[Toshi]

Apple simply doesn't offer anything in a desktop form factor between the Mac mini (underpowered, poor graphics cards) and Mac Pro (awesome but $texas). Now, after about 48 hours of hand-wringing and head-banging, I have what appears to be a fully functional Mac Pro equivalent Hackintosh. Here's what I got, what I found out, and what I did to make it work. Many thanks to tonymacx86's blog as well as countless Google searches turning up random bits of information on forums here and there.

Hardware needed to for the Hackintosh Mac Pro that I built, see spreadsheet for product links and prices:

- Antec LifeStyle Solo case
- SeaSonic S12II 430B 430W power supply
- Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 motherboard (rev 2.0 is current)
- Intel Core i5-760 processor
- ATI Radeon HD 5770 graphics card
- Corsair 4 GB DDR3 memory kit
- Samsung 1 TB Spinpoint SATA HDD
- Lite-On SATA DVD burner
- Masscool G751 Shin-Etsu thermal interface material
- Apple USB Ethernet adaptor (I never got the drivers for the motherboard's built-in Ethernet to work but this works out of the box)

Build this computer carefully! Making sure the pins on the CPU's underside line up with those on the motherboard's LGA1156 connector is nerve-wracking, at least until the fans spin up and it boots to the POST screen for the first time. Building the computer is mostly an exercise in hooking things that are labeled as "XYZ" to the "XYZ" plug on the motherboard. It's also a bit of a challenge in figuring out which screws fit in which screwholes: big ones with post things for mounting the motherboard, for instance.

Specific things about hardware setup, again assuming you bought exactly what I list above:

- The front case panel audio cable says "HDAudio" on one connector (use this one) and "AC' 97" on the other (don't use this one)
- Use the red SATA cable that comes with the DVD burner, and use one of the blue SATA cables that came with the motherboard to hook up the HDD. When using the blue cable put the 90 degree end on the HDD side, not the motherboard side where it'd block other ports
- Make sure to hook up both the 2 x 12 pin ATX power connector and the ATX 12V power connector. The second one is a bit confusing: the motherboard has a 2 x 4 connector and the power supply has a 2 x 2 connector. The solution is to plug it in such that pins 1, 2, 7, and 8 mate up with the 2 x 2 connector (this is illustrated in the motherboard manual)
- I didn't hook anything up to SYS_FAN or SYS_FAN2 on the motherboard, and the front panel 1394 (Firewire) connector didn't seem to have a mate on the motherboard
- Install your two RAM sticks in slots 1 and 3, not 1 and 2. 1 and 3 both are white, whereas 2 and 4 are blue. Installing them in 1 and 3 allows them to be run as a dual channel setup
- The expansion slot knockout panels that you'll need to remove for the graphics card are the 2nd and 3rd from the top, not the 1st and 2nd as you might first assume
- The knockout back I/O panel cutout that came with the case pops out without any screws or connectors, and the one provided with the motherboard pops in similarly
- I highly recommend that you mount your HDD with the included suspension system rather than rigidly on drive rails--I did so and my system is nice and quiet

IMPORTANT HARDWARE NOTE: The GA-P55A-UD3 motherboard apparently has a hardware bug in its USB implementation such that resetting the computer using the reset or power buttons doesn't properly reset the USB controller. Thus on the subsequent bootups the USB controller won't initialize and thus one's USB keyboard and mouse won't work! This is a problem, and one that caused me quite a bit of frustration until I realized that powering down completely, removing the power cord for 5-10 seconds before re-plugging it, and then powering the system back up gets the USB chip to work properly. I actually went as far as to buy a PS/2 keyboard before I discovered the above fix, only to find out that this wouldn't ultimately help since OS X doesn't recognize PS/2 hardware, unsurprisingly

Now that things are physically put together go ahead and power your system up just to make sure that nothing's fried, etc. Plug in a monitor, a USB keyboard and a mouse before you do this. You should hear things spin up and then should see the colorful POST screen for the Gigabyte motherboard advertising its 2x copper PCBs, etc. It also tells you at the bottom how to get into the BIOS setting editor (del key) and how to choose the boot volume (F12). Hit del this time while you see the screen to get into the BIOS editor.

