pastrychef
Moderator
- Joined
- May 29, 2013
- Messages
- 19,458
- Motherboard
- Mac Studio - Mac13,1
- CPU
- M1 Max
- Graphics
- 32 Core
- Mac
- Classic Mac
- Mobile Phone
First, I have to start by thanking trs96 for writing such a thorough guide and providing a place for 6300/8300 owners to come with questions.
About 4 years ago, I successfully hackintoshed a Samsung laptop and was able to get almost all the features working. Not long after, however, I came across a great deal on a new MacBook Air and that has been my primary machine. I mostly use it for web browsing, Microsoft Office work, and occasional photo editing in Adobe Lightroom. To this day it still runs great for those purposes, but with only 4GB of RAM installed, it's definitely not up to every task I've thrown at it.
For Christmas, my wife bought me a new drone and I've had a great time with it. My only problem is that editing video footage using Final Cut Pro on the MacBook Air is just so slow. The mobile i5 processor and 4GB of RAM make 4k editing impossible and even 1080 a chore.
So I decided that it was time to purchase a new desktop (something I haven't owned in 10 years), but I didn't want to spend a lot. We are set for an international move soon and are planning to buy a house. So, for now, the $1500+ i7-8700k dream build I had in mind is going to have to wait. I decided it was time to look at cheaper options, both to get my feet wet with a Hackintosh build and to have a machine capable of light video editing at 1080p (and maybe 4k using proxies).
This week I found an 8300 Elite SFF with an i7-3770, 16GB RAM, and 1.0TB HD for $180 plus shipping. I think that's a pretty good deal, just based upon the parts alone. A friend of mine was nice enough to give me an MSI GT710 2GB LP graphics card. I know that it is not ideal for video editing, but it will allow me to get started until I can buy a GTX 1050 TI (which seems to be the best card that this MB will support). I also have a Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD that I will be using as my boot/install drive. This should hopefully speed things along. This weekend I will be checking out some of the local shops that sell computer parts to see if I can snag a monitor for a decent price.
As far as Bluetooth/wifi, I am considering this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Broadcom-B...985234?hash=item1a3a3953d2:g:qbAAAOSwlzRaVuPX - This chipset should work natively, right? It's a little more expensive than the Chinese options, but the vendor is located in USA, so I won't have to wait a month to receive it.
Any other things I am overlooking or things to consider? I appreciate all of the work that has gone in to this post!
4GB, in my opinion, makes macOS unusable now. I feel that 16GB should be a bare minimum by today's standard.
Yes, that Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card should work fine.
Do some research before investing in to a GTX 1050. Lots of people are reporting severe lag with the last few versions of the Nvidia web drivers. Currently, it appears that the lag primarily affects Skylake and newer systems, but the fact that Nvidia still hasn't fixed it is disconcerting.
Meanwhile, Apple has been hard at work bringing native support for a number of AMD GPUs to macOS. If you will be editing in FCPX, AMD will perform much, much better.
I forgot I did have one question before beginning. Is it better to install Sierra first (as it is better documented on these machines) and then upgrade to High Sierra, or can I go direct with a High Sierra install?
Go straight to High Sierra. I see no point in bothering with Sierra. Installation method is the same for either version of macOS.