Experience with Thunderbolt Display, Magic Mouse & Keyboard

[MichaelMatics]

Hey,

I'm currently using a Macbook Pro from 2013 with a Thunderbolt Display, a Magic Mouse and a Magic Keyboard for Music Production & Coding in Xcode. Even though it has 16 GB RAM and an i7, it's too slow for the most tasks.

I wanted to get an iMac Pro for about 10,000 $ (with 10 core Intel Xeon & 64 GB RAM), but a friend told me that I could get a Hackintosh with better performance for a third of the money. I researched a bit and now I have a question.

I really love my Thunderbolt Display and my Magic Mouse and Keyboard. Do they work properly with a Hackintosh? Does anyone have experience with it? Which hardware would I need in addition for supporting those devices?

And are services like iCloud work properly?

Or should I just buy the iMac Pro?

Thank you in advance

 

[madmanphoo]

I’ve got the same setup as you. The keyboard, Magic Trackpad and Magic Mouse can work straight out of the box as long as you get a compatible WiFi and Bluetooth card for your computer.

I bought a BCM943602CS module from Amazon but for my second build I could not find this anywhere. Google compatible Bluetooth / Bluetooth WiFi cards and you’ll get a list. You won’t have to do anything to get then running. Install OS X and they’ll work with no problems.

For the Thunderbolt Display, you’ll have to have a motherboard that either has a Thunderbolt 3 port (not too many of those) or one that will accept a AIC (add in card). You’ll get two flavours of these cards. Gigabyte make the AC Alpine Ridge and Titan Tidge cards. Asus make the ThunderboltEx cards.

For my build I went with a Gigabyte AORUS Gaming 3 motherboard. For a Hackintosh it’s as solid as a rock. I then added a GC Alpine Ridge card. Note: you motherboard must have a TH header port on it. That will let you plug your card into the board. Itself the card will sit in a PCIE slot, but you also have to plug in the header cable. Once that’s done, you have to load up a windows partition, install and activate the AIC, and then plug in your Display to see if it works. If all is good you can just fire up OS X and it should work.

I got mine working yesterday and it works well. I don’t yet have the USB ports or the camera working but it’s something I’m sure is fixable.

If you have any other questions let me know.

 

[Jammyjoe05]

I have managed to get the bluetooth working and it connects to the Magic Mouse and keyboard, but the gestures do not seem to work. Any help?