Build a Hackintosh with better performance than a Mac Pro — for half the price. A comprehensive, free, step-by-step guide.
Last updated December 2011 with the latest Intel Sandy Bridge processor and motherboard recommendations (which, it’s worth noting, are not available on the out-of-date Mac Pros) and OS X Lion-native installation instructions. Follow these instructions to upgrade from Snow Leopard, or continue reading to build a machine for Lion from scratch. My example build is currently running flawlessly using OS X Lion 10.7.2.
Introduction
What do you do when you need a high-end Mac — for editing video, retouching photos, recording music, animating 3D graphics, or just playing games — but you can’t afford a Mac Pro? Build one out of PC components. Yes, it’s possible to take off-the-shelf PC parts and build a Mac with your bare hands. It takes a D.I.Y attitude and a sense of adventure, but the result — a machine that’s faster than the entry-level Mac Pro, for half the price — is worth it. I wrote this how-to with video editors and other creatives in mind, but this hackintosh will work for anyone looking to get more bang for the buck out of a Mac. I believe this is the most in-depth guide you’ll find online, as I explain a lot of the reasons for choosing certain components, and I also include a full suite of testing utilities to ensure you end up with absolute best hackintosh (less) money can buy. As more folks build this exact machine, the article should get even more comprehensive, thanks to comments and additions.
Creativity shouldn’t be relegated to the upper class. But in the 21st century, many creative pursuits require the latest technology — especially working with video, which requires a lot of processing power and storage space. But when Apple recently announced new Mac Pros for the first time in almost two years, I wondered why they were so expensive, concluding that they were “not a good value proposition.” As far as video editors were concerned, I also wondered why they no longer offered nVidia graphics cards as an option, despite (or because of) the fact that Adobe Creative Suite 5 uses nVidia cards to get drastically higher performance when editing video. So here’s the latest technology at a fraction of the cost — all it requires to build a hackintosh is some elbow grease and a DIY attitude.
Here’s a screencast (no sound) of the hackintosh running flawlessly, loading notoriously slow applications like Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Word in a jiffy. You’ll have to full-screen it to read the text:
This isn’t easy. There are literally a million things that can go wrong when trying to build a hackintosh. You need a basic level of technical ability to do this! While I knew from reading the experiences of others that this was possible, I hadn’t seen anyone put together a guide for creating a hackintosh specifically for video editors, animators, and filmmakers, so I exhaustively researched the components and procedures — often ordering more than one component and choosing the best option — and put together this step-by-step hackintosh guide. Then I tested it on a real-life project. Then I tested it some more and replaced a few components. Then I started over and rebuilt it from scratch to ensure it would work for others. Only then was I satisfied that I’d put together the absolute best hackintosh from a price, performance, and reliability standpoint. As such, I would strongly recommend you use the same components and follow the step-by-step guide, because any deviation from the instructions here might result in a hackintosh that doesn’t work perfectly.
One final note for this introduction: like The DSLR Cinematography Guide, very little of this information originated with me. Instructions for how to build a hackintosh are scattered all over the internet, contained in many different forums and web sites. However, no one’s written a guide specifically for video editors and other professional digital creators. Despite their lack of cohesive organization, however, online forums are absolutely incredible resources — and the first thing you should do is bookmark the following forums. I’ll do my best to answer any questions you have while we build a hackintosh, but these forums are also a great resource:
For a comparison of the speed of this Hackintosh and the current Mac Pro, turn the page:
(Apple photo by kyz)
192 COMMENTS
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Raúl on 09.19.11 @ 9:31AM
Hello,
congratulations on your website … I’m riding a Hackintosh and would like to buy the EVGA GTX 460 GPU, but I can not find it … Do you think I could buy another GTX GPU another series, like 560?
A greeting and thanks
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Peter on 09.28.11 @ 3:36PM
Hello, great guide. is there an update coming before 2012? new mainboards, gpu’s or cpu’s? i’m planing to build a hackintosh soon but I can wait, if there is a good update in any parts soon. please let me know. greez Peter
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I’m in agreement with this, i plan on using this guide and consciously giving Koo amazon affiliate fees. I’d be curious to know the next time it will be updates. Thanks for all the hard work!
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Sean on 10.23.11 @ 4:29PM
Me too – i plan to bild soon also so please let us know if update coming soon !
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No plans for updates until there’s some new hardware… it was just updated last month and new motherboards/CPUs don’t come out that often!
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Umesh Patel on 10.12.11 @ 10:41AM
1. I want to make a system that can edit DSLR file (5D MAK 2) with CS 5.5 (premier and some compositing with AE) and if possible i want to install LION and FCP Studio (Mac) later…..
