- Joined
- Jan 3, 2011
- Messages
- 135
- Motherboard
- Gigabyte GA-Z97X-SLI
- CPU
- Core i5 4690K
- Graphics
- GeForce GTX 970 (eVGA ACX 2.0)
- Mac
- Classic Mac
- Mobile Phone
I was reading the blog looking at a board to replace my MSI motherboard which I'm not happy with for several reasons. The worst of it is that after running Snow Leopard and rebooting, neither SL nor Win7 Pro can see the ethernet. I have to power off and power back on. Also, the eSATA provided by my case is not hot-swappable in either Windows or OS X, my Samsung 1.5TB drive won't spin up if it spins down in OS X (so I have energy saver turned off), and I'm also not thrilled with a couple other things. It's just a crappy board all around for a Hackintosh and I regret buying it but I've had it long enough that I can't return it. Just going to bite the bullet and build a new board. My goal is to use as much of my current system as I can (particularly the Core i3 540 and my DDR3 memory) yet still have a good Hackintosh. That eliminates Sandy Bridge for the moment.
So I'm looking at the blog with recommended builds and they're all built around discontinued boards that either cost a TON of money now ($240 for a P55-UD4? no thanks), and I'm looking at boards that Newegg carries currently in stock. I want to best of these boards for Hackintosh purposes; any of them appear to do what I need with Windows 7. Here are my choices:
P55-USB3 - P55 chipset, Realtek 8111D ethernet, ALC888 audio, USB3, no eSATA (fine, as long as it works with the port built into my case)
P55A-UD3 - P55 chipset, Realtek 8111D ethernet, ALC888 audio, USB3, no eSATA (fine, as long as it works with the port built into my case)
Do you see a trend? To me the boards are basically identical, it's just the back panel port layout is rearranged - it even has the exact same ports just in different places. Both boards have DSDT.AML files for their current BIOSes in the DSDT database, even. I can't figure out the $20 difference. Would I be well-served by the P55-USB3? If so that's what I'll buy.
So I'm looking at the blog with recommended builds and they're all built around discontinued boards that either cost a TON of money now ($240 for a P55-UD4? no thanks), and I'm looking at boards that Newegg carries currently in stock. I want to best of these boards for Hackintosh purposes; any of them appear to do what I need with Windows 7. Here are my choices:
P55-USB3 - P55 chipset, Realtek 8111D ethernet, ALC888 audio, USB3, no eSATA (fine, as long as it works with the port built into my case)
P55A-UD3 - P55 chipset, Realtek 8111D ethernet, ALC888 audio, USB3, no eSATA (fine, as long as it works with the port built into my case)
Do you see a trend? To me the boards are basically identical, it's just the back panel port layout is rearranged - it even has the exact same ports just in different places. Both boards have DSDT.AML files for their current BIOSes in the DSDT database, even. I can't figure out the $20 difference. Would I be well-served by the P55-USB3? If so that's what I'll buy.
