Hi TimTech,
at first I'm really looking forward to your Goal! Would be great to see that this is working
Personally, I would run with 10.9+ because you have full support for this.
Now your motherboard: If you look through a buyer's guides from July 2014, you'll see that there are some mb which were all working. Same chipset, same form
Good luck with your task!
Since I am putting this project into an All-In-One, the mobo must be Thin ITX form factor.
HERE is a list of boards filtered down to Asus and Gigabyte options. My understanding is that for OS X, gigabyte and its bios are most compatible, am I correct?
I would like to build a machine that is compatible with 10.10 and will support future OS X releases. I was not able to find any builds through the buyers guide that were not on the 97 chipset platform, and since Intel's latest Thin ITX board is on the H87 platform those builds were not helpful for this.
Welcome!r
If you look at my build on the Asus H81T then you should feel confident. I built it in a really small box and currently look foor a Loop LP2150 chassis which are hard to get. The build, with my experience, is no issue. Should be fine for you too.
What I am wondering about is the LVDS connector. Wondering if that works, but at least you got a shot at it. Help for that if you run into probs is probably very limited but never shy away from a challenge...
For starters I chose the safe path and built a hack mini. The only real challenges on the Asus are the move of the boot stuff to the EFI partition and the HDMI Audio edit or patch. The rest is easy enough.
Can you run 10.6 on a 8 series chipset? Why? The support in 10.6 is not there. It's probably easier to run 10.9.x or Yosemite on 8 and 9 series or even 7 series boards. You may get away with a basic install, and then download the new OS. If .... Possible...
The fan HTS1150LP isn't easy to find either, I had to wait a while. Don't like the quality either, from the fan... But it is what it is.
And in the end you may get close to a real mac pricewise, but you will have more hw in it. And I could swap the i5-3750s for an i7 if I feel like it or more RAM... you get the point.
Good luck, there are a few thin mini-ITX builds. Gigabyte MSI ASRock Asus...pick a build you like.
Darf
To be honest I am not entirely sure what you mean by the LVDS connector. I believe the mobo connects directly to the AIO screen much like a laptop does with a similar harness. I don't intend to use a graphics card but Intel's integrated graphics which are OSX compatible so I don't see a problem there, lets hope one doesn't arise.
I only put down 10.6 as an example of an operating system because that is the disc in my hand and that is what the customer is running on his Mac. I would prefer to install 10.10 and future OSX on my Hackintosh(s). The company I work for is an ASI Partner, so when we have decided on a chassis, whichever one it may be, we should have no problem getting it(them). However; I seem to be having quite a tough time actually finding any but the Intel Loop.
Finding other peoples builds on this sites seems to be difficult for me.
For my first CustoMac I am not going to go crazy as it is just a beta. I will probably get an i3, 8GB Crucial RAM, thin optical drive and a Samsung 840 Evo 120GB SSD. If I begin building these on a more regular basis I will move into high end options. In reality I am not even experienced with OSX or Macs, I am a windows fan. But for the love a good project and to fill I market I have decided to dive into this CustoMac.
Have you looked at the specs of the All-in-Ones from Dell, Lenovo, Hp, etc.?
If the board/CPU is Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge/Haswell and the audio and NIC are same as those on the supported boards in the Buyer's Guide, there is a good chance they would work. The main problem will be with the OEM BIOS - sometimes they lock things out and it is impossible to bypass their settings.
Quick way to test. Take a portable USB hard drive, clone your OS X to it, install Clover so it boots, go to store, plug it in and reboot to see if it will boot with Clover. Worst they can do is throw you out of the shop
If by looked into All-In-Ones from the above listed companies you mean their prebuilt systems then no. If you mean look at All-In-One Chassis options then yes! I am looking meticulously into my chassis options. I know MSI, Gigabyte, Asus and Intel all offer AIO chassis. I have actually considered ordering one of each of my options from ASI just to find which I like and which has the best build quality. But from what I've seen so far Intel's Loop L5 is a solid starter choice.
Bios shouldn't be a problem as I am going to start with a compatible motherboard. I live an a small town area and the closest Mac store is St. Louis Missouri so walking into one isn't exactly an option lol.
