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Oct 12, 2011
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Motherboard
Asus Maximus V Gene
CPU
i7-3770K
Graphics
GTX 1060
Mac
  1. MacBook Pro
  2. Mac Pro
Mobile Phone
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Haximus Pro - Mac Pro Early 2009 - The End....

Shokka9's Haximus Pro: Mac Pro Case Mod

Asus Maximus V Gene Motherboard
Intel i7 3770K CPU
Noctua NH-D14 CPU cooler

32GB Corsair Vengeance Low Profile RAM

2 x 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 SSD
2 x 2TB WD Caviar Green HDD (Sep 12)
LG CH10LS28 BlueRay Reader/DVDRW

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 780 OC 3 Windforce

Noctua NF-P12 120mm Case fans
Noctua NF-B9 92mm Case Fan for the PCIe mod

Seasonic X-460FL
Red & Black Single Sleeved PSU cable kit

Connectivity
Targus ACB10US Bluetooth Dongle - eBay

Apple Mac Pro Case Inventory
A1289 Mac Pro Case - 922-8890 (no internals, except optical drive cage 922-7729)
Processor Cage (with fans & speaker) - 922-8886
Hard Drive Carrier x 4 - 922-8899
SSD Carrier x 2 - 922-8959
Front Panel - 922-8889
PCIe Fan - 922-8884

Lian Li V351 Motherboard Tray
Lian Li PSU Mounting Plate

Keyboard & Mouse
Apple Full Wired Keyboard
Apple Wireless Keyboard
Apple Trackpad
Twelve South Magic Wand

Miscellaneous & Tips
Dremel Tool
Cutting Discs for Dremel
Braided cables
Jumper Cables

Introduction
Ok, let's begin at the start. This is my first real Hackintosh attempt. So, for the last 3-4 months, I have been buying parts, modding the Mac Pro case, and then all of a sudden, we end up here: Within touching distance of the end. Which is getting closer, after deciding to re do the whole thing, but again with a motherboard tray. It looks neater, and guarantees the board is level etc, quickly.

My reason behind doing this, was to have a powerful machine. To be able to work in intensive applications such as Cinema4D and other design based apps. However, when it came to choosing a case, I was not left with many options. I don't think anybody can argue the fact that the Apple Mac Pro case (even the older G5's and earlier) are built to an extremely high standard. So, I decided to make my Hackintosh in a Mac Pro case, as I feel there is nothing in the PC market that is of any quality that comes close to the Mac Pro case. Yes, I like quality things, who doesn't. What makes it crazy, is then taking a Dremel tool to it! Let the modding begin!

I am no stranger to modding things, almost everything I own is customized to some extent. So, for me, this was something I could get my hands dirty with.

My Goals
I wanted the build to look like a Mac Pro from the outside, and also the inside (as much I could). So I decided quite early on that I wanted the HDD carriers, and the Processor Cage in order to make this work.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, it's much appreciated.

UPDATE November 2015
Okay, I thought it would be great to have a little place where I could add my updates regarding new OS X versions. A few days ago, I upgraded to El Capitan. The actual update was fairly easy, as I use Clover. So, I added the SIP lines in my config.plist, and moved the kexts to 10.11 (and other).

Updated quite effortlessly to be honest and booted as expected. I noticed immediately that I was missing some USB ports, but that wasn't massively causing me any issues.

The main issue for me, was iMessage. This decided not to work; so in my haste, I ended up deleted a keychain plist (as well as many other iMessage, iCloud things as I tried to fix my iMessage issue). Rebooted, and straight away, I knew there were issues as Keychain was popping up like mad, asking for passwords for lots of processes. I tried my password, it would not accept it........so I nuked the installation.

I then made a USB bootable pen with Clover and began from the very beginning (again).... see the next post for an updated guide.

