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!





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.
Intel manufactures the chipset. Foxconn actually makes the motherboard.
But Core i5 compatibility, not so much.
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.
But Core i5 compatibility, not so much.
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.
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?
Intel has always made the boards for Apple. Foxxconn only makes Ipods, Iphones and the Ipad for Apple
Either way, thanks for the reply
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.
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....