Sfwg's First Hack: GA-Z97MX-Gaming 5 - Core i5-4570S - NVIDIA GT740

Components

GIGABYTE GA-Z97MX-Gaming 5 LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128716

EVGA GeForce GT 740 02G-P4-3744-KR 2GB 128-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 Video Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487060

SAMSUNG 850 EVO MZ-75E250B/AM 2.5" 250GB SATA III 3-D Vertical Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147372

PC/HACKINTOSH - APPLE BROADCOM BCM94360CD - 802.11 A/B/G/N/AC + BLUETOOTH 4.0
http://www.osxwifi.com/apple-broadc...-bluetooth-4-0-with-adapter-for-pc-hackintosh

Already Owned

Intel Core i5-4570S Haswell Quad-Core 2.9GHz LGA 1150 65W BX80646I54570S Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116897

Antec TWO HUNDRED S Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129074

Antec BP550 Plus 550W Continuous Power ATX12V V2.2 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply - Intel Haswell Fully Compatible
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371016

PNY XLR8 DDR3 8GB (2x4GB) 1600MHz (PC3-12800) CAS 9 1.65V PC Memory Desktop Kit (MD8192KD3-1600-X9)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D1IUEE0/

Western Digital WD Green WD15EARS 1.5TB 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA67S2N05420

WD My Passport for Mac 1TB USB 3.0 Premium Storage Model WDBJBS0010BSL-NESN
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236982

Apple MB110LL/A White USB Wired Slim Keyboard with Numeric Keypad
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA37820R9906

Apple White 4 Buttons USB Wired Mighty Mouse Model MB112LL/B
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826101011

HP bd240i Blu-ray Disc Combo Writer
http://support.hp.com/us-en/product...er-series/3422498/model/4119224?cc=us&lang=en

HP Pavilion 2310m Monitor
http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/...en_US&jumpid=reg_r1002_usen_c-001_title_r0001

Logitech C615 HD WebCam
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA4A02Z35722

Comments

Background

This is my first hackintosh/CustoMac, but sixth overall build since my first P4 Windows XP machine in 2005. So I guess I build a new machine every 2 years. Sounds about right.

I would not have put this machine together and tinkered with it over these past few weeks if not for an almost perfect storm of events that had been building for a long time. As most of you reading this can imagine - or more likely, have experienced - a guy who's built a number of machines over a number of years amasses spare parts. Lots of spare parts. "Good God, Rich, another hard drive?" asks the wife number of spare parts.

Well, as you can see from my parts list above, I had a lot of the stuff already accumulated, including the RAM. This is my first DDR3 machine. When I'd upgraded my kids' Windows 8.1 build last year from 4 gigs of RAM to 8, I screwed up and bought the wrong RAM (DDR3 v. DDR2). Did I take the wrong stuff back when I went to get the right stuff? Heck no! Some day I was going to need it, right? So that's why I already had the RAM.

The keyboard and mouse I used for my Mac Mini purchased just after Xmas 2014. For anyone wondering why I want the wired USB keyboard: I use the numeric keypad for playing Civilization 5. And I play Civ 5. A lot.

But the one thing that I acquired in July that made me finally build this machine was the CPU: a buddy at work just gave it to me. One day we were driving out to get BBQ at lunch and he tells me he's upgraded his CPU. He asks me if I want his old one (he's had it six months or less). I ask how much, he says buy me lunch, and I say done!

The items I did purchase specifically for this build were straight out of the buyer's guide.

Selected Equipment Notes

This rig is intended to be my main desktop, and as such, it will be in our master bedroom on my desk. It's the television of the bedroom and is hooked up to a pretty good stereo (Bang & Olufsen Beovox S45-2 loudspeakers, Nakamichi BX300 cassette deck, Bang & Olufsen Beogram RX 2 turntable, Sony STR-DE895 receiver). The HP blu-ray drive does in fact play blu-ray movies on this hack running OS X 10.10.4 and DVDFab Media Player. I had to change a few default settings but I did get it working.

The Logitech web cam works in FaceTime, once I unplug it and plug it back in. I've probably got a setting wrong somewhere, but I haven't played with it enough (as of 12 August) to figure it out.

The monitor is hooked up via DVI cable to the video card. I also have my Mac Mini hooked up to the same monitor via HDMI. Sound to the receiver is through optical S/PDIF. As of 12 August 2015 I have not recorded to the line in on the motherboard (which will be an analog signal).

I should have made a better choice of video card. This one covers to expansion slots, and this motherboard has the PCIe 1x next to the primary PCIe 16x slot. As a result, the wifi/BT card from OSXWiFi ($100) was placed in the far PCIe 16x slot. It works perfectly there (but of course it's taking up the slot I would use for SLI, if I ever get there).

