just bought second hand mackintosh

[Scampaboy]

Hi,

I'm looking for some help ( admin please feel free to move this to the correct forum )

I recently purchased a hackintosh from eBay which has El Capitan installed and judging by the auction photos it has a serial number attached so apple services may work. Its an old one here are the specs

Case: Silverstone Sugo SG07
CPU - i5 760 2.80GHz
Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-H55N-USB3 Mini- ITX
Memory - 4GB RAM Installed (Max 8GB)
Hard Drive - 500 GB
Graphics - Gigabyte AMD R9 270x

I have a few questions I wonder if it possible to answer.

1, I have an ssd in a MacBook that I want to move over is it as simple as moving it over and formatting. is there a guide so I can swap the os install from the hd to the ssd without issue. Then dual boot windows on the HD.

2, Also I have a GPu available that I want to use, GTX 1050 ti low profile oc is it possible to use this GPU with my current install ? can I swap them out and then change drivers or is it a case of having to re install the whole system, if it is possible is there a tutorial or guide available.

3, If I did need to reinstall to achieve any of the above which install method would you recommend to achieve El Capitan or sierra on my current system.

4, I will update my mother board cpu and RAM over the coming months is it worth reinstalling or is it a case of fixing something that is not broke.

I would really appreciate some advice I've been searching the forums while I've been waiting for the computer to arrive and getting overwhelmed by all the information, I'm actually using my phone as my wife has kidnapped my MacBook which makes it all a little hard to digest.

Regards

Richard

 

[Bob_the_Tomato]

4, I will update my mother board cpu and RAM over the coming months is it worth reinstalling or is it a case of fixing something that is not broke.

So, the only thing you are keeping is the case?

 

[Scampaboy]

I say coming months .... I have a demanding wife it may be next year

 

[trs96]

I say coming months .... I have a demanding wife it may be next year

Just curious as to how much you paid for the hackintosh ?

 

[UtterDisbelief]

Hi there.

1) I think it depends on what is installed on your macbook. A lot of people just install the Clover bootloader to a mac system and then install / tune the necessary drivers graphics, network, audio, sata.

How did your second hand hackintosh arrive? Does it boot Clover or Cameleon / Chimera ? For a system based on a previous chipset tech, it could be one of the latter two.

2) Another builder said they got the new 1050 to work on an older, El Capitan system just by using the latest Nvidia web-drivers. More compatibility will come with Sierra but it also imposes other niggling strictures such as which system definitions you can use. Older ones are reliable with MacPro3,1 but that isn't allowed by Sierra.

All that said your R9 gpu looks quite powerful already.

3) In general Sierra will install on older hardware but maybe 4gb is the absolute least RAM needed as Apple's Base Mac Mini and iMac has this. If you re-install you should really record everything the previous owner installed in case they had to implement any special "tricks" , so check all third party kexts etc.

4) If your hackintosh is working ok at present, my choice would be to use it and get used to how it's been built and then only install a fresh system on the new hardware to save yourself any potential problems. But that's just me. With what you have you can learn all the basics first.

 

[Scampaboy]

Hi there.

1) I think it depends on what is installed on your macbook. A lot of people just install the Clover bootloader to a mac system and then install / tune the necessary drivers graphics, network, audio, sata.

How did your second hand hackintosh arrive? Does it boot Clover or Cameleon / Chimera ? For a system based on a previous chipset tech, it could be one of the latter two.

2) Another builder said they got the new 1050 to work on an older, El Capitan system just by using the latest Nvidia web-drivers. More compatibility will come with Sierra but it also imposes other niggling strictures such as which system definitions you can use. Older ones are reliable with MacPro3,1 but that isn't allowed by Sierra.

All that said your R9 gpu looks quite powerful already.

3) In general Sierra will install on older hardware but maybe 4gb is the absolute least RAM needed as Apple's Base Mac Mini and iMac has this. If you re-install you should really record everything the previous owner installed in case they had to implement any special "tricks" , so check all third party kexts etc.

4) If your hackintosh is working ok at present, my choice would be to use it and get used to how it's been built and then only install a fresh system on the new hardware to save yourself any potential problems. But that's just me. With what you have you can learn all the basics first.

Thanks

It’s using clover at the moment, I think I will just stick with what I’ve got as it’s working fine with El Capitan. Although I will put some more RAM in over the next week.

Everything works if it’s not broke don’t fix it.

I’ll save the gpu till I upgrade the motherboard in the future.