What is your oldest Hackintosh still in use?

My home media server (2010) on a Gigabyte board and the board in my DIY MAME arcade cabinet (2011-ish) on an AsRock ConRoe board, both Core2Duo CPUs running Snow Leopard.

trs96 said:

I still use my "old reliable" Z68 Gigabyte motherboard. Very first hackintosh for me.

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Best oldest hackintosh MB ever.

Z77X-UD5H with i5-3570k runs very good on latest macOS.

Z77X-UD5H, I5-3570K, 32Gb RAM and RX470 Strix (added later) is still may main machine. Bought real macs to my whole family members but I still have a great comfort with my old hackintosh.

Well, I HAD been running an i7 3770K on a Gigabyte Z77X-UP5 TH with 32GB RAM and an Nvidia GTX 980ti until June... that was until the Earth swallowed the transformer box outside my place, and it got zapped by the surge. I'm STILL replacing lights that have started burning out only a month or so later. RIP, you were a fine Hackintosh. You will be missed, especially since I don't have another working Mac OS machine to create new install media. Uuuugh...

I do have a spare i7 4790K and a Z87 motherboard that I could build a replacement out of. Haven't tried to yet.

On a side note... I love how surreal this photo came out. I had my hands full, forgot to turn the brightness of my phone to auto, and was struggling to even take it... Accidentally activated the portrait mode, which softened the background... Really enhanced the fever-dream moment I was feeling when I saw this! Beyond fitting.



I'll be building two new machines. I'll use that i7 4790K and build a hackintosh into my old 2014 case that I built from an old 1939 Philco radio, and I'll be doing a 10th gen i9 10900K in a new SFF case that I'm building with leftovers from the same old Philco radio cabinet. I kept the bits left over, cause I saw potential in them. Neither machine is up and running, unfortunately, and I'm stuck on a dual core i5 tablet just as old as my dead hackintosh... running Windows...

richfiles said:

Well, I HAD been running an i7 3770K on a Gigabyte Z77X-UP5 TH with 32GB RAM and an Nvidia GTX 980ti until June... that was until the Earth swallowed the transformer box outside my place, and it got zapped by the surge. I'm STILL replacing lights that have started burning out only a month or so later. RIP, you were a fine Hackintosh. You will be missed, especially since I don't have another working Mac OS machine to create new install media. Uuuugh...

I do have a spare i7 4790K and a Z87 motherboard that I could build a replacement out of. Haven't tried to yet.

On a side note... I love how surreal this photo came out. I had my hands full, forgot to turn the brightness of my phone to auto, and was struggling to even take it... Accidentally activated the portrait mode, which softened the background... Really enhanced the fever-dream moment I was feeling when I saw this! Beyond fitting.

View attachment 552732

I'll be building two new machines. I'll use that i7 4790K and build a hackintosh into my old 2014 case that I built from an old 1939 Philco radio, and I'll be doing a 10th gen i9 10900K in a new SFF case that I'm building with leftovers from the same old Philco radio cabinet. I kept the bits left over, cause I saw potential in them. Neither machine is up and running, unfortunately, and I'm stuck on a dual core i5 tablet just as old as my dead hackintosh... running Windows...

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you can also create a usb recovery stick in windows if needs be

Feartech said:

you can also create a usb recovery stick in windows if needs be

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Oh? I will have to research this.

Last OS I installed was Yosemite, and it was kind of a miracle install... It actually failed, and I sat the SSD aside for a year. My motherboard had died once already due to a power surge, and I had it repaired (I was never a fan of this generation of Gigabyte's power management, and actually predicted the failure mode in my original 1 month review of the motherboard). Anyway, the BIOS had been updated when it was serviced, and my settings were all reset. I plugged the Yosemite SSD in by mistake, and it still stalled where it had a year prior... but I saw something, something rebuilding, and then BAM, it worked, and continued to work for the next 6 years! I was too paranoid/lazy to change anything on the system and update, not to mention, my GTX980ti was a barrier to upgrading beyond High Sierra anyway, due to the Nvidia/Apple driver issue.

I feel like way back then, making media on Mac OS was pretty much the only real option. I suppose things have had plenty time to change.

I3-2105 H61n

UPDATE Jan 2023: I'm now on Monterrey as iphoto no longer worked ok with my phone.
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My MSI z77 board with i7 2600k has served me well for some time now. I see it as very stable and I'm a bit reluctant to upgrade. Eventually I will though, but maybe a Mac Mini will be next in line.

