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Graphic Card suggestion on this build

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Nov 3, 2010
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Motherboard
MSI B250M-Pro VD
CPU
Intel Core i3-7100
Graphics
Sapphire Pulse Rx 560
Mac
  1. iMac
Classic Mac
  1. Power Mac
Mobile Phone
  1. iOS
Hi, I'm building (slowly buying parts) a new hackintosh machine with the purpose of having a quite good and reliable High Sierra for work and my Apple ecosystem with a Windows partition for gaming... not too much game for the time a have, but however good game with latest titles.
The specs I choose are:
GA-H270M-DS3H
i5 7400
Crucial Mx300 SSD 256Gb + a HDD WD 2Tb
Crucial Ram 8Gb
and I'm in doubt on Video card:
Sapphire RX560 2Gb (I read now more compatible for Mac from 10.12.6+)
KFA2 GTX1050 2Gb (maybe more powerful than RX but related to Nvidea Web Driver that I read could be sometime problematic)
Definitely what is your suggestion on video cards and why (pros and cons)?
Thanks
 
I built my sister a box with same motherboard. One plus is that the motherboard has both HDMI 1.4 and DisplayPort built in; this is good to get set up initially before messing with the video card. It also means you can drive your DisplayPort monitor without having to (yet) spend all that money on a video card.

I used an i3. 3.9 GHz for $105! The i3 has 2 cores and hyper-threading, so it's not going to be that far behind a slowish i5. If I remember the Geekbench 4 scores correctly, they were something like 5000 and 10500.

Can't tell from your post if you were thinking 2x4GB or 1x8GB or RAM. With 4 DIMM slots, you can get 2x4GB of RAM (so you have interleaved memory) and still have room to upgrade later. I don't think 2x4GB will cost much more than 1x8GB. If you eventually are going to run Mac and Windows simultaneously using Parallels, then you'll want to get some more RAM.

I (and seemingly the whole world) went with the Samsung EVO 850 SSD. There are a whopping 17,228 reviews on Amazon. Priced the same as the drive you listed. Either one will be fine I'm sure. When new, the EVO pegged the hard disk benchmark straight across at max SATA 3 speeds. The one I've been using at home for several years has come down in speed a little.

I installed a 120mm PWM case fan — hard to say no for $10. Shop around on NewEgg for deals. In fact, I just bought another 120mm PWM case fan that had a $9 mail in rebate!

I jettisoned the CPU cooler that came with the CPU and instead sprung some $13 for a 92mm Arctic Alpine 11 Pro CPU cooler. Probably it was overkill, but if you are eventually going to be playing some games on the machine, you might find the Intel cooler is running at high RPM and making a lot of noise.

NewEgg seems to constantly run specials on decent 400 to 500 Watt power supplies with Bronze Plus certification. I bought a name brand 500 Watt one 2 years ago because it was too cheap to pass up. I think I payed $15 after the mail in rebate.

I'd go with the NVidia 10x0 cards. I originally tried the RX560 in the build but couldn't get sleep working. I switched it out to a GTX 1050 and it worked flawlessly. The GTX is probably slightly more money but probably also slightly faster. If you are trying to play the latest game titles, I'd say either card is going to be the weak point. Could you go for a GTX 1060 instead? I've noticed prices moving up slightly in the last month, but if you are patient you should be able to get a 1060 for $210. And, if you are just going to use the Mac side of things in a typical office setup, you could just use onboard video and put off gaming until later. I'm typing this from my home machine... HD4000 graphics driving a 1080p television, which has been working just fine for over 5 years now.

One nice feature (I guess it's nice) is that the RX560 and GTX1050 are low enough power that they use power from the PCI bus only. I don't know if this holds for all manufacturer's implementations, but the two Gigabyte ones I have experience with were both bus powered.

I'm a little scared by your statement "with a Windows partition." Maybe you can do it, but I think common wisdom is to give Windows its own dedicated hard drive or SSD. One of the best benefits of Hackintoshing is that you don't need to use bootcamp and Apple's lousy drivers.

Issue #1:
I just couldn't get sound working — not the built in and not HDMI either. Very frustrating. I tried with multibeast and with audio_cloverALC-130_v0.3 and with audio_cloverHDMI-130_v0.6. Between each attempt I reformatted the SSD and reinstalled the OS. I'm probably just an idiot and didn't follow directions. My workaround was to use an $8 "USB Audio Adapter"

Issue #2:
I had an issue with NVidia drivers not activating. Then I noticed MultiBeast's "Clover UEFI Boot Mode + Emulated NVRAM" option (in the Bootloaders section). That did the trick.

Good luck!
 
