My budget build - High Sierra, MSI B250M Pro Opt Boost, i3-7350k, HD 630

[MacManiac]

My budget build - High Sierra, MSI B250M Pro Opt Boost, i7350k, HD 630
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Components

Intel i3 7350K Processor
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01NCEJN24/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117772

Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO Processor Cooler
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005O65JXI/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103099

MSI B250M PRO OPT BOOST LGA 1151 Motherboard
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072JSMM2C/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813144051

Ballistix Tactical 4GB Single DDR4 2666 (x 2) Memory
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01HDUVNQY/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820156058

EVGA 450 BT 100-BT-0450-K1 450W ATX12V Power Supply
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817438130

NZXT S340 Razer Matte Black Steel/Plastic ATX Mid Tower Case
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015401L80/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811146214

Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OAJ412U/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA2W02CZ2241

SYBA USB 2.0 External Stereo Sound Adapter
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006SF68P2/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812186035


Comments

This is the second hackintosh that I have ever attempted to build. My first hack, the one in my profile, was built back in 2010. It is still going strong, and it has been my daily driver for the past 7 years.

I wanted to build a new hackintosh just for fun. But I didn't want to spend a whole lot doing it since I don't really need any new hackintosh. Many of the parts that I chose for this new hackintosh were parts that I found on sale, and parts that came with rebates, making many of the parts extremely cheap.

After rebate, the motherboard cost me about $34, the cooler cost me about $12, the power supply cost me about $12, and so on. I wanted to keep the total cost of the machine under $500, and I have achieved that.

But I didn't want to end up with a cheap looking piece of junk. It still had to be a machine that didn't feel slow and was good enough for me to use as a internet and multimedia machine, which is probably 95% of everything I do. And I also wanted it to run the latest macOS, which is currently High Sierra.

Installation

This part was pretty easy I thought, easier than I could have hoped for. Before I began the install, I removed the Intel Optane card from the motherboard, as I don't believe that it works under macOS. I might list it on eBay soon for $25-$30 since I have no use for it. After that was done, I simply followed the tonymacx86 guide to installing High Sierra, using UniBeast and MultiBeast for High Sierra, and I haven't done anything extra beyond that. I chose to stick with HFS+, to be on the safe side of things. No additional steps, kexts, edits or messing about was done.

macOS has been working great so far, with not a single crash, freeze or any other issue so far. I am using the internal Intel HD 630 graphics. I don't really need an external card at the moment, and the HD 630 seems to be more than good enough for my needs. Because of the motherboard, the max DVI out resolution is 1920x1080. My current monitor and TV are both max 1920x1080, so that's not an issue for me. In the future, if I ever want to get a 4K monitor for example, then I can always add a PCI graphics card to the machine.

I was actually gaming on the new build earlier today, through Nvidia Now, and it was working great. I was even playing a windows only game (Age of Empires HD) on my hackintosh, and that too was working fine. I might only be using internal intel graphics, but with Nvidia Now, I can basically play any game that I want, including the most graphics intensive games, using their 1080s or whatever it is they use on their cloud servers.

What works and what doesn't work

Ethernet - works, didn't have to do any extra steps beyond UniBeast/MultiBeast
USB 2/3 - works, didn't have to do any extra steps beyond UniBeast/MultiBeast
Intel HD 630 graphics - works, didn't have to do any extra steps beyond UniBeast/MultiBeast. It works fine on both my monitor through DVI, and my tv (using DVI > HDMI). I have allocated 1024 MB of RAM to it, through a BIOS setting.
Sleep/Wake - does not seem to work. Not a big issue for me, and I'm probably not going to bother to invest the time to try and fix it.
Internal Audio - does not work without additional tinkering, and I'm not going to bother fixing it, because I don't need it. The SYBA USB sound adapter that I bought works good (plug & play), and I now have analog audio out and digital spdif audio out, both working good. I was watching a movie yesterday on the new machine, using DVI to HDMI and digital audio out, and everything was working great and sounding great.
iMessage/Facetime - does not work without additional tinkering, and for the moment, I'm not going to bother. I already have numerous iPhones and iPads that beep and make noise whenever I get a message. I probably don't need any more distractions.
Wifi and Bluetooth - I haven't had a use for either of these yet, and when and if I do, I'll just simply buy a dongle for each. I use Ethernet for my Internet for my desktops.

That's about it I guess. All in all, I'm very pleased with how this build turned out for me. I took a chance on the cheap, untested for hackintosh motherboard, but it's worked out great, even better than I might have imagined, since I didn't run into any issues when installing, and the machine has been running great so far, without any issues like crashes or freezes. And I haven't spent any time at all tinkering with things, to get them to work. I'm all about simple and hassle free.

For what this machine ended up costing me, and for the minimal effort & time invested in building it, I couldn't be happier.

Here is the Geekbench 4 score. I didn't build this machine for any processor intensive tasks, or I obviously wouldn't have went with a dual core CPU, and I wouldn't have opted to build a budget machine, but this score happens to be higher than the quad core i7 860 on my first hackintosh, which cost me three times the total price of this newest hackintosh.

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[daeklove]

Can't get the motherboard to see the HD. Any ideas?

 

[MacManiac]

Can't get the motherboard to see the HD. Any ideas?

This is the first time I have returned to this thread since I first posted it, so I didn't see your question until now.

Hopefully you have solved that issue a long time ago.

But if not, then I might ask if you have removed the optane card from the board? That was one of the first things that I did.

 

[MacManiac]

Here is a small update to the original thread. I have made a few hardware additions to my build since I first posted the original build.

I added a Gigabyte RX 560 and that is working fine. I also added a 4K monitor, which I have connected to the rx 560 via DisplayPort.

I installed Mojave last week and that is also working fine. I didn't do an update, I did a fresh install. Besides internal audio, which I don't care about since I am using the usb audio dongle (analog+digital) which works great, everything seems to be working good, including iMessage. I'm pretty happy with Mojave so far, everything seems smooth and dark mode is great. The Geekbench score is also slightly higher compared to when I last checked it when using High Sierra. These are the only kexts that I used, via Multibeast.

 

[MacManiac]

I did another hardware addition to my build today.

I wanted to use an old but great firewire audio interface that I have with my new machine (Apogee Duet FW), so I installed a PCI-E firewire card today, the SYBA low profile FW card, and I am pleased to report that I now have fully functional and working Firewire on my build. It was plug and play.

Spending $25 on that PCI-E card was a hell of a lot cheaper than buying a new Apogee Duet USB for $600.00

 

[shyamkawshal]

I have a similar setup and would like to give it go with installing High Sierra. My MB is MSI B250M PRO-VH Ver 1.0 (I hope this is the same or identical) with a Intel i5 7500 CPU & GeForce 610 GPU. I dont have a clue how to get about doing this. It would help if you could direct me to some links where I could find a step by step guide for my configuration. I would like to stick to HFS+ and not interested in WIFIi-Message but would like to have bluetooth & audio. You can suggest wht hardware to buy for this. Your help is greatly appreciated.