First Run

I first used the main guide UniBeast/MultiBeast method but iMessage didn't work. Plus I would only successfully boot at best 50% of the time. After playing around for a couple weeks and learning as much of the Fix iMessage guide as I could, I took the Clover plunge.

Second Run

I then did a clean install of Clover with the WiFi/BT card removed and no Ethernet connected. 100% success. I will come back and add more details to this section later, including the guides I used and the specifics I used for my hardware.

Multi-booting

I am multi-booting with Windows 8.1 Pro with Media Center on a different hard drive, all with UEFI. I am new to UEFI with this Z97 motherboard. I will add more details regarding settings and things at a later date. I also plan to put another spare drive in and add Ubuntu to this build. Because I can.

Update 13 August 2015: After updating to 10.10.5, I did add 2 more hard drives to the system. The first was a 500 gig data drive for the Windows side, the second was another 500 gig drive for Ubuntu Desktop 14.02 64-bit. I've just started playing with that, and all out of the box seems to work OK, with the possible exception of wifi. More detail to follow.

Update 8 September 2015: The weekend after adding the 2 drives to the hack noted above, I took stock of my remaining spare parts. I still had on hand everything I needed to make another system, and with the addition of a large capacity hard drive purchased new, I could make a decent server. After some research I went with Amahi, primarily based on some recommendation posts and guides on Lifehacker. The Amahi has excellent remote access as well as Plex server functionality. I am really high on this setup after a few weeks. Anyway, Amahi runs on Fedora, so "because I can," I deleted the Ubuntu from the Linux hard drive and installed Fedora. ("I will learn Linux if it kills me!" is the goal here.) I disconnected the other hard drives during installation. I then shut down the system, reconnected all the drives, then restarted. Fedora's bootloader (Grub?) booted without giving me other options. I shut down the system, disconnected the Linux drive, then restarted and Clover worked. I booted into the hack, shut down again, reconnected the Linux drive, then restarted yet another time. This time all the boot options were available in Clover.

Advice From One n00b to Another

All the information to get things 100% working is out there, in this forum. And Clover is what you want to be booting with. Read the Fix iMessage Guide all the way through. Then read it again. Then read it a third time. Then do a clean install with Clover with all your networking disabled. Then make the changes to the config.plist file as directed in the Fix iMessage Guide. Then get your Ethernet port working. Then get your WiFi and BT working. Then start signing into your apple ID accounts with FaceTime, iMessage, the App Store, etc. Everything will work.

Edit Log
08 SEP 2015 - Deleted Ubuntu and installed Fedora. See Multi-booting section.
25 AUG 2015 - Updated Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 over the weekend. Didn't break anything.
13 AUG 2015 (2) - Added a Windows data drive and a third booting option: Ubuntu Desktop 14.02. See Multi-booting section.
13 AUG 2015 - Updated to 10.10.5 through the App Store. Complete success with extra patching, updating, etc.
12 AUG 2015 - Added 2 forgotten equipment parts: Webcam and Blu-ray drive. Added "Selected Equipment Notes" Section.
11 AUG 2015 - Original post.

Welcome to the Hackintosh club!

Your post made me laugh as I also have a cupboard full of bits (hidden from the wife) that will get used "one day". I also think that "lunch" in exchange for the Core i5 was a pretty good deal. I'd have taken him to McDonalds, but then I always was tight!

Agree with Clover comments, steeper learning curve but you made the right choice.

Interested to know if you have Handoff working with your Broadcom card?

Enjoy the new rig.

Yes, handoff is working fully, as is iMessage. There is a slight flaw in handoff - I just checked my phone to see if Safari was available on handoff and it was, except when I went to fire up this very page, there was an error from tonymacx86.com saying I wasn't logged in.

The iMessage was a bit strange to finally get fully functional. Initially I only was able to exchange messages with other folks with iPhones. Over the weekend I was able to get SMS messaging as well. I Googled and poked around Apple's fora and it looks like folks with iPhones and genuine Macs have this problem all the time. Anyway, after enabling 2 step verification and logging in and out of both the Hack and the iPhone multiple times, eventually I got the verification code to show up to pair the phone to the Hack.

Thanks for the note!

Hahaha this made me chuckle as someone that's been building computers at home since the mid 80's , I too have accumulated a massive cupboard and shed and room and garages full of left over bits and pieces. Just the other week whilst looking for something entirely different I found a brand new Z68xp-ud3r motherboard hidden in the office cupboard along with an i7-2700k cpu that I'd obviously forgotten about. So that will get used with some spare 128Gb ssd that I have sitting doing nothing atm. LOL

krautzman said:

along with an i7-2700k cpu that I'd obviously forgotten about

Click to expand...

Yeah, I wish I had enough spare parts to forget about an i7 CPU!