BIOS settings:

- Main Screen -> Load Optimized Defaults first, then modify as below after doing so:
- Advanced BIOS Features -> First Boot Device: CDROM, Second: Hard Disk, Third: disabled
- Advanced BIOS Features -> Init Display First: PEX (might have this misspelled, not PCI but the first PCI Express option)
- Integrated Peripherals -> PCI SATA Control Mode: AHCI
- Integrated Peripherals -> Onboard H/W LAN: disabled <-- we won't need this since we'll be using the Apple USB Ethernet adaptor instead and this saves a bit of boot time
- Integrated Peripherals -> Onboard SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode: AHCI
- Power Management Setup -> HPET Mode: 64-bit mode

After you make the above changes hit F10 to save and then the computer will continue to try to boot. It won't work since nothing's loaded yet, but this is a necessary first step. Now go back to a working computer and download and prepare the following:

- Mac OS X Snow Leopard retail install DVD
- iBoot ATI 5xxx-3 (burn this ISO onto a blank CD-R with Disk Utility)
- An external USB drive (flash drive, HDD, doesn't matter) or a DVD-R burnt with the following contents:
-- The DSDT from tonymacx86's DSDT Database for this motherboard (DSDT-GA-P55A-UD3-2.0-F11.aml). I used the F11 DSDT even though my BIOS as shipped from amazon.com was F10
-- MultiBeast
-- Mac OS X 10.6.4 Combo Update
-- Snow Leopard Graphics Update

Now that we have the computer built, a SL install DVD handy, a CD-R (not DVD-R!) burnt with the ISO of iBoot ATI 5xxx-3, and the USB drive with the DSDT, MultiBeast, the 10.6.4 combo update, and SL Graphics Update, we are finally ready to start installing Mac OS X. Here are the steps to take:

- Power on the computer and hit F12 at the POST screen to select boot-up volume
- Insert your iBoot CD
- Use the down arrows to change the boot-up volume selection from HDD to CD-ROM. Hit enter to select
- iBoot should now load. Once presented with a screen with a CD icon with "iBoot ATI 5xxx-3" underneath it eject the iBoot CD
- Insert the SL retail install DVD. After waiting 10 seconds for the drive to spin up hit F5 to refresh. Now use the right arrow to select the install DVD and hit enter to boot
- After selecting the language go to the Utilities menu and launch Disk Utility
Partition your SATA internal HDD as 1 partition, HFS Extended (Journaled), named Snow Leopard hereon for reference purposes, then quit Disk Utility to return to the Installer
- Install OS X as you normally would, restarting afterwards
- When the computer restarts hit F12 again and swap out the CDs, inserting iBoot again. Select and then boot off the CDROM again, which should bring you back to iBoot
- This time select your Snow Leopard internal HDD and boot from that

You should now be booted in 10.6.0. Audio and extended graphics support won't be working (no audio and 1024x768 unaccelerated graphics is all you'll get at this point). Don't worry: we'll fix these soon. Network access over wired Ethernet should be working, however, assuming you plugged in your Apple USB Ethernet adaptor and added the interface in the Network pane, hitting Apply afterwards. Now mount/insert your external USB drive and perform the following:

- Copy the DSDT-GA-P55A-UD3-2.0-F11.aml file to your desktop, renaming it as DSDT.aml
- Run the Mac OS X 10.6.4 Combo Update installer, letting it finish but NOT restarting at the end of it. You can ignore it and leave it open or you can force quit the Installer, doesn't matter
- Run the Snow Leopard Graphics Update installer, again letting it finish but NOT restarting at the end of it
- Manually delete /System/Library/Extensions/AppleHDA.kext, copying it somewhere else for safekeeping first

Now run MultiBeast and select the following options:

- UserDSDT
- System Utilities
- Kexts -> Audio -> VoodooHDA -> Experimental -> VoodooHDA 0.2.56 (don't use .61 or .70, they have a hissing problem)
- Kexts -> Disk -> IOAHCIBlockStorageInjector
- Kexts -> Disk -> JMicron 36x -> JMicron36xSATA
- Kexts -> Graphics -> Enablers -> ATY_Init Vervet
- com.apple.boot.plist -> 32-bit GraphicsEnabler=No

Restart after this and you should have a Hackintosh Mac Pro with functioning wired Ethernet, Quartz Extreme acceleration and full resolution support from your ATI 5770 graphics card, and front panel audio without hissing from the built-in motherboard hardware. Although all of this information is available from disparate sources out there I hope having it in one place for one particular hardware configuration is helpful.

