Hackintosh for Music Production

[achaigne]

Hello !

I am thinking to make a Hackintosh for music production (recording, mixing etc ...) to replace my Macbook Pro Retina in the main machine.
The idea would be to have a portable tower, so I chose the Fractal Node 202.

My config :
Mini ITX motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H270N-WIFI
Processor : i7-6700K
RAM : 2 X 16GB
Hard Drive : Samsung SSD 850 EVO 1TB

OS : El Capitan

My requests :
Functional Thunderbolt with a PCI Card ?
Possibility to connect Firewire : USB-C to Thunderbolt + Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter: do you think it can work?

What do you think of the rest? the config ?
I've heard about the new Nuc ... but i need a skylake because i used El Capitan

Thank you for your advice !

 

[Jamesbond007]

Hello !

I am thinking to make a Hackintosh for music production (recording, mixing etc ...) to replace my Macbook Pro Retina in the main machine. The idea would be to have a portable tower, so I chose the Fractal Node 202.

My config :
Mini ITX motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H270N-WIFI
Processor : i7-6700K
RAM : 2 X 16GB
Hard Drive : Samsung SSD 850 EVO 1TB

OS : El Capitan

My requests :
Functional Thunderbolt with a PCI Card ?
Possibility to connect Firewire : USB-C to Thunderbolt + Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter: do you think it can work?

What do you think of the rest? the config ?
I've heard about the new Nuc ... but i need a skylake because i used El Capitan

Thank you for your advice !

You cannot have functional Thunderbolt even with a add-in card like the Gigabyte GC-Alpine Ridge, since your motherboard GA-H270N-WIFI does not have a Thunderbolt header.

If you absolutely need Thunderbolt, you will have to replace your motherboard with one that have a Thunderbolt header (or have Thunderbolt onboard, like my GA-Z270X-UD5), and is compatible with your CPU.

 

[achaigne]

Thanks Jamesbon007 !
But i need a mini itx motherboard... so to have a thunderbolt, i have to have a thunderbolt port directly on the motherboard ?
And if i want i can add a add-in card, that's what i understand ?

It's not working if a have a usb c on the motherboard with an adapter usb c -> thunderbolt ?

 

[Jamesbond007]

Thanks Jamesbond007 !
But i need a mini itx motherboard... so to have a thunderbolt, I have to have a thunderbolt port directly on the motherboard ?

The motherboard must either (1) have Thunderbolt support itself, or (2) have a Thunderbolt header, through which you can connect a Thunderbolt add-in card like the Gigabyte GC-Alpine Ridge, to have Thunderbolt functions.

And if i want i can add a add-in card, that's what i understand ?

It's not working if a have a usb c on the motherboard with an adapter usb c -> thunderbolt ?

In the PC world USB-C is not the same as Thunderbolt 3. If the motherboard has USB-C ports but no Thunderbolt support, you can't use the USB-C port to connect Thunderbolt devices.

 

[antosx86]

In order to have thunderbolt on a mini-ITX build, the mobo you need is the Asrock Fatal1Ty Z370 Gaming-ITX/AC. Thunderbolt doesn't work out of the box, you need some tweaking and activating he port under windows before you go with macOS. This thread should be useful.
Firewire adapters are also an issue, search the forum for adapters and/or hubs that work. They're quite expensive, expecially compared to a PCIe firewire card with a Texas Instrument chip, which should work out of the box, but you know on mini-ITX you have only one PCIe slot, and you'll probably want to use it for a GPU.
Having a firewire interface working on anything later than Snow Leopard might also be a bit difficult as Apple dropped support for the firewire CoreAudio driver. There's a workaround for that which is said to work with most interfaces: disabling System Integrity Protection when you install the (legacy) driver, and of course re-enable that later.

 

[achaigne]

In order to have thunderbolt on a mini-ITX build, the mobo you need is the Asrock Fatal1Ty Z370 Gaming-ITX/AC. Thunderbolt doesn't work out of the box, you need some tweaking and activating he port under windows before you go with macOS. This thread should be useful.
Firewire adapters are also an issue, search the forum for adapters and/or hubs that work. They're quite expensive, expecially compared to a PCIe firewire card with a Texas Instrument chip, which should work out of the box, but you know on mini-ITX you have only one PCIe slot, and you'll probably want to use it for a GPU.
Having a firewire interface working on anything later than Snow Leopard might also be a bit difficult as Apple dropped support for the firewire CoreAudio driver. There's a workaround for that which is said to work with most interfaces: disabling System Integrity Protection when you install the (legacy) driver, and of course re-enable that later.

Thanks !
For the thunderbolt, i can add a pci card thunderbolt and use my apple adapter thunderbolt->firewire.

I have a problem with my system requirements, because actually my Pro Tools works only on El Capitan (Skylake), but the motherboard and all the components i found are for Kabylake or CoffeeLake, so i need to choose to change my version of Pro Tools and my OS ...

 

[achaigne]

The motherboard must either (1) have Thunderbolt support itself, or (2) have a Thunderbolt header, through which you can connect a Thunderbolt add-in card like the Gigabyte GC-Alpine Ridge, to have Thunderbolt functions.


In the PC world USB-C is not the same as Thunderbolt 3. If the motherboard has USB-C ports but no Thunderbolt support, you can't use the USB-C port to connect Thunderbolt devices.

Really thanks !

 

[swgdesign]

If it helps I built a Hackintosh recently using the following parts

I7 8700k
asus z370 prime-a (has thunderbolt support I believe)
16gb Corsair Dominator ddr4 2600mhz
Audient ID14 interface

Works flawlessly.

 

[achaigne]

I find motherboard with Thunderbolt 3 :
GIGABYTE - Motherboard - Socket 1151 - GA-Z270MX-Gaming 5 (rev. 1.0)
ASRock > Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming-ITX/ac
Someone knows if it works ?

And i need to find a pci card for the firewire now.

Thanks to all !!

 

[Jamesbond007]

I find motherboard with Thunderbolt 3 :
GIGABYTE - Motherboard - Socket 1151 - GA-Z270MX-Gaming 5 (rev. 1.0)
ASRock > Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming-ITX/ac
Someone knows if it works ?

And i need to find a pci card for the firewire now.

Thanks to all !!

The Gigabyte Z270MX-Gaming 5 only has a Thunderbolt header and still requires a separate Thunderbolt 3 add-in card to support Thunderbolt 3. The board does not have an Intel Thunderbolt chip and so its USB-C port does not support Thunderbolt 3.

The ASRock Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming-ITX/ac, on the other hand, does support Thunderbolt 3 onboard.