Should i make system with “Intel i 7 3.x Ghz” (with Nvidia card for Premier support ) or a system with Intel 2600 k (I want to use Nvidia card instead of the Ati graphics card). What n vidia card should i use with SANDY BRIDGE SYSTEM.
I’m going to make both the system as i saw on your site…Tell me so that i order for it….
TONS OF THANKS FOR THE SITE… -
Aaron on 10.14.11 @ 9:15AM
I have concerns about building my hackintosh with an SSD. I know performance wise it’s a no brainer but I can’t help but think as making the ultimate video editing system that using an SSD will be limiting. Seeing as most software needs to be installed to the primary drive and cannot be installed to external drives; this eats up space! Specially seeing as high performance software will take up a huge percentage of this space. It troubles me somewhat that using an SSD to get performance and space = more $$$ or £££ in my case. I’m still weighing it up in my head which route to take. I don’t think the 60gb ssd that’s in this guide will be enough for me. It’s either bigger ssd and more money or go with a larger and cheaper hdd. What did you guys go for?
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Clayton on 11.5.11 @ 2:09PM
I made mine back in Dec of last year with a 120 GB SSD. I’ve got quite a bit of pro software installed – Adobe creative suite, cinema 4d, realflow, Logic, plus a bunch of non-pro software. With logic, I put the audio content on my storage drive since that’s pretty huge. I still have lots of space available after installing everything I needed. I wouldn’t even consider not putting an SSD at this point. I put an ssd in my 3 year old macbook pro as well – before the SSD it took 12 seconds to open photoshop cs5. With the SSD, it takes 2.5. Huge difference.
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Eric on 11.29.11 @ 2:25PM
Does anyone know if the Hackintosh builds in this walk-thru would be compatible with Protools 8, 9 or 10? I built my PC a few years back and it’s never been too stable, and now it’s crashing all over the place. So this option to rebuild using some of my existing parts, into a stable MAC system would be friggin’ awesome.
Any suggestions or comments let me know. Thanks for this awesome post. I’ve read it through over and over…and over and over….
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I haven’t used ProTools but Adobe Audition and other audio apps have worked great.
This is also why I suggest buying from Amazon — if it doesn’t meet your expectations, you’ve got 30 days to return the components with no restocking fee…
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Eric on 11.29.11 @ 3:22PM
Right on. That’s alot of cash up front to get what I need. I was going to get everything from Newegg since I’ve had credit/financing from them before. I’ll check some other forums on the DAW builders, but this looks very promising and a fraction of the overall costs of a new MAC.
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Matt B on 12.1.11 @ 5:02AM
Don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but internal hard drive prices have gone through the roof. I was looking to replace a Samsung 1tb drive that died in my Hackintosh and found the price has now quadrupled since I bought it last year!
Why? This article explains all. A flood in Taiwan has caused havoc for the world’s hard drive production and supply. Read all of it though, and quite why it’s made all the manufacturers, – even the ones not affected – put their prices up, especially for desktop drives remains a bit of a mystery.
All in all though, this moment in time is not a good one to be putting together a new system.
http://windowssecrets.com/top-story/what-you-can-do-about-soaring-hard-drive-prices/
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Is it possible to put the nvidia card in the hackintosh? I’m planning on buying everything within the next two days and am struggling on which one to build.
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Klaus on 12.1.11 @ 7:10PM
Hi there,
I spent the last three days assembling and setting up my Hack Pro, following your hardware list as closely as possible – not easy in Europe, had to use an Antec cooler, a different LG BD burner, different Bluetooth USB dongle. My GPU of choice is a used Macintosh edition GTX 285 from Hong Kong. Getting OSX to run was easy at first, tricky in the middle and a triumph in the end. I had to start from scratch five times, but it was worth it. Right now, I am running a i7 OSX 10.6.8 machine with a geekbench result of 11,600. I am knocking on wood constantly, but this machine seems to be remarkably stable. I got there using tonymacs database a lot, and I did use iBoot/Multibeast, but it was here in the tutorial where I found the stuff that made the whole procedure a positive and wonderful experience. You rock, mister. May there be many many more Hack Pros decending from this fantastic tutorial. Best regards, Klaus -
Oatesy on 12.6.11 @ 6:00PM
Is there any alternative Gigabyte motherboards that can be used. The mini ATX suggested has very limited expansion slots and the alternative Full ATX is very expensive. Ive seen a few other Gigabyte ATX motherboards with the same chipset . Would they be suitable ?
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Ricardo Duarte on 12.12.11 @ 6:22PM
Great step by step tutorial. I was wondering if i get the hardware you mention how stable is your machine? is it stable enough to develop on it? Do you get any kernel panic issues etc? Can you update your hackintosh with lion without any trouble?
