The Perfect Motherboards For Your Hackintosh
We keep getting asked, which motherboard to start with for a fully working hackintosh? Start with the letter "G."
So you're going to "hackintosh." Well, you might as well start off properly.
After scouring around countless forums, the most popular boards people are using to setup their systems are boards made by Gigabyte. Digging deeper, the reason is clear: almost complete driver compatibility with Apple's OS X Snow Leopard (save for SATA 6gbps at the moment). The specific features and hardware components that Gigabyte uses for its motherboards in the last few years, are either the same, or natively supported by Apple.
Some other boards people are using belong to Asus, but there are far more compatibility issues here as far as hackintoshes go.
Motherboard support in OS X is the biggest hurdle in setting up your system. If you're going with Core i5 and Core i7, Gigabyte's recent X58A line of boards like the X58A-UD5, have complete compatibility with OS X.
Those interested, can look for driver support on kexts.com. The site also hosts full boot images that have already been customized to work with various boards (mainly Gigabyte boards).
Taking a quick look at the osx86project wiki, we can see a quick run down of which boards have the most compatible. For the latest version, check the OS X 10.6.4 list. Here is a list on OS X 10.6.3, and this one is for 10.6.2. If you want the best shot at a fully working and stable system. Start off with one of the popular Gigabyte boards listed.
On forums such as efixusers.com as well as insanelymac.com, there are plenty of guides on how to setup your own system with driver support as well.
What things do you need to look out for?
- Ethernet support
- SATA support
- The correct DSDT (or how to edit one)
If you want us to write a DSDT guide, let us know!
Thanks to John Pals!
- MSI,
- Gigabyte,
- Foxconn,
- ASUS,
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Mmmmmm. Windows or Mac, that motherboard looks really feature rich!
I guess if I ever was gonna play around with Mac OS X, this would be the way to go. At least It wouldnt completely cost an arm and leg to do so. But I tried the whole hackintosh thing a couple years ago, and while it was kinda cool getting to play around with a different OS other then Windows and Linux, it wasnt all that practical in use. But Im sure there will be plenty of people that find this information useful.
Gigabyte makes the motherboards for macs. Except since it has an apple on it, it's worth more.
Good way to dual boot from Windows to Mac, though if you usually play Steam games then you could theoretically stick with the Mac and use Mac drivers for the GPU.
I admit I haven't used OSX much but I can't really see anything that special about the OS that I'd want experiment with getting it running on non-Apple hardware.
It's not bad, it's just not offering anything that Windows or your general Linux distro can't do.
*shrug* My .02 I suppose.
I would love to install MacOS so as to use the millions of programs that I can't find on PC.
...Windows I meant ;D
Is this suppose to encourage or discourage me into buying gigabyte
"If you're going with Core i5 and Core i7, Gigabyte's recent X58A line of boards like the X58A-UD5, have complete compatibility with OS X."
But Core i5 compatibility, not so much.
YAY my board(X58A-UD5) can be a hackintosh. crap, i still don't feel like doing it. But this is good to know for testing purposes.
Gigabyte makes the motherboards for macs. Except since it has an apple on it, it's worth more.
Actually Intel makes the motherboards for Apple, not Gigabyte. Which I'm shocked that Intel boards aren't more compatible.
I wonder if UEFI and Apple's EFI are the same under the hood from Intel? It could also be the reason why there isn't a more wide spread usage of UEFI until now. Apple secretly having a deal with Intel to NOT to push it forward until the last minute (aka HDD larger than 2.2TB)
You mean we can build a system that runs OSX for a fraction of the cost it takes to buy a Mac!? Whodathunkit?
Actually Intel makes the motherboards for Apple, not Gigabyte. Which I'm shocked that Intel boards aren't more compatible. I wonder if UEFI and Apple's EFI are the same under the hood from Intel? It could also be the reason why there isn't a more wide spread usage of UEFI until now. Apple secretly having a deal with Intel to NOT to push it forward until the last minute (aka HDD larger than 2.2TB)
Intel manufactures the chipset. Foxconn actually makes the motherboard.
