
I should have told that driver that NO, HE was the jerk.
Is CUDA installed?
What Is the Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow?
I wonder if there was a version mismatch between Clover and Unibeast.
I should have ordered the steak.
[Hums and taps foot to "We Built This City"]
So what I think may be happening is the wrong drivers are being installed.
from the EFI partition...which just may be hosed.
So, I need to change them out with known good drivers.
What I'm going to do it utilize a script I downloaded; EFI Mounter 3.
Enter in my password...
I'm going to mount the EFI...
Alright, what I've got here is I've mounted the EFI partitions of both my USB boot stick as well as the install of Mac OS 10 on my SSD.
I'm going to copy the EFI folder from one volume to another and see if the old EFI will help this boot any quicker.
So let's open the stick and let's open the EFI...there we go.
And now I'm going to copy this EFI, and I'm going to select "Replace".
OK, now I'm going to shut down, pull out the USB stick and see if that helps.
That's a lot better!
Let's log in.
"1-2-3-4-5". Same as my luggage.
Graphics seems to be right. It's using the Web drivers I'm willing to bet. Let's take a look.
And yes it is the Nvidea web driver. I think that may have solved it.
I guess that means what was causing the issue was rewriting the EFI folder via the newer Clover.
The build is done. Mac OS seems to be performing nicely as do some of the more creative apps.
The machine has all put together and all the cables are cable managed.
Now it's time to take it back home and put it back into the studio.
The question everyone asks is "how is the performance?"
First we have black and white analytics. Raw horsepower.
A common tool to measure this is Geekbench. Download the Geekbench app, let it run and whammo, you get performance metrics.
I decided to compare my build against a top of the line Late 2017 iMac Pro, retailing for $13,199
as well as against a Late 2013 Mac Pro canister, with a retail cost of about $7,000 today.
My build came in at just over $2500. I've outlined the specs of each machine here.
You can see that my build beats the Mac Pro hands down...
but is handily beat by the multicore performance of a iMac Pro, albeit at a price tag that's 5x as expensive.
As each of these computers were built with much different parts, a straight horsepower comparison isn't enough.
So, I also benchmarked all 3 systems with Adobe, Apple, and Avid software.
First, I did timeline render tests with Adobe Premiere Pro 2018.
I also used Adobe Media Encoder and exported to an h.264.
The results are pretty much inline with the Geekbench results.
The iMac Pro was the fastest performer, followed by the Hackintosh, and then the aging Mac Pro. Remember, the shorter the time, the better.
Now on to FCP X, v10.4.2, where I expected my system to fall down
due to the graphics card being nVidia card as opposed to the AMD cards found inside other Apple computers.
I did a timeline render benchmark, plus a Compressor encode time trial.
For renders, all 3 systems were very, very fast, in fact FCP X rendered faster than any of the other NLEs.
My Hackintosh did indeed end up rendering the slowest – however all systems rendered within a few seconds of one another.
That being said, my build exported the fastest, barely beating out the iMac Pro.
Lastly, Avid Media Composer, where I tested with the 2018.5 Ultimate version.
The iMac Pro came in first again, with the MacPro actually slightly beating my Hackintosh...
however all 3 systems were within seconds of one another.
Export times are largely irrelevant out of Media Composer.
Each system exported at exactly the same time - given Media Composers reliance on 32 bit Quicktime 7 for exports.
So, "how long did it take you to build it?"
The initial build took 9 hours. This includes research, the hardware build, the software build and initial software troubleshooting.
However, in the month since I've build the machine, I've had to spend an additional 3 hours troubleshooting
thermal issues, and buying 2 additional fans and installing them.
Do I have any regerts? A few.
The motherboard I chose didn't have Thunderbolt on board.
Not that I have any Thunderbolt devices, but it would have been nice to have an option for the future.
I also haven't seen much performance gains between OpenCL and CUDA playback inside Adobe apps.
I purposely went with a GeForce GTX 1070 SC as I expected performance gains with CUDA enabled.
As other apps – namely Final Cut X, are optimized for AMD cards, I would have rather gone with a Vega card,
use OpenCL inside Adobe, and still maximize the performance from other AMD enhanced apps.
So, was it worth it?
As a full time tech nerd and part time creative – yes.
First time I've built a computer from scratch in over a decade,
and I learned more about the underpinnings of the Mac OS than I otherwise would have.
But does this cost savings outweigh the piece of mind of a fully supported, warrantied and sexy looking piece of Apple Gear?
For someone who is a full time creative professional- I'm gonna say no.
You need a system that works, one that you can apply updates when needed,
and easily add additional hardware and software.
Time is money, and the less time you can spend troubleshooting the better.
Have more Hackintosh questions other than just these 5? Ask me in the Comments section.
Also, don't forget that I'll post all of the parts, pieces, and guides I used for my build at 5thingsseries.com.
Also, please subscribe and share this tech goodness with the rest of your techie friends. The more the merrier!
And I'll be your bestest tech friend.
Until the next episode: learn more, do more – thanks for watching.
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