 

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Mac Pro Early 2010 Case Mod - Haximus Pro

osX The Installation - El Capitan

Latest Bios for Asus Maximus V Gene from the Asus website.
osX El Capitan 10.11.* - From AppStore
8GB USB Drive
Latest Version of Clover (r3320 at time of writing)
Clover Configurator
Kexts from previous installation (found in EFI-Clover-Kexts) - FakeSMC & AppleIntelE1000e
KextBeast (or Kext Wizard)
iMessage Debug (to check injected values are persistent)
Remove Ethernet Cable during install and setup

For guides on creating a bootable USB installation drive with Clover; they can be found here or elsewhere ;-)

The Procedure

The Bios

a) Firstly I updated (flashed) my bios, with the one from Asus. Then I checked the settings in the bios:
a) Load Optimized Defaults
b) Disable VT (CPU settings)
c) Disable Secure Boot (Boot Settings)
d) Set UEFI first on boot sequence (Boot Settings)
e) Set OS Type to OTHER OS (Boot Settings)
f) Ensure ACHI is enabled for the SATA
g) Save and Exit - Ensuring values are persistent

Install El Capitan

1. Booted from the USB Pen. Once in the installation.......
2. Use Disk utility to format my SSD to Mac OS Extended (Journaled), GUID, before installing osX. Let this complete then
3. Select the target drive, and proceed to install
4. Let it reboot once it has finished, and then boot from the USB installer, and boot into the El Capitan install (finish install if required
5. Boot from the USB installer to the El Capitan if you had to reboot

Install Clover UEFI

1. Install Clover to the SSD in UEFI mode (guides here and elsewhere)

Configure Clover

Before I did this, I actually installed my needed kexts to El Capitan with KextBeast. You don't need to, but you need to ensure that the kexts are in the Kext folder of the Clover install, and you have Inject selected in the configuration.

I installed Clover Configurator, which created a config.plist.

SMBIOS
As I wanted to have a fully working iMessage/Facetime install, I had to pick the closest 'real' mac profile to use. Therefore, I picked iMac13,2 due to my hardware in my PC.

I then created a UUID (Open terminal, type uuidgen and it will give you a unique UUID), then created my MLB and ROM values, all of which were added to the SMBIOS nad RT Variables screen.

I also added the SIP values required in the RT Variables, to fully disable SIP.

Boot flags were next; I disbaled Nvidia driver, until I could install the Nvidia drivers later.

In order to get Speedstep working, I used the -xcpm boot flag, selecting 'create p states and c states'. The profile iMac13,2 does not use speedstep apparently. I was running my CPU at 3.5GHz despite it being overclocked in the bios to 4.6GHz. After adding this flag, I was running from 1.8GHZ at idle, to 4.6GHz under stress. So, success.

Make sure the config.plist is saved, reboot, and wait for the magic to happen. This is when I check that values are being retained, especially for iMessage. I run the iMessage Debug app, to check that the values match what is in my config.plist for Clover. Everything checks out, so I will now connect the ethernet cable, and reboot.

The result, is that I could log into my iCloud, iMessage and everything worked as it should.

Next up is reinstalling software, and personalising El Capitan to my liking.......EASY!

Post Installation

Nvidia Drivers (change config.plist to enable nVidia driver)
Nvidia Cuda
Overclock CPU & RAM in bios.

Benchmarking

Please see the benchmark results below. I ran Cinebench, Geek Bench, Unigine Heaven. All gave satisfactory results.


Issues

I have a couple of USB ports not working, but I have USB3 and USB2 ports working, so not much of an issue for me.
 

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Mac Pro Early 2010 Case Mod - Haximus Pro

Case Mods
Re-uploaded some photos, as I took a website down, which was actually hosting my build photos.

Updated 11.05.2017.

Thanks for looking.
 

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Mac Pro Early 2010 Case Mod - Haximus Pro

Conclusion

After a good few months of waiting for parts and having the time to do all this in between work, family and life. I can finally say that I have finished my case mod.