Actually Intel makes the motherboards for Apple, not Gigabyte. Which I'm shocked that Intel boards aren't more compatible
I was under the impression Foxconn made Apples boards, just like the make many boards for DELL. I know the old ones are for sure, but have not seen many new ones.
Does Intel make there boards now?
Wait, no i5s can be jammed into a LGA 1336, and some i7s are LGA 1156
Intel manufactures the chipset. Foxconn actually makes the motherboard.
Intel has always made the boards for Apple. Foxxconn only makes Ipods, Iphones and the Ipad for Apple
Good to know(for real), "always" would include the Power PC days and those board are for sure made in the foxconn factory.
Either way, thanks for the reply
Intel has always made the boards for Apple. Foxxconn only makes Ipods, Iphones and the Ipad for Apple
No, actually. Foxxconn manufactures OEM boards for almost everyone, including Intel. If you buy an Intel board, changes are near to 100% that it is manufactured by Foxxconn.
Awesome. This is the exact board I have...
Write a DSDT guide! I personally LOVE the Mac OS X operating system, but the price for their hardware is definitely not worth it for me.
Yes YEs YES.............PLEASE write a guide for custom DSDT patching iwould personally love......it
am having a hard time trying to get my ich 4 working in snow leopard....
personally though..... i find osx as a whole better than windows (enter pc fanboys)
thats bcoz....on my ancient P4 rig with onboard memory.....
Leopard 10.5 runs flawlessly....no crashes nothing whereas i still have problems with windows.....
think it is down to the UNIX base on which apple is based...
but a dsdt guide would really help.......
especially one in which USB patching is detailed......very few guides for that out there....
Just a question:
Will OSX run in any Virtual Machine Manager on top of Windows or Linux?
The ultimate hackingtosh guide http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/
They have a full library of DSDT files, a boot disc and even an easy to use drivers compilation that sets everything up for you once you've installed OSX...
wow I need this one.
Why would you want to run MaxOSX? Stability? Get Linux, far more stable. Security? Get Linux, far more secure. Plethora of software options, including games? Go Windows.
A P55 system is also a great option for running OSX...
But SATA 6Gbps is not the only unsupported feature...
Note also that there's also no support for the NEC µPD720200 USB3.0 Host Controller, Marvell 9128 SATA chip, nor the iTE IT8213 IDE controller.
So check the motherboard components before committing to one.
For more info and detailed hackintoshing guides check my blog:
http://lnx2mac.blogspot.com/
Just a question:Will OSX run in any Virtual Machine Manager on top of Windows or Linux?
Yes you can run it using VMWare and I've been using for a while now, nothing special about it at all.
Google it there is a step by step guide for getting it to work. I do have a link for the guide if you're interested pm me because posting it here might be considered spam.
I would love it if Toms would write a DSDT guide I run a hackintosh on i7 with the 58-Extreme board, but iv'e been intimidated to try and edit my own DSDT.
In fact it would be awesome if Toms did more articles on Hackintosh in the future.
There are other options too, if you run a core 2 duo with Gigabyte there is a project by some guy Cartri, search for cartri Bios in google and you can find it. I would post a link but I'm not sure if that breaks the rules.
anyway you can flash your bios with his and not need a DSDT at all and it runes with only two kext.
some would say flashing a bios is risky but hey let people decide if they want to risk it or not right.
@ultameca: There's a comprehensive database of pre-edited DSDTs for lots of motherboards in the tonymacx86 site at: http://www.tonymacx86.com/dsdt
I must say those 10 SATA ports look so sexy!!! And u get 2 more eSATA this is heaven for a storage freak like me
Absolutely Tuan, write the DSDT guide, PLEASE!!! I am getting near to order an Asus motherboard but if this is reliable and doable for me I will definitely choose a suitable Gigabyte board to experiment with a Hackintosh...