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How to Build a Hackintosh

   

Build a Hackintosh with better performance than a Mac Pro — for half the price. A comprehensive, free, step-by-step guide.

Last updated March 2013 with the latest Intel Ivy Bridge processor and motherboard recommendations (which, it’s worth noting, are not available on the out-of-date Mac Pros) and OS X Mountain Lion-native installation instructions. We’ve also refreshed the nVidia GPUs. New in this latest build: Thunderbolt! However, note that to use the Thunderbolt ports on a Hackintosh, you will have to plug in your Thunderbolt device at boot-up; it is not hot-swappable. We also have native nVidia graphics drivers for the best possible video/3D support.

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 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 my original 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:

The new model represented in this article is quite a bit faster.

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)

Pages: « Previous | Next »

COMMENT POLICY

We’re all here for the same reason: to better ourselves as writers, directors, cinematographers, producers, photographers... whatever our creative pursuit. Criticism is valuable as long as it is constructive, but personal attacks are grounds for deletion; you don't have to agree with us to learn something. We’re all here to help each other, so thank you for adding to the conversation!

Description image 283 COMMENTS

  • Sebastian Kubatz on 10.25.10 @ 4:47PM

    I love you for that. ;)
    Really… this is what I’ve been waiting for.

    Thanks a lot.
    I’ll let you know once I get mine done.

    http://sebastiankubatz.de

    cheers,
    Sebastian

    Reply
  • LoooN on 10.25.10 @ 5:08PM

    Yes, you did it, finally…
    i’ve get to read through your posts and i now have the best friend (yeah that’s you) that tells me the coolest things, the best site to wake up with (mobile web)

    congrats…

    Reply
  • Daniel Lee on 10.25.10 @ 5:25PM

    Can this be download as PDF? I don’t ever want to lose this instruction should APPLE make you take down this link?

    Reply
  • Julian on 10.25.10 @ 5:27PM

    I love it already!
    Eversince I discovered your dslr guide, finally the endless hours of forum research (lenses,codecs, hacks,workflows, diy’s, etc,etc) came to an end! Everything was there. And now this. Just about when I got fed up with my old G5 not working on an intel based platform,scratching my eyes out on a small MBP screen and lots of rendering time while video editing. This is a good moment to say: THANK YOU! for all the work you’ve done to put this together. Long live NoFilmSchooli
    J

    Reply
  • Mike Jenkins on 10.25.10 @ 5:56PM

    I’ve been running a hackintosh for editing for a while, it’s so fast compared to similar Mac Pro rigs because I overclocked my processor to 3.8 GHz and use triple-channel RAM. It also cost me a third of the price of a similar Mac Pro. Glad to see others doing this as well!

    Reply
  • LANDOMAN on 10.25.10 @ 7:04PM

    THANK U SO MUCH FOR THIS!!!
    I DO APPRECIATE IT TO THE MAXIMUM!!!

    I WOULD LOVE TO BUILD A HACKINTOSH AS WELL, BUT HERE IN GERMANY, THE GIGABYTE VIDEO CARD IS NOT AVAILABLE AND THE DEALER U FOUND DOES NOT SHIP OUTSIDE THE US!
    SO IS THERE ANY OTHER CARD I CAN USE WITH THE SAME POWER?

    Reply
  • tinten on 10.26.10 @ 5:14AM

    Hey man thanks for this cool Article, I’m definitely interested in building one of these….. I live in Germany too and was wondering if I could still order through your amazon wishlist, or I should look for the products through amazon Germany….
    either way I’m gonna hook one up…thanks again for putting the time and energy to share this knowledge …….cheers bro

    Reply
  • Koo on 10.26.10 @ 1:51PM

    Landoman and Tinten –

    You should be able to use other nVidia cards — you might not get as good performance, but it’s possible. Here’s how:

    http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=223244&mode=linear

    If you’re shopping at Amazon Germany, this link should work:

    http://www.amazon.de/?tag=nofilmschool-20

    Thanks!

    Reply
  • George Pada on 10.27.10 @ 3:48PM

    Hey Koo,

    I have built and used a hackindosh for a year! I even edited an actual paid job! A rock festival that we shot with 4 dv cameras.

