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January 2014 Buyer's Guide question

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CouchKing

CouchKing

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I've spent the better part of the last three days doing mind-numbing amounts of searching and reading on the forums here. When I first came across this site, I got ahead of myself and immediately started compiling a wish list on newegg of parts for my dream hackintosh, based on the December 2013 Buyer's Guide. Of course, I wanted to go big and build a 2011 socket machine.

After reading a fair amount it seems that there are a lot of issues with 2011 socket systems, due to the lack of native support. On a previous thread I commented on someone linked a few builds that were successful, but none of which used motherboards listed on the buyer's guide. Why list hardware in a novice guide if it's not feasible to build a system that uses the listed equipment?
 
CouchKing said:
Why list hardware in a novice guide if it's not feasible to build a system that uses the listed equipment?
Click to expand...

The Buyer's Guide lists the parts that are known to work and the mainbords are the easiest for a novice/first time PC-Mac builder to get working. They are not the only ones that will work and work well, but other boards may require extra "fiddling" to get working - i.e. require a BIOS patch, need bootloader installed differently, need additional kexts from other sources, etc.

You can build a system from socket 775, 1156, 1155, 1366, 1150 and 2011 boards and get OS X running but, depending on the board and the chipsets on the board, you might not get audio or networking or some of the USB ports working in OS X due to lack of kexts (drivers) for the particular chip.

Gigabyte boards are most often used and are in the recommended build list because, so far, they require the leaast amount of "fiddling" and most everything works. Be aware, though, that not even all Gigabyte boards will have everything that will work - some boards have unsupported audio or networking chipsets. You just have to do some homework and compare boards before you decide to buy.
 
Going Bald said:
The Buyer's Guide lists the parts that are known to work and the mainbords are the easiest for a novice/first time PC-Mac builder to get working. They are not the only ones that will work and work well, but other boards may require extra "fiddling" to get working - i.e. require a BIOS patch, need bootloader installed differently, need additional kexts from other sources, etc.

You can build a system from socket 775, 1156, 1155, 1366, 1150 and 2011 boards and get OS X running but, depending on the board and the chipsets on the board, you might not get audio or networking or some of the USB ports working in OS X due to lack of kexts (drivers) for the particular chip.

Gigabyte boards are most often used and are in the recommended build list because, so far, they require the leaast amount of "fiddling" and most everything works. Be aware, though, that not even all Gigabyte boards will have everything that will work - some boards have unsupported audio or networking chipsets. You just have to do some homework and compare boards before you decide to buy.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. I'm very new to this, and it can be frustrating to comprehend a lot of the information available, when I have limited a understanding of the software/drivers under the hood. I've done a fair amount of hardware installation and upgrades, but always on machines with fully compatible drivers/hardware. (I.E. windows systems or Apple built machines.)
 
Everybody has to start somewhere/sometime. Here are some basics to consider for mainboards:
socket 775, 5 series and 6 series boards without UEFI BIOS require a DSDT. Most of these are EOL and no longer made.
socket 2011 boards will work, but the 79 series chip is not supported in OS X so far and not all things work easily. They take much more work up front to get working but may be well worth the effort depending on your usage.

6, 7 and 8 series mainboards with UEFI BIOS do not require a DSDT

Gigabyte boards in general are easiest to use because the BIOS has MSR unlocked. MSI, ASUS, ASRrock, etc need a BIOS patch with the exception of the Asus 8 series.
Asus 8 series boards have a different problem - they are totally EFI - no legacy booting and no plans for allowing it in the BIOS. A work-around was found - see http://www.tonymacx86.com/401-install-bootloader-extra-efi-partition.html

Otherwise, if you don't mind the extra work to patch the BIOS (see http://biosrepo.wordpress.com/faq/ ), the the other brand boards work as well as the Gigabytes do.
 
CouchKing said:
After reading a fair amount it seems that there are a lot of issues with 2011 socket systems, due to the lack of native support. On a previous thread I commented on someone linked a few builds that were successful, but none of which used motherboards listed on the buyer's guide. Why list hardware in a novice guide if it's not feasible to build a system that uses the listed equipment?
Click to expand...
The buyer's guide clearly states socket 2011 systems have limited OSX support.
 
dtrHacPro
GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3 |  i7 2600K |  GeForce Other
dtrvndrn said:
The buyer's guide clearly states socket 2011 systems have limited OSX support.
Click to expand...

It says that power management is not working. It doesn't say much else about the additional work required to get the system working. Also, the install guides make it sound as easy as: make a Unibeast drive, run the install, use the post install tools and you're done. After reading the forum threads it sounds like you could potentially end up with a very expensive paperweight, or worse yet a windows machine. :crazy:
 
 
Sweet thread, good questions, great answers. Very cool glad this was brought up and discussed. Also, even though I did not ask any questions still wanted to say thank you for the links, most helpful and much appreciated. Thank you.
 
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