 

[Toshi]

Oh yeah, total cost is <$900. Noice.

 

[binary visions]

Seems like a lot of effort for something that's supposed to "just work"

Kidding. Nice - I approve of the partial exodus from the Apple stronghold.

That's a pretty serious bug on the motherboard, incidentally. Can't believe that left the factory. No other bugs/missing stuff you've found?

 

[MMike]

Dude....get a Dell....

 

[Toshi]

Seems like a lot of effort for something that's supposed to "just work"

Kidding. Nice - I approve of the partial exodus from the Apple stronghold.

That's a pretty serious bug on the motherboard, incidentally. Can't believe that left the factory. No other bugs/missing stuff you've found?

No other big bugs like that. That one wasn't documented, either. Not cool, Gigabyte, not cool, and almost a game-stopper. I was looking up the amazon return policy at one point. I'm going to install Windows 7 on another drive within it, perhaps later today, btw. Civ 5 needs Windows…

I did a little benchmarking this morning, and it shows that the relatively mid-line hardware that I picked is quite kick-ass in terms of comparison to current and a few-years-old Apple hardware:

Here are its XBench results, note the overall score of 266.

What's a 266 in context of other current/last few years Apple offerings?

Pretty damn fast, that's what! You can see in the breakdown of the scores that disk access is its weak link. In the future I may move to an SSD drive for the OS, perhaps in another year when they become cheaper yet.

 

[binary visions]

Nice benchmarks.

I tucked an SSD in my laptop because I don't need much storage space in it, and I found a very good deal on one. It's pretty sweet - speedy boot times, snappy application access and it's quiet and cool.

I'll step into a SSD on my desktop for an OS drive, probably when they're cheap enough to RAID0 two of them and the drivers are there to still maintain TRIM support. Intel has drivers that do this. The speed increase from a RAID0 on solid state is so high, plus the lack of moving parts, make it more appealing than RAID0 has been in the past. Just requires me to make sure I don't store anything but applications on the OS drive.

 

[Toshi]

They require special drivers? They don't just appear as a SATA drive to the OS? If they require drivers I'm staying away from them until someone else in the Hackintosh world posts up explicitly that they work.

 

[SkaredShtles]

48 hours to get a functional system?

 

[binary visions]

Well... I'm pretty sure TRIM is implemented at the driver level, which is important for ongoing performance of your drive. Also, since I was talking about doing RAID0, you need RAID drivers.

 

[MMike]

I have an SSD in my laptop (which happens to be a Dell). It's pretty slick. I'd hate to have to go back......

 

[Toshi]

48 hours to get a functional system?

24 hours of that was spent in Newport, so more like 24h of true frustration. Many other of those hours were spent poring over obscure forum threads trying to figure out why this or that didn't work. A few more of those hours were spent reinstalling after something went wrong and mnunged everything up--I think this is the fourth install?

Supported officially, this is not. Then again a real Mac Pro is about $1400 more precious.

 

[Transcend]

24 hours of that was spent in Newport, so more like 24h of true frustration. Many other of those hours were spent poring over obscure forum threads trying to figure out why this or that didn't work. A few more of those hours were spent reinstalling after something went wrong and mnunged everything up--I think this is the fourth install?

Supported officially, this is not. Then again a real Mac Pro is about $1400 more precious.

I had a macpro for sale for $1250. You had more fun though...I think?

 

[stevew]

 

[Toshi]

An update: My video card failed today. It wasn't entirely trivial to diagnose the problem, which manifested as booting normally to the Chameleon bootloader, loading all my kexts including USB Ethernet (which is the key to knowing whether the motherboardhardware USB bug has been invoked), and then locking up with a solid grey screen.

Note that this solid grey screen did not have an Apple logo, so was neither the one that you see when loading kexts without verbose logging turned on nor the kernel panic screen. There was no kernel panic. Furthermore, under Windows 7 the computer would also not boot unless I chose safe mode, and one of the many times when I tried to boot in regular mode the video card, instead of going blank after the regular Windows loading screen, displayed this:

That looked awfully graphics card-ish to me, even though google was of no help, either pointing me towards old-ass pages talking about blue channel interference in the days of analog VGA connectors or generic pages talking about the BSOD.

The next clue was that Windows, uh, didn't recognize that there was a graphics card installed in Safe Mode. Perhaps this is normal behavior when the correct driver isn't loaded but I thought it odd that it reported null instead of "Card XYZ--no support" or the like:

In any case, I hobbled on over to the local Best Buy and bought another Radeon 5770 to try out.