    But your hac really scores high!
    Gr8 job!

    P.S. I might give it a try… ;-)

    Reply
  • Matty Dread on 10.28.10 @ 7:52PM

    For those of you wishing to save the pages you can use evernote to save the entire contents of each page. You can probably pdf it from there by printing to pdf.

    Reply
  • mo sizzle on 11.2.10 @ 10:17PM

    This might have been answered already, but what kind of programs/plugins do I buy? Windows/mac/ or either?

    Reply
  • alexander Miller on 11.3.10 @ 5:17AM

    i dont know allot about pc building, but is there anyway to but in 2 video cards so you can run 3-4 monitors seemlessly without one of those converter boxes?

    Reply
    • Koo on 11.3.10 @ 12:45PM

      Theoretically yes, but it’s not something I’ve done or know how to. If you do, please let us know!

      Reply
      • alexander Miller on 11.5.10 @ 12:11AM

        well is the motherboard SLI compatible? i havnt found anything on it, only crossfirex compatible

        Reply
    • flick on 01.31.12 @ 5:59PM

      The spec on the ATI card for the Hackintosh says it will run 4 monitors simultaneously up to 1920 x 1080. It has 4 outputs (DVI-D, DVI, DP, and HMDI).

      I’m wanting to run Isadora on this system, with multiple outputs – looks like everything except HDMI will run out through a VGA adapter. Maybe there’s a way to send VGA out through HDMI without a $50 adapter box, I would hope…

      Reply
  • Scott on 11.3.10 @ 5:48PM

    I really wish I saw this before plunking down for my new Macbook Pro. I will still probably try something like this at some point though.

    Reply
  • alex on 11.7.10 @ 6:03PM

    any idea if you can run (or how well it runs) photoshop, illustrator & indesign?
    Thanks a bunch… Can’t wait to start getting parts in!

    Reply
    • Koo on 11.8.10 @ 12:14PM

      It runs all of the Adobe apps flawlessly. On page one there’s a video of Photoshop starting up in 2 secs…

      Reply
  • Raymond Parkman on 11.11.10 @ 1:11AM

    Hi there! I’m sorry to bother you, but I did a donation but the password and or login did not work. can you please help me out?

    Reply
  • Steve on 11.11.10 @ 7:57AM

    So how many PCI slots are in this thing? That’s the biggest drawback of a Mac for video. There aren’t enough slot.

    I don’t see any specific mention of the slot issue. How big of a PC motherboard exists out there if you need a lot of slots?

    Reply
    • Koo on 11.11.10 @ 1:12PM

      You can get a different Gigabyte motherboard (UD7, for example) if you want more PCI slots. For the specs of this one, see here.

      Reply
  • alex on 11.11.10 @ 4:39PM

    This fucking site rocks man.

    I love the motherboards x58a-ud3r and the gigabyte ud4p series. These work extremely well.

    for 10.6.5 update, just install the update and if you don’t have sound which is the biggest issue right now, just use multibeast to install the rollback driver to 10.6.2.

    Good luck!

    Reply
  • Mike on 11.15.10 @ 10:27PM

    This was great! We must have been doing research at the same places cause I recently built a system very similar to what you have outlined, but I’m running Win 7 64-bit and loving it. I just recently had a WD Caviar Black 1TB die on me (rare I know) and as a result ended up picking up 2 1TB Samsung F3′s and setup RAID 0. Loving it! CS5 is even more blazing fast now! Awesome site, I’ve learned a lot!

    Reply
  • Jeff Maysh on 11.16.10 @ 8:19PM

    Reports of CUDA working for fermi cards (but not opencl)
    http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=214219

    update 2010/11/16: nvidia released a new driver including a new NVDAGF100Hal.kext: http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro-macosx…f03-driver.html

    Reply
  • Tyler on 11.19.10 @ 10:47PM

    Can anyone comment on performance of nVidia cards with DDR5 ram compard to nvidia cards with DDR3 ram for Mercury Engine Playback in CS5, and which of those cards are compatible with building a hackintosh?

