Hackintosh 2022 and beyond - Is there any point now?

[pastrychef]

Is there any point in making a hackintosh now that Apple are using the M1 & 2 chips?

If you don't need to boot in to Windows, no, there's no point to building a new hackintosh.

ok so you are saying I should go with a Mac Studio in that case as I edit a lot of 4K video for my work?

If you edit in FCPX, Apple Silicon Macs will outperform any hackintosh because of the Media Engines' hardware encoders/decoders.

 

[trs96]

ok so you are saying I should go with a Mac Studio in that case as I edit a lot of 4K video for my work?

Yes, the Mac Studio will save you much time, money and lower your electric bill significantly. I don't know of any x86 PC that can come close to the performance per watt of the Mac Studio. You won't have to buy all the separate parts to build a PC. You won't have to spend hours learning how to install and configure macOS. Fewer problems with updates etc. In summary you'll miss out on all the stuff us hackintoshers deal with on a regular basis. Make sure to get enough ram to meet your long term needs. Most you can afford is best. The specs you order from the factory are what you'll have for the life of the Mac Studio.

 

[zipb]

Unfortunately over the years PC components have become more expensive. My first hi-end hack(2011) was $1000 for everything, if I would start all over now it would be closer to $2000.
Still tempted by a Z790/13900 upgrade... But just MB/CPU/RAM would set me back 1500...

Plus, it would gobble up expensive energy.

 

[dehjomz]

As long as your apps still have an x86 version available and apple still supports intel x86 in the kernel there is still some point of a hack.

But sooner or later intel is likely going to get the boot just like nvidia did. Apple has not made a Mac with any of the latest intel chips like alder lake or raptor lake. Apple doesn’t make drivers for the new intel iGPUs or thunderbolt (maple ridge) controller. And New thunderbolt controllers are likely coming that will support 80 Gbps in bi-directional mode and 120 Gbps/40 Gbps in asymmetrical mode. Will the existing macOS thunderbolt drivers be adequate to handle the next generation NHI interface? What about when intel adds accelerators and chiplets/tiles to its upcoming lakes. No one knows how that new hardware will interact with the macOS kernel. You’re going to be paying for hardware that macOS cannot take advantage of.

But at least we know apple is making great power efficient chips and putting them in products at the bottom of the stack like Mac minis or MacBook airs so if/when you need to go all in on apple silicon, there are cheap(ish) alternatives.

Of course the benefit of a pc of hack is its modularity and ability to upgrade it over time and add storage or ram or even swap out the cpu or motherboard. Something you can’t do with current generation real macs.

But one thing I will say, if you have to get a real mac, my experience with the MacBook Pro M1 Max is that it is the best laptop I’ve ever owned and it’s usually docked on my desk driving my two monitors keyboards audio interface etc enabling me to get work done on a daily basis. And I never ever hear the fans (even when I have a plethora of apps open doing work or when I’m on video calls). I can’t say the same about intel laptops. My hack still gets some love too but the laptop is a beast.

And nobody mentions the cost of maintenance! What brought me to hackintosh in the first place was my dead GC in a 2008 iMac that I couldn't change myself (here in Europe) and had to go to a certified Apple repair shop where I spent 10 times what I would have spent for a basic PC GC...
Yes, the cost is different now, that's why I wrote "if you don't aim for the state-of-the-art".
In the OP case, I trust @trs96 for what he wrote about a high-end production machine.
I agree with @phunguss and @Middleman and I add that you'll be able to use also used PC parts (or convert existing HP and DELL machines) for a long time, if you don't care for the latest MacOS version and you accept the (tiny) risk of decreased security.

the risk of decreased security is not tiny. This year alone, apple patched several zero day vulnerabilities in Monterey and Big Sur. If you’re on older oses, say high sierra or El Capitan (because of nvidia driver support), the amount of zero days on those OSes could be astronomically high and apple is no longer supporting those kernels. That’s rather unfortunate.

 

[pastrychef]

From a cost perspective, I feel the base M1 Max Max Studio is a very good bargain.

Going by Geekbench scores, the M1 Max CPU performs approximately between an 17-11900K and i7-12900K. The GPU performs, roughly, in the neighborhood of a Radeon RX 6600. Of course, the cost of RAM, power supply, etc. are all baked in.

Apple gouges on RAM and storage pricing. Although, the cost to upgrade RAM on the Mac Studio is more reasonable than on other Mac models. If you can live with external storage, it can save you a lot of cash.

Don't concern yourself with "modularity" or "upgradeability" of PCs. It's all BS. My last hackintosh was a Z390 system with i9-9900K and 64GB RAM. If I wanted to "upgrade", I would have to buy new motherboard, CPU, RAM. Based on the insane power requirements of the latest PC hardware, I would likely have needed a new power supply too. So, the only thing that would've been re-useable was the PC case and the SSD (unless I want to also upgrade to a modern NVMe SSD).

The way that Intel changes sockets and motherboard requirements for just about every generation of new CPU, there's really no modularity or upgradeability to them.

 

[Nodarkthings]

the risk of decreased security is not tiny. This year alone, apple patched several zero day vulnerabilities in Monterey and Big Sur. If you’re on older oses, say high sierra or El Capitan (because of nvidia driver support), the amount of zero days on those OSes could be astronomically high and apple is no longer supporting those kernels. That’s rather unfortunate.

This doesn't mean that YOUR risk is high! Your exposure to ferocious hackers depends on a lot of factors, starting with what you do with your computer: if you don't connect to the Internet (say an audio/video production machine), the risk is nil.
The security risk is mainly for corporate computers, but even there, most of the hacking goes through errors or ingenuity of some user of the network.
I've been running obsolete Macs for thirty years now, nothing ever happened.
As long as you can update the browsers, most of the risks for a basic user are covered.

 

[craighazan]

Like @phunguss, I'd rather build my computer, I don't need a machine that's on the bleeding edge.

 

[Middleman]

Aside from the cost savings compared to a real Mac, the most interesting post I read recently regarding hackintoshes is the fact that there are some who are buying it in the current energy crisis to use it also as their central heater at home!

 

[craighazan]

Aside from the cost savings compared to a real Mac, the most interesting post I read recently regarding hackintoshes is the fact that there are some who are buying it in the current energy crisis to use it also as their central heater at home!

You're not going to keep warm with an M1/2!. Intel will be great!.

 

[trs96]

Aside from the cost savings compared to a real Mac, the most interesting post I read recently regarding hackintoshes is the fact that there are some who are buying it in the current energy crisis to use it also as their central heater at home!

If you want the best home heating buy an old G5 tower on Ebay and fire it up this winter. Run a CPU stress test in a continuous loop. Then you can shut the furnace off completely.