I'm still on Mojave as I run iPhoto and Aperture, and Parallels 12 (?) to run Windows 10 from an internal SSD at the same time I boot and run MacOS from another SSD.

Have one internal SSHD and one Fusion drive (120gb + 4TB), and a few external drives, internal Blu-ray writers, and upgrading to a M1 (2?) Mac Mini will in some ways be a downgrade.

So, I hope to pick up a cheap i9 setup eventually...

My GA-P55-USB3 can be considered retired (triple booting with windows as main OS for HTPC) , but still working if needed.

tonymacx86 said:

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For me, I'm still testing everything from Intel 8 Series to 400 Series. Here's an old thread example of my 8 series "2013 CustoMac Mini" build which still runs the latest MacOS Monterey. Pretty good for an almost 10 year old build.

CustoMac Mini 2013: GA-H87N-WIFI - Core i3-4340 - Intel HD 4600

CustoMac Mini 2013: GA-H87N-WIFI - Core i3-4340 - Intel HD 4600

CustoMac Mini 2013 GA-H87N-WIFI - Core i3-4340 - Intel HD 4600 Components Gigabyte GA-H87N-WIFI http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D94X4DO/ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128626 Intel Core i3-4340 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EUUPKB0/...

www.tonymacx86.com

What is your oldest Hackintosh still in use?

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I first came across the idea of a Hackintosh somewhere on the internet and quickly latched onto tonymacx86.com.

My wife still owns a late model iMac iSight G5 computer, the only 64 bit PowerPC Apple made. It still is a brilliant machine but showing its age (it currently runs Linux but could easily revert to Leopard) and so she became interested in the Mac mini. I have never liked the mini, overpriced, underpowered and runs too hot.

I persuaded her to let me build a Hackintosh. This was back in 2013.

Following the build notes on tonymacx86 I built the following:

Gigabyte GA-H77N-WIFI mother board; Intel Core i3-3225 processor; Zalman CNPS2X low profile cpu cooling fan; 2 x 4Gb Corsair 1333 Mhz DDR3 sticks; Sandisk 120Gb SSD; Western Digital Green 1Tb HDD; TP-LINK TL-WDN4800 N900 WiFi card.

Thermaltake Element Q case cw 200W ps; Apple wired keyboard with numeric key pad; Apple wired mouse
The machine was built in November 2013 and Mavericks was installed using Clover.

I retired that machine only recently, running Mojave and OpenCore. It cannot be upgraded without a change of graphics card. I have never used external graphics cards. The Intel onboard graphics have always been OK for us. We use Photoshop and various video editors - currently ShotCut is favourite: open-source, multi platform and kept up to date – all without issue. It now runs Linux in a different box with lots of disk and Thunderbolt analogue video capture card as a dedicated video machine.

I have since built various Hackintoshes using Clover and lately OpenCore which I find is much easier to use and update.

I have built machines using the excellent HP Elite 8300 USDT machine which I bought on eBay for £100. This computer also has an IVY BRIDGE processor, an i7-3770S with HD4000 graphics and 8Gb RAM. It is so good, I bought a second machine to use with W10 Pro. This one has an i5-3470S processor and 8Gb RAM. This processor has HD2500 graphics so an external graphics card would be needed to run MacOS. I think the IVY BRIDGE processor was a good design and runs well.

A particular favourite is my NUC8i3B which is attached to a 27 inch monitor and is good for Apple TV and other streaming TV.

My last Hackintosh build is a 10th generation Intel machine which I built using bits from my second Hack built in 2014. This one uses:

Gigabyte Z490i AORUS ULTRA mobo; Intel core i9-10900 processor running at 2.8GHz using UHD Graphics 630; 32Gb RAM in 2 sticks; 500Gb SSD system drive; total 2.5 TB HDD; 2 x 1TB PCiE SSD; Noctua fans; a big red Aerocool case with 400W ps. (more than is needed). This machine runs many tasks faster than my Apple despite having a slower processor. This will probably be my last Hack now Apple have ditched Intel. All the current hacks except the HP are running MONTEREY 12.5 very well.

As some other correspondents have said, our enthusiasm for Hackintosh has not stopped us buying Apple products. We have always liked Apple, just not the price! We still have no iPhones but have iPad Air, iPad mini, iMac computers, 21.5 inch and 27 inch – my pride and joy – Intel 10th generation 10 core 20 thread i9 at 3.6GHz, 72Gb DDR4 memory and 4Tb SSD, nano coated screen. I bought this machine as an Apple refurb. when they stopped making them. It is a great machine if only because of that superb 5k Retina nano-coated screen which Apple now sell as a monitor-only for £1750.