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Thank you pwagner, to answer your useful post:
I used an i3. 3.9 GHz for $105!
well I had thought the same thing, but some benchmarks give about 35% higher score to i5, specially in game scenario. for now money difference are around 50€
Can't tell from your post if you were thinking 2x4GB or 1x8GB or RAM
Surely I mean 2x4Gb (MB has 4 slots for future upgrade)
I (and seemingly the whole world) went with the Samsung EVO 850 SSD
I know it, but I already own a Corsair MX300 and for now I'll stay with it plus a HDD for data
I originally tried the RX560 in the build but couldn't get sleep working
How many times ago did you tried? I read that from 10.12.6 and on Apple adds native support for that family chip, and with lilu.kext and whatevergreen.kext all should works flawlessly specially sleep/wake... maybe you tried on an older macOS version?
The GTX is probably slightly more money
Not too much. I found RX560 to 99€ and GTX1050 to 110€
Could you go for a GTX 1060 instead?
Should be great, but not for now
I'm a little scared by your statement "with a Windows partition."
well I mean Windows partition on the HDD. SSD completely dedicated to macOS. That's for now... afterwards I'll buy another SSD (surely EVO850) to have SSD1 macOS - SSD2 Win10 - HDD Data
I just couldn't get sound working — not the built in and not HDMI either
That is strange. I read that ALC887 could be simply enabled... have you read this https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/applehda-realtek-audio-guide.234732/#post-1606764
Anyway I'm still in conditions to change MainBoard. Any suggestion for a working audio with the same budget?

Thank you
 
I think we're pretty much in agreement. I figured you already had some of that equipment, so it's a no-brainer to just use it.

As for getting the audio working ... yeah, it should work perfectly right out of the box exactly as you said. Probably I'm just not following directions correctly. I fresh-installed my z77 machine to move from 10.11 to 10.13.2 and after just a few clicks of the mouse and a reboot the sound worked perfectly. Go figure.

As for the RX560, I've heard there is better support now too. Perhaps I didn't quite have the right combination of settings. If you get the RX working properly, then that would be nice as you won't have to worry about downloading drivers at every OS dot release. In any case, though, I'd advise only getting the RX if you can return the card — just to be safe. On the other hand, even *I* was able to get the GTX 1050 working.

CPU preference depends on use, and you seem to have a good handle on what's going to work best for you. You'll notice that I'm running the i5 3570k in my own old rig, so I'm right there with you on the benefits of a 4-core CPU. Still... 3.9 GHz for $105!

I don't know how to explain my audio failure, but other than that, the h270m-ds3h is a fantastic board. Inexpensive, and comes with all you could really want. Even onboard DisplayPort. If you have a DisplayPort-only monitor, that could be useful in initial install, where it's sometimes advisable to just use the simplest onboard video possible. When I was looking for boards for my sister, I came to the same conclusion you seem to have come to: h270m-ds3h is a winner.
 
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RX 560 can get 30 bit color in OS, I've heard that the Nvidia drivers aren't getting that 30 bit support. pwagner do you get 30 bit color support for the 1050? 30 bit color is important for OS apps for video rendering and its the future proof setup. However there are many 3rd party apps that prefer Nvidia cards but the trend seems to be heading toward AMD as far as apple is concerned.

RX cards always work with updates so no worries or waiting for the new web drivers.
 
Good points Gigamaxx. That machine is with my sister now, so I can't check.

As for my own machine, it's hooked to a 55-inch flat panel TV, so accurate color—even at 24 bit—is questionable.

The newer cards (RX560 and GTX 1050) are amazing though. Fast and silent. The GTX (and probably RX) doesn't even run the fans most of the time. I did a little bit of power testing with the RX560 and GTX1050. Compared to using on-board video, the idle power usage was higher by something like 4 or 5 watts at the wall. That's pretty impressive.

Another plus for the RX560 is that it has 4GB of video RAM (instead of 2 for the GTX). Not sure of what applications make use of that extra memory, though. The gamer community seems to think that these "low end" cards are more limited by processing speed than they are by video RAM. (I put "low end" in quotation marks because this area of computer is improving so quickly that it's hard to call a card "low end" when it's ahead of pretty much anything n the market 4 years ago.)
 
h270m-ds3h is a winner
Great. That really confort me.
I'm right there with you on the benefits of a 4-core CPU. Still... 3.9 GHz for $105
i3-7100 has a really aggressive price, but I prefer 4 core @3Ghz instead of 2 @3.9
Another plus for the RX560 is that it has 4GB of video RAM (instead of 2 for the GTX)
To stay in a limited budget I should however take a 2Gb either RX560 or GTX1050. I know GTX should be a little more powerful, but definitively a native support could make an hackintosher life more simple.
 
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