Many thanks for the reply. You are the first person to respond.
I am looking at the Predator line and the Alienware line.
Neither vendor talks openly about the details of each of the features like
Wifi, Ethernet or Audio.
Your recommendation to just "try it" doesn't help because I don't want
to buy a $1000+ machine for Windows. If I can't use it as a mac, it would
be a waste of money in my humble opinion.
My reply was based upon the understanding that you already owned this machine. If you do not then I advise you not to buy it as a machine to run macOS - I think you can build a much better machine for a similar price - you should be able to build a similar machine for about $500 - $600 and it should run macOS better.
However I am looking for some organizing principle for what hardware has
a good change of working with hackintosh and which probably won't.
https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/january/2017
Lots of hardware is listed. Other hardware can also be made to work. Stick with a known to work motherboard, add compatible components that suit you (wifi, graphics etc are all optional). Get what meets your requirements and assemble it. There is many how to build a computer videos on YouTube. It is actually really easy - just take your time. First build will take perhaps a couple of hours including all the unboxing!
Is a good strategy to look for cards/features that are supported in MacOS?
Absolutely - the correct hardware will work with some input and effort of the person installing macOS. The guides and threads at Tonymacx86 are designed to assist you. You can also ask the wider community for assistance which you should find very helpful. Purchasing the wrong hardware is heart wrenching, especially when you are on a tight budget. I hate waste at the best of times!
At first this may seem a naive question but I have not seen any discussion about
what are the requirements for drivers in the hackintosh world. Do we depend
on MacOS drivers for most things?
About 99% of what you need is already in macOS. The only driver(kernel extension or kext in macOS) that you must have is FakeSMC. In the real world you will also find that you need to use an additional kext for your ethernet chipset and another for the audio. Some other settings are required like series 100 boards also require an additional audio option for the 100 series audio to function as Apple do not yet use this hardware.
I am appreciative of any further light you can shine on this problem.
The very first thing is to define what you intend to use this computer to do. If you want to surf the web and use simple home/office type applications then a simple computer with an Intel i3 processor is probably fine. if you wish to edit video, produce music or do some gaming then look more towards an i5 processor for hobby type home use. If you are more serious the go with an i7. Gaming or video editing will benefit from an additional graphics card. Adobe applications respond well if you use nVidia GTX 950 or above. FCPX works much better with the older AMD HD7970 or R9 280X cards that can be picked up from eBay.
I am a bit overwhelmed by the idea of buiding from scratch; I am
however willing to buy a system if there is a good chance that it
will work with sound, wifi, eithernet, and graphics.
You can do this - just plan things out step by step, watch a video of someone (who knows what they are doing) assembling a motherboard, CPU, RAM, Power supply and a graphics card into a case. use this as reference.
Note on motherboard and case sizes.
ATX - generally the largest for home use, have upto 7 pcie slots for adding additional hardware cards. Needs an ATX case.
mATX - reasonably compact, good size for a desktop build. Has three PCie slots Requires either a mATX or a larger ATX case
mini-ITX compact single slot board with a single PCIe slot. Often fitted with incompatible onboard wifi - but you can swap these out. Use a small mini-ITX case or one of the larger mATX or ATX cases. Some cases may require a small form factor (SFF) power supply.
