Hardware Upgrade Guide?

[pisomojado]

I'm looking to upgrade my hardware, specifically my gpu, maybe cpu. I was looking for a guide since Hackintoshes have chronic compatibility issues. The only one I could find was from Lifehacker and is 4 years out of date. Please point me in the right direction.

 

[nobodynose]

I'm looking to upgrade my hardware, specifically my gpu, maybe cpu. I was looking for a guide since Hackintoshes have chronic compatibility issues. The only one I could find was from Lifehacker and is 4 years out of date. Please point me in the right direction.

There is plenty of compatible hardware listed in our Buyer's Guide - that's a good place to start.

 

[pisomojado]

I always buy hardware from the buyer's guide, but isn't there more to it than that? Like something to do with sockets and systems disks and stuff? I can't just buy the latest cpu and gpu from the buyer's guide and toss them into my tower, can I? That would be awesome if true!

 

[Jamesbond007]

I always buy hardware from the buyer's guide, but isn't there more to it than that? Like something to do with sockets and systems disks and stuff? I can't just buy the latest cpu and gpu from the buyer's guide and toss them into my tower, can I? That would be awesome if true!

If you care about MacOS native support, then no, you can't just buy the latest CPU, motherboard and GPU and expect them to work directly. I care a great deal about native support, which is why I am still using an old GTX660 GPU in my system, and I avoid the Maxwell (GTX9xx) and Pascal (GTX10xx) cards as I don't want to have to install the Nvidia web drivers. I have just bought a Sapphire RX560 which supposedly has native support in Sierra 10.12.6 and I am going to see if I can make it work on my system later.

For example, the Intel X299 platform, released in June, and the Intel Z370 chipset and Coffee Lake CPUs, released this month, have no native support, and there won't be for some time. Support may come for the X299 platform after the iMac Pro ships in December and the new Mac Pro ships in (probably) 2018.

For GPUs, I only note the compatible graphics card models, but I do not always follow the Buyer's Guide here. Partly because I can't buy EVGA cards at my place, and partly because I have used other brands (Inno3D, Galaxy, now Galax) and they work fine with MacOS.

 

[vulgo]

I always buy hardware from the buyer's guide, but isn't there more to it than that? Like something to do with sockets and systems disks and stuff? I can't just buy the latest cpu and gpu from the buyer's guide and toss them into my tower, can I? That would be awesome if true!

Some examples of compatible hardware

CPU

• Your 7 series motherboard -> Ivy Bridge CPUs

Nvidia GPU support

• Nvidia GPU with Apple Drivers -> Fermi 600s, Kepler 700s
• Nvidia GPU with Nvidia Web Drivers -> Maxwell 700s, Maxwell 900s, Pascal 1000s

You could also re-use your DDR3 RAM and upgrade to 8/9 series motherboard + Haswell/Broadwell CPU, and/or consider AMD graphics compatibility on a card by card basis noting any reported 'boots to blank screen' issues

 

[Stork]

I'm looking to upgrade my hardware, specifically my gpu, maybe cpu. I was looking for a guide since Hackintoshes have chronic compatibility issues. The only one I could find was from Lifehacker and is 4 years out of date. Please point me in the right direction.

In addition to the other users' comments and advice, here's my recommendations since I have the same motherboard and an i5 K processor:

• You're out of luck if you want to upgrade your processor as you have the best for that motherboard/socket series. I sped up the speed of my Thunderball build by installing a modified BIOS (located here on the Forum) to accept the use of a NVMe SSD with a PCIe adapter card. See my post in my Thunderball build description for more information.

• Your GTX 580 graphics card is on a par with the GTX 1050 Ti, GTX 960, GTX 670 graphics cards. It depends upon what apps you're using that would drive the capability of a graphics card...and what version of MacOS you're using - the newer Nvidia Pascal (GTX 10x0) cards require 10.12.4 (IIRC) or newer macOS. However, a used GTX 770 or GTX 680 would work natively. (If the GTX 770 has DDR5 memory, it will require the Nvidia drivers.) Again, it depends upon your critical apps.

Good Luck! Have fun!

 

[pisomojado]

Thanks to you all -- this is great stuff. My biggest question is, say I upgrade to a popular motherboard and choose a chip and a gpu with native support; will I be able to plug in my hard drives, run multibeast, and go? Or will I need to do a clean installation, and, if so, how do I get all my apps and data back? I'm sure this is a common practice, but I can't seem to find a guide for the step by step upgrade process. If I'm walking into a two week long fiasco of thread crawling and trouble shooting, I might hold off until my system is really struggling.

 

[Going Bald]

Thanks to you all -- this is great stuff. My biggest question is, say I upgrade to a popular motherboard and choose a chip and a gpu with native support; will I be able to plug in my hard drives, run multibeast, and go? Or will I need to do a clean installation, and, if so, how do I get all my apps and data back? I'm sure this is a common practice, but I can't seem to find a guide for the step by step upgrade process. If I'm walking into a two week long fiasco of thread crawling and trouble shooting, I might hold off until my system is really struggling.

Whether you can move the drive from old build to new build depends on several factors:
What version Mac OS are you running?
What boot loader are you using?
If using Chimera, need to remove and install Clover if upgrading to 170/270 series boards/CPUs
If using Clover, will need to upgrade to latest version to run High Sierra

In any case, if you added kexts for audio/networking then you will need to remove them before installing kexts for new hardware.

 

[pisomojado]

• NVMe SSD with a PCIe adapter card. See my post in my Thunderball build description for more information.

I tried to read this. My understanding is that you replaced your sata ssd with a NVMe SSD because NVMe is faster. To do this, you modified your bios, cloned your ssd, and tinkered with your efi folder. Very nice! However, this type of solution is a bit farther outside the box than I'm personally comfortable with.

 

[pisomojado]

What version Mac OS are you running?
What boot loader are you using?

Sorry, I'm on 10.12.6 and using, I believe, the latest and greatest Clover.

In any case, if you added kexts for audio/networking then you will need to remove them before installing kexts for new hardware.

By deleting them from the efi folder?