It worked, in that Windows would now load. However, my OS X installation was now borked, because I'd restored the whole drive from a Time Machine backup before I'd figured out that it was a hardware problem. (Time Machine backups don't restore the bootloader, and, in my case, somehow the USB support also was nixed. Not being able to use USB peripherals and having the machine set up by default without ssh access through which I would have enabled vnc killed the whole thing.)

So I reinstalled OS X. Not a big deal: boot using the iBoot disc you should still have around, swapping out to the Snow Leopard install disc at the Chameleon bootloader screen. No non-system files should be overwritten so all your user data should remain intact. What I also did from a working computer was to load up my backup drive array with the latest MultiBeast.app from TonyMacX86, 3.2.0. The real point of this post is to update my old instructions, as they're suddenly less necessary with the newly updated MultiBeast.



Teh new hotness, with old instructions struck out:

You should now be booted in 10.6.0. Audio and extended graphics support won't be working (no audio and 1024x768 unaccelerated graphics is all you'll get at this point). Don't worry: we'll fix these soon. Network access over wired Ethernet should be working, however, assuming you plugged in your Apple USB Ethernet adaptor and added the interface in the Network pane, hitting Apply afterwards. Now mount/insert your external USB drive and perform the following:

- Copy the DSDT-GA-P55A-UD3-2.0-F11.aml file to your desktop, renaming it as DSDT.aml
- Run the Mac OS X 10.6.5 Combo Update installer, letting it finish but NOT restarting at the end of it. You can ignore it and leave it open or you can force quit the Installer, doesn't matter
- Run the Snow Leopard Graphics Update installer, again letting it finish but NOT restarting at the end of it
- Manually delete /System/Library/Extensions/AppleHDA.kext, copying it somewhere else for safekeeping first

Now run MultiBeast and select the following options:

- UserDSDT Install
- System Utilities
- Kexts -> Audio -> VoodooHDA -> Experimental -> VoodooHDA 0.2.56 (don't use .61 or .70, they have a bad hissing problem but even .56 had a hissing problem as well)
- Drivers & Bootloaders -> Kexts & Enablers -> Audio -> Realtek ALC 8xx -> ALC8xxHDA
- Drivers & Bootloaders -> Kexts & Enablers -> Audio -> Realtek ALC 8xx -> AppleHDA Rollback
- Drivers & Bootloaders -> Kexts & Enablers -> Audio -> Realtek ALC 8xx -> Non-DSDT HDAEnabler -> ALC892
- Drivers & Bootloaders -> Kexts & Enablers -> IOAHCIBlockStorageInjector
- Drivers & Bootloaders -> Kexts & Enablers -> Disk -> JMicron 36x -> JMicron36xSATA
- Kexts -> Graphics -> Enablers -> ATY_Init Vervet
- com.apple.boot.plist -> 32-bit GraphicsEnabler=No
- Drivers & Bootloaders -> Bootloaders -> Chameleon 2.0 RC5 - ATI Experimental

Restart after this and you should have a Hackintosh Mac Pro with functioning wired Ethernet, Quartz Extreme acceleration and full resolution support from your ATI 5770 graphics card, and front panel audio without hissing from the built-in motherboard hardware. Although all of this information is available from disparate sources out there I hope having it in one place for one particular hardware configuration is helpful.

This set up is much cleaner, with no non-standard graphics kexts any more and no GraphicsEnabler=No hacks! The new pseudo-native ALC892 high-def audio support is much better than the brute-force VoodooHDA as well, and has no hiss at all as opposed to the quiet hiss before.

Oh, and finally, with regard to Best Buy: Amazon.com, from which I'd bought my original Radeon 5770 that failed, accepted it as a return despite it being well beyond the usual 30-day window and sent me a prepaid return label! I ordered an identical replacement card from Amazon, which is now $7 cheaper than its October 2010 price to boot, and will abuse Best Buy's no-restocking fee return policy when the replacement from Amazon arrives on Thursday. Thank you for loaning me this card for a few days, Best Buy, although I'd sure have hated to truly pay your store's price, $67 higher than that of Amazon…

 

[moff_quigley]

That's pretty freakin' cool but after reading this I feel pretty good about spending $2K on the 8-core Mac Pro a year or so ago.