Is 100% hassle free hackintosh possible?

[mr.ezrider]

I have a late 2009 iMac 27" i7 that I updatet with 500GB SSD drive in place of ODD.
It works really good for all of my needs, mostly web office large excel, some Illustrator and photo/video.
But know is dying, GPU is almost dead, needs new chip/reballing.

So, I am thinking to sell it cuz it still has some value and to buy external monitor and use my mid-2014 MBPr 13".
But, I have read that model can not run 4k @ 60hz, although there is a hack to make it go 50Hz.
Also, I think that 4k @ 2160p is too small to read and retina style is only 1080p which is too large on 27".
New 5K iMac is too expensive for what I need, its just a lot of money that I cannot justify.

Long story short.
Should I sell my iMac, since is 7 yrs old and if it dies again it is worth nothing?
Should I buy external 1440p and use it with MBPr, which would be OK I guess?
Should I build medium range hackintosh and use it with 1440p monitor?
Is 4k monitor scaled to looks like 1440p an option for Mac OS, does it looks blurry?

I like hachintosh cuz it is updateable, I can keep drives and psu and case and display etc later down the road.
I can have one SSD for OS, and two HDD in raid for data.
It can be fast enough.
But can it be worry free like apple computers in terms of OS funcionality.

I dont need Sierra or even El capitan, I just want it to work 50 times sleep/in/out a day, weeks without restart, I want it to "just work". I can put a lot of hassle in preparation and instalation if in the end I will get desktop that I dont need to tinker with if I dont do any updates.

Its a bit longer post I hope that I made my point/wishes clear.

Thank you!

P.S. If I missed forum section please move it where it should be.

 

[Going Bald]

It is indeed possible to build a PC-Mac that is reliable (actually more reliable than a real Mac in some cases).
Suggest you look at the Golden Builds forum and the User Builds forum and see what has been built before.
Many of these builds are production builds and see 24/7 usage.

 

[mr.ezrider]

Thank you!

I was reading and watching youtoube on topics above, and came to some new conclusions.

You dont need 5k monitor you can have 4k scaled in macOS (more space) to 1440p which looks really good, as I saw on images. Please state your 1st hand experience if any cuz I may be mistaking.

MPBr 13 is no go for me while I feel that my old iMac works better with paralles and VM windows than this MBP which has 16gb of RAM i5 and flash. So I guess for 8 hours a day proper iMac or hackintosh would be better.

Reading around I lean towards selling iMac and building hackintosh for all the reasons stated in post before.

When I decide on components I would spec it here.

 

[Going Bald]

Thank you!

I was reading and watching youtoube on topics above, and came to some new conclusions.

You dont need 5k monitor you can have 4k scaled in macOS (more space) to 1440p which looks really good, as I saw on images. Please state your 1st hand experience if any cuz I may be mistaking.

MPBr 13 is no go for me while I feel that my old iMac works better with paralles and VM windows than this MBP which has 16gb of RAM i5 and flash. So I guess for 8 hours a day proper iMac or hackintosh would be better.

Reading around I lean towards selling iMac and building hackintosh for all the reasons stated in post before.

When I decide on components I would spec it here.

I have been running on my sig build since 2010 and never looked back. It has been more reliable than the Aug. 2008 Mac Pro tower I gave to my nephew when I built the PC-Mac. It has run every version of OS X from 10.6 to 10.12 without any problems since I got the DSDT for the system completely edited for power management.

 

[mr.ezrider]

since I got the DSDT for the system completely edited for power management

Thank you for sharing.
Is there a motherboard that I can buy that has everything well described in DSTD like yours?

I mainly work in web/gmail, illustrator and lightroom, windows office in paralles VM, and once a year in FCPX. I dont play games but I would like good GPU for adobe, FCPX and 4k retina scaled display (to run it @ 1440p). SSD for OS and HDD raid for data, so I guess the most important hw is motherboard.

I was thinking about Gigabyte H170 mobo that just works (is there any?), some good enough silent GTX with dp ports. Other components like i5 or i7, samsung evo 500gb ssd, seagate or wd drives 2TB, LG 27UD68 are fool proof? I already have apple wired keyboard and good Razor mouse, 2.1 sound and other pheripherials.

As I said one thing that looks most important is motherboard that I choose, all others should work worry free.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

All the Hackintosh's I've ever set up have been 100% reliable once I was done with the initial set-up stage.

It's the beginning that's super finicky; once you're done you're done.

 

[Going Bald]

Thank you for sharing.
Is there a motherboard that I can buy that has everything well described in DSTD like yours?

I mainly work in web/gmail, illustrator and lightroom, windows office in paralles VM, and once a year in FCPX. I dont play games but I would like good GPU for adobe, FCPX and 4k retina scaled display (to run it @ 1440p). SSD for OS and HDD raid for data, so I guess the most important hw is motherboard.

I was thinking about Gigabyte H170 mobo that just works (is there any?), some good enough silent GTX with dp ports. Other components like i5 or i7, samsung evo 500gb ssd, seagate or wd drives 2TB, LG 27UD68 are fool proof? I already have apple wired keyboard and good Razor mouse, 2.1 sound and other pheripherials.

As I said one thing that looks most important is motherboard that I choose, all others should work worry free.

See the native power management thread https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/mavericks-native-cpu-igpu-power-management.128926/ - applies to later versions also.
From what I am reading, newer boards require less and less editing and are easier and easier to get working 100%.

 

[mr.ezrider]

thank you .. I have found some builds similar to what I want to build .. with everything working .. so I guess it could be done ..

 

[CaptainKernelPanic]

No Hackintosh is 100% hassle free.

EDIT: No computer is 100% hassle free either hah.

EDIT 2: Come to think of it, NOTHING is hassle free in life...

 

[mr.ezrider]

No Hackintosh is 100% hassle free.

EDIT: No computer is 100% hassle free either hah.

EDIT 2: Come to think of it, NOTHING is hassle free in life...

.. thank you for sharing .. when I say hassle free .. I mean to get normal day to day operation like I had on iMac or even windows back in past .. and I can say with 30+ year of using computers they all were pretty much hassle free for me .. hassle is when I have to do something that I should not do .. like to reboot not being able to wake from sleep .. like to power cycle display .. things like that .. i dont mind putting an effort to make things work .. but not every day from start or to battle with the same thing over and over ..

and on life remark .. it was also hassle free for almost 45 years ..

at the moment I am looking at golden and user build to find best motherboard do buy .. there are up to date configurations that seem to work hassle free after you set it up .. many choose asus .. but I still dont understand the grand picture or even all the terms used in hackintosh build to make fully informed decision ..