    Reply
  • joe on 11.21.10 @ 6:14PM

    how do i dual boot? what should i install first? i want windows 7 and mac in the same computer
    thanks

    Reply
  • jreitter on 11.22.10 @ 7:15AM

    Have you ever done a Benchmark with Cinebench? I would like to see your OpenGL results. I get only 21 FPS with my GTX 285. In Windows 7 I get about 48 FPS. Zooming in Photoshop is a pain and it lags the hole time. The overall OpenGL performance in Photoshop is low … the Mercury Engine in Premiere works kinda ok so far. Maybe because it uses CUDA and not directly OpenGL.

    Reply
    • Koo on 11.22.10 @ 3:55PM

      I have, and here are the results:

      CPU: 5.09 (no overclocking)
      OpenGL: 14.66

      Again, if you want max OpenGL performance you might get a different card — the 285 is great for Adobe Premiere Pro (and it works great in my copy of Photoshop), but there are certainly other cards out there…

      Reply
      • txusic on 12.26.10 @ 8:00AM

        awesome article…
        any workaround the sleep so far?
        is ur card a fermi card, how did u solved the fermi problem on a mac?

        Reply
      • John on 12.26.10 @ 11:00AM

        My first Cinebench scores were:

        CPU: 5.14 (overclocked to 3.0 GHz)
        OpenGL: 15.56

        After updating to very latest Nvidia drivers via http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2010/11/updated-nvidia-drivers-for-mac-os-x.html guide.

        OpenGL: 16.26

        After following this comment from the same guide “To all of those with performance issues using a GTX460: go to S/L/E AppleGraphicsPowerManagement and edit info.plist -> search for line MacPro4,1
        Vendor10deDeviceXXXX
        change XXXX with 0e22″ I actually changed MacPro5,1 as well.

        OpenGL : 26.40

        Good increase.

        Reply
        • txusic on 12.27.10 @ 8:47AM

          john do you get the casual freezes referred to the GTX460 cards?
          Or when waking up?
          thanx in advance

          Reply
          • John on 12.27.10 @ 2:17PM

            txusic I’ve not had any freezes of any kind, I am using the 285 GTX though. I don’t let my Mac sleep only the monitor. System on a whole is rock solid.

  • Rick on 11.22.10 @ 10:23PM

    Can i use a friends snow leopard disc or it must be one disc for hackitosh? u know like only one license kindda tihing?

    Reply
  • Faisal on 11.24.10 @ 6:25PM

    What kind of graphic card do I need to run cinema4d on mac hackintosh ?

    Reply
  • noname on 11.25.10 @ 5:04PM

    Thats the best tutorial I’ve seen so far.
    Did you also released a pdf file?

    thanks

    Reply
  • LEVI on 12.9.10 @ 2:04AM

    FRICK!!!

    when i run iboot or kakewalk it and load the mac osx disk, i get a grey screen of death. WTF anybody else have this problem how did they fix it!

    Reply
    • Levi on 12.11.10 @ 4:36PM

      the problem i was having was fixed by removing all my ram except 2gb’s and also using iboot’s “legacy boot loader” instead of the normal one

      i am now having problems getting my gtx 460 gpu to work, so i am working on that.

      Reply
  • Rory Green on 12.11.10 @ 10:25AM

    Does that motherboard support 2 CPUs? I really want a 12 core machine but I don’t want to spend the $5000 for the 12 core Mac Pro.

    Reply
  • Alex on 12.15.10 @ 12:49PM

    Great article. Any suggestion of where to look if I want to turn a laptop into hack book pro to use for portable video editing? Thanks

    Reply
  • levivk on 12.20.10 @ 5:08AM

    got my computer done and up and running here is a link to my build video

    Reply
  • Mikolaj on 12.25.10 @ 10:31AM

    Hi!
    Can I build a Hackintosh on two processors, for example on two i7 970th This machine will not necessarily be cheaper than the series Mac but maybe faster? What do you think?
    I do not know what the technical possibilities and options, but from experience I know that it is worthwhile to spend more money on the best equipment every few years.
    And maybe when the new faster processors will be available upgrade will be possible.
    If this is possible?
    Thanks.

    Reply

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