I cant use ur links on amazon coz i am in Uk if you wanna build a list for uk I dont mind getting it from there.Thanks
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msizzle on 01.4.12 @ 9:09PM
For anyone who is interested, I am selling my hackintosh. Saves you the trouble of building it.
http://newjersey.craigslist.org/sys/2783859986.html
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Jeff on 01.17.12 @ 9:41PM
My answer: Build a PC. I mean, seriously, you note that it is crazy expensive to buy a mac and you can get a pc for half the price, so why not just go all the way and build a pc.. Even if you build a mac for the same price, the software for it is still 3x the price of pc software, and pc software has much more freeware, such as gimp. And don’t tell me that you are going to pirate mac software just to match the price.
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Robert on 03.18.12 @ 2:23AM
Really? Software is more expensive for Macs? If you were to buy CS5, and then install it, you’re not going to be charged extra for installing it on osx rather than windows. Office for windows is no cheaper than office for mac. Gimp is available for free for macs. Lion costs $60 to buy outright ($20 to upgrade to) and the cheapest windows 7 os costs $200. The majority of people who use macs use them because they prefer osx and buying a mac is the only way they can get it. If they can get that without having to pay the premium of using mac only software – why wouldn’t they?
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keehan on 01.22.12 @ 8:23AM
is it possible to use this method for upgrading mac pro(2007) to hackpro.
it is so painful that mac pro cannot be upgraded for using any current apps release now eg. OSX 10.7 lion -
JUST FINISHED! Check out the specs/photos. Could NEVER have done it without this guide. You’re the best!
http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/7646/hackintoshinfo.jpg -
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Thanks for this guide, it helped me out tremendously, one thing i might change is the hardware assembly order. with the p180 case it is very difficult to add the Blu-ray/DVD drive after the ram installation. i accidentally broke one of my retaining clips on DDR3 Slot 1 when removing the ram to instal it. Damn these clumsy fingers. It sucks to lose the mobo in one shot but i got a new one on the way now and i don’t feel bad about it because of how much money i was saving on it anyway. I figure id give a heads up as it might save some people a little cash if they do that instal first. You definitely get much love from me for doing this as it has saved me so much time with my research by just having to verify yours.
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jack on 02.20.12 @ 3:04PM
Never mind apparently I’m dumb and the drive is inserted from the outside not the inside of the case. Oh well next time i will RTFM.
/facepalm.jpg
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Thanks for the heads-up, guys, I have updated the components to ones that are currently available.
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Is it possible to build a hackintosh using a G5 case an power supply as the base?
A friend “donated” his G5 to me. The mother board failed.
Or is the issue that the hackintosh mother board is a different form-factor?Craig
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Yea Koo seriously you rock, I’m going to be building my new machine from this.
It’s a mess out there to build one of these without your nice compilation of information.
Thanks for all your time, it’s much appreciated.
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Brandon on 03.27.12 @ 1:04PM
How long did this take you to do Koo? How many days and how many hours of actually putting it together and getting Snow Leopard working? Great guide by the way, I’m excited to build but must know How long this takes so I can plan my schoolwork accordingly.
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fantastic work, again !
I was just wondering : is it possible with this new configuration to still boot on Snow Leopard ? I have to stay on this OS because I still use a lot of apps that are not 64 bits… Unfortunately the last macbook pro (a real one !) I just bought don’t allow me to install Snow Leopard any more… It would be one of the many reasons for me to build a mackintosh !
does anyone know ??
thanks ! -
kago on 04.20.12 @ 6:44PM
What does apple say about this? What action do they take when they find you running a hackingtosh in you office?
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fxtentacle on 05.4.12 @ 4:59AM
Great article! Thank you!
I’ve built two hackintoshes on my own and back then i needed to modify and compile my own bootloader and DSDT tables.
This time i’m lazy and i want stuff to “just work”. I’m glad i stumbled upon your nicely written and well-researched article :)
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Hello,
Do you plan on updating your recommended hardware with the release of premiere cs6?
Here http://www.eoshd.com/content/8027/macbook-pro-editors-rejoice-new-premiere-pro-cs6-supports-opencl-for-renderless-timeline-not-just-nvidia-cuda
it seems we don’t need a nvidia graphic card anymore to get gpu acceleration in premiere cs6.
I’m curious to know what you would recommend for a cs6 hack pro.Thank you
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I just finished building my first Hackintosh! It is running great, but i’m having problems enabling Cuda for Premiere Pro CS5.5. I have a GTX 460 SE card. I can get all the way through the terminal to add the card to the list but when i hit control+X and then Y terminal comes up with an error writing the file. (yes i started the whole thing with sudo nano at the beginning). No matter what I try I can’t get it to work. Any suggestions?