Finding the right Motherboard for my first Hackintosh Mac Pro

[KimOhNo]

Hey guys,

thanks for this awesome community so far!

I am about to build my first PC since 15 years. The part that overwhelms me the most is the Motherboard. Any help would be great. I want to use this Computer mostly for rendering in Cinema 4D And After Effects work.


I am going for the recommended Mac Pro parts, so:

• i7 8700K
• Crucial Ballistix 32GB
• GTX 1080

I am confused about the Motherboard, coffeelake etc, my brain starts to hurt. Here is what I would like to have:

• Bluetooth and Wifi included, so I dont have to buy 2 extra cards(?)
• USB-C (Important) and another 3.1 Gen
• I have no need for 5.1 or 7.1

I just don't want to overpay something that I dont need. I am not really a gamer but it seems all good motherboards are "Gamerboards"

If you could help me out or have any advide I'd be grateful.

Second question would be: Does NVIDIA run on MacOSX really well or not that much? Because i was considering eGPU first but NVIDIA has its problems with the system it seems. But I need it for octane render. Thanks a lot

 

[WonkeyDonkey]

Your starting point should be the Buyers Guide, which you can see at the top of the screen. This is a detailed hardware listing of components that are currently recommended and are known to work with OSX. If you go to the motherboard category listing within the Buyers Guide, you will see all of the currently recommended ones.

You can then get yourself a shortlist and go explore the boards on the respective manufacturers websites, and decide which ones best suit your needs.

You can also have a browse through the User Builds section of the forum where you can read up on various builds that folks have built for specific purposes, and read about the process they used and any issues they encountered.

Coffee Lake based motherboards are the latest recommended ones and the coffee lake chips seem to be giving good performance from what has been reported so far. Z370 and a K chip will be perfect if you plan to overclock. If you plan to keep your build at stock speeds then opting for H370 and a non-K chip will save you a little cash.

Regarding BT and wifi. Some boards do include these but they are not always compatible. Intel wifi/BT cards are not supported at this time and your best bet is a broadcom based card as they have a lot of support. I would not personally discount a motherboard based solely on the supplied card. Broadcom cards are cheap enough if you find a board that is otherwise well suited to your needs.

Regarding graphics, nVidia was the recommendation for quite a few years but that has now changed to AMD based GPU's. The support for these is much better, particularly with 10.13.4. A lot of nVidia cards now have performance issues in the latest OSX.

USB controllers will largely be dependent on which board you buy.

HTH.

 

[WonkeyDonkey]

Also, please complete your hardware profile as per the site rules. Thanks in advance

 

[KimOhNo]

So far I have not bought anything, so I thought it makes no sense to fill out hardware profile

OK. I definitely need the NVIDIA Card and the performance. I feel like it is just not the best time to go 10.13.4 than. I almost feel like it would be better to build a Hackintosh "ready" PC and than go windows until NVIDIA finally gets the support it deserves. Damn, very hard decisions! Working cross platform would turn my workflow (and raids) upside down.

 

[WonkeyDonkey]

nVidia performance has been an issue for the last few point releases of OSX. There are one or two workarounds that people have used to improve things a little, including reverting back to older drivers.