The only thing I am waiting for is my new 27" IPS monitor, but that is irrelevant to the build ;-).

Looking back, I would of definitely done things a bit differently, and took a different approach to the way some of the mods were done. But overall, I am pleased at the way everything turned out.

I have a Mac Pro killer at around half the price (if Apple made one with this spec). It performs amazingly, looks awesome, and does what I need it to and more.

In Windows, it plays games on Ultra and does more than I imagined, as I didn't make this to play games, but my Xboxes are becoming redundant, except for gaming with my kids.

Even my kids prefer the Mac to the Windows, and its quite easy to see why. osX is a much nicer user experience.

Thanks for taking the time to read this thread, and look at my build. Take care.

UPDATE 21/11/2014

The build hasn't changed really hardware wise, except the addition of a new GPU yesterday. I had the pleasure of installing a new Gigabyte GTX 780 OC 3 Windforce (bit of a mouthful), which you can see in the image below.

As mentioned in a post towards the end of this thread, I installed Yosemite on release day, after getting Clover running perfectly.

I updated to 10.10.1 also, and installed the Nvidia drivers for it. However, I am running the GPU on the native osX drivers with good results.

I ran some benchmarks last night, and all seems well except Cinebench, so I need to look at some things. I will add the screenshots of the others (Luxmark & Unigine Heaven).

Obviously there are no issues in Windows, and I have been playing Far Cry 4 on Ultra settings with no issues (other than the glitches within the game itself).

UPDATE NOVEMBER 2015

Added El Capitan guide, and updated first post too. I will add new photos, and benchmark screen grabs when I get the chance.

So, 3 years on, and I have installed every version of OS X, without issues (as such). I have noticed that El Capitan, and Yosemite are taking longer to boot (we are talking seconds here, not minutes). On Mountain Lion, my Mac would boot in less than 5 seconds. Now it takes 10-15 seconds, for me it is far too long. But I think it is down to me now using a password to login. Previously, I just booted straight in with no logging in. Either way, it takes longer.

Thanks for reading.

UPDATE MAY 2017
This build still exists, but in a different case (In Win 805), with a new GPU (Asus Strix 1060 OC 6GB), and some RGB lighting (NZXT Hue+). It's running Windows 10 and macOS 10.12.4 Sierra (which boot super quick!!).

New build can be seen here (CLICK ME)

Happy Days!
 
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Mac Pro Early 2010 Case Mod - Haximus Pro

Nice mod. One of the better ones that I've seen. Good work!

More pics are always welcome by the way.

Cheers.
 
More photos, if anyones interested.

Of course. I like to learn from looking as the pictures posted from this community, grab the good ideas, collect them, and apply to my mod finally.

Thanks,
Noom.
 
Ok guys, I will add some more photos at the weekend; busy week, but as the build is not how I exactly want it, I am reluctant to put lots up until I start finishing parts off.

The fact that osX runs beautifully and is rock solid (under stress tests), rendering complex objects, means I am reluctant to stop using it.

I can see why quite a lot of people jump from Windows to osX in a Hackintosh fashion. I've only booted Windows once since having Mountain Lion to play with.

Thanks for the comments guys!

:)
 
Shokka9's Haximus Pro: Mac Pro Case Mod

My reason behind doing this was to have a powerful machine to be able to work in intensive applications such as Cinema4D etc. However, when it came to choosing a case, I was left with not many options. I don't think anybody can argue the fact that the Apple Mac Pro case (even the older G5's) are built to an extremely high standard. So, I decided to make my Hackintosh in a Mac Pro case, as I feel there is nothing in the PC market that is of any quality that comes close to the Mac Pro case. Yes, I like quality things, who doesn't. What makes it crazy, is then taking a Dremel tool to it! Let the modding begin!


Where'd you get the case? ebay? Or a parts supplier? (Those tend to be pretty pricey)
 
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