My first Hackintosh! Intel Core i7-3770K / GA-Z77X-UP5-TH

[thelostswede]

Interesting, as supposedly the Atheros Bluetooth chips aren't supported at all in OS X
I'll have to give this a try at some point, as I can say this doesn't work with Windows 7, at least not in my experience.

 

[geekomancer]

Thanks HazMatt and blueridgedog for your comments. @HazMatt, that's exactly what I was hoping -- that someone would benefit from my verbose posting of successes and failures. @blueridgedog, I promise to read the advice for posting on tech forums and do my best to follow it.

Update: I got my EVGA 560ti working solidly (!!!), with no intermittent DVI port switching, and no "Nvidia ROM patching failed" errors on boot! I followed iMac86's solution in this thread: GTX 560 Ti dual monitor / audio problems . The gist is boot into Windows, use GPU-Z to save the graphic card's BIOS as a .rom file, place this file into /Extra, and then make a couple of mods to org.chameleon.Boot.plist

Also, I have found Xcode to be a very handy way to modify plists and kext files. Xcode contains (among many other things) a nice, simple (and free) editor, downloadable from the App Store. Anyone more knowledgeable than I, please feel free to chime in on Xcode vs the many other options for editing system files.

 

[geekomancer]

It reminds me of the classic: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html For my money, everyone should have to agree that they have read that prior to being allowed to post on a technical forum.

blueridgedog, thanks again for this link. I read it, and it has great advice/protocol for how to interface with programmers, ask technical questions, and research (before asking questions). I plan to read it several more times until integrated.

Update (FI, no response requested): I have added the audio interface RME Babyface to my setup. Installed easily and as expected. Updated drivers and firmware easily, works great, sounds great. Studio is now once again fully operational!

Next step (again FI, no response requested): Install Windows on separate HD (already bought Seagate Barracuda 500GB). (Already did this in a partition to Mac HD, in order to use GPU-Z to snatch ROM file for 560ti, but then decided to erase partition and run Windoze on its own drive.)

Thanks everybody!

 

[GJCORNISH]

I'm going to be using this motherboard. I found the entire thread including the multiple postings very helpful. What we as users and those as moderators find helpful are horses of a different color. I mod a few boards myself and sometimes find these maddening, but when researching material, do not.

I really like your idea about posting which board do not need a DSDT in the setup page. As a first time builder I'm reading reading reading and still find some things very hard to find.

 

[nfilg]

I wanted to get a mac mini i7 quad core but giving 1000$ for the current mac mini's hardware is too much. Its my first build! Do you think is better to wait for the USB 3 Ivy bridge Mac desktops and then start the build or do it now? Thanks!

Shopping list:MB: Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP5-TH
CPU: Core i5 3570K or Core i7-3770K both with HD4000
RAM: 2x 8Gb - Corsair CMX16GX3M2A1600C11 kit

Already have:
USB Bluetooth | TARGUS ACB20EU-22
Mushkin Chronos Deluxe SSD 240GB 2,5" MKNSSDCR240GB-DX
Apple wireless keyboard
Apple magic trackpad
Apple 27 thunderbolt display
ASUS Rt-N66U router

Budget 650€.
UseSx ML with thunderbolt display using cpu hd4000 integrated graphics, may buy a discrete gfx card later.

TIPS:As the older UEFI's that ship on the boards are flaky and on the old forums we had a sticky thread telling people to update the UEFI before doing anything else.

WI-FI
If you're concerned for compatibility, you can always just buy a wireless bridge or PowerLine adapters and connect them to your computer via ethernet. So long as your ethernet is working, both of those methods will achieve the desired result. If you want to connect to your ASUS Rt-N66U via WiFi, then you will either need a USB dongle or replace the onboard miniPCIe card with a supported card. Or you can connect to the router with a Cat5e ethernet cable.

PSU
Any good namebrand 400W-450W 80+ Bronze or better would be good if you do not plan on a discrete gfx card
Any good namebrand 500W-600W 80+ bronze or better would work if you want a discrete gfx card.

Apple Thunderbolt display all ports:According to a comment's user on youtube eatsimplefood all usb 2 and firewire and other features on the ATD work
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw0lyxzohM0

 

[jimmybeth]

I am building my first mac and after I get things running in snow leopard I then go for update helper and do the update to snow-leopard.
I just am at a white screen with spinning. It -v said something about iTunes account. I have done 3 clean installs and get to that point and I am stuck. I have no way of moving on. Do you think it is my bios version. I have what came out of the box. What my hope to do is to get Mountain lion downloaded and then use unibeast. I heard that was a great way to go. I even installed an I3 in it just to get snow-leopard to run. I know nothing about kexts and am afraid of them. Please if you can spare a minute I would appreciate it. I am at in failure mode mentally.

 

[runebinder]

I am building my first mac and after I get things running in snow leopard I then go for update helper and do the update to snow-leopard.
I just am at a white screen with spinning. It -v said something about iTunes account. I have done 3 clean installs and get to that point and I am stuck. I have no way of moving on. Do you think it is my bios version. I have what came out of the box. What my hope to do is to get Mountain lion downloaded and then use unibeast. I heard that was a great way to go. I even installed an I3 in it just to get snow-leopard to run. I know nothing about kexts and am afraid of them. Please if you can spare a minute I would appreciate it. I am at in failure mode mentally.

What specs are you running? If you have an Ivybridge chip then that's probably the issue as the Mac App store (definite), and I believe iTunes (could be wrong on this one), do not work in SL with Ivybridge.

 

[geekomancer]

Just in case anyone is still going with the 560 Ti (560ti):

I originally followed Post #46 from this thread (http://www.tonymacx86.com/mountain-...gtx-560-ti-dual-monitor-audio-problems-4.html) to get my dual DVI monitors working. After updating to 10.8.2, MultiBeast, and installing the latest NVIDIA drivers (http://www.tonymacx86.com/articles/...es-mountain-lion-10-8-2-graphics-drivers.html), I was able to remove the ROM fix (kept GraphicsEnabler -> Yes), and system seems to be running fine (same as before, as far as I can tell, but with a slightly quicker boot).

The 560ti is still a bit mulish, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone building a system from scratch, but it's working for now. I will probably eventually swap mine out for a 6xx, since those seem to work seamlessly.

I hope this helps.

 

[geekomancer]

I replaced my 560ti with a 650ti. System is running much better, with no freezes. It was easy to install (http://www.tonymacx86.com/328-native-support-nvidia-gtx-650-ti-gtx-660-graphics-cards-10-8-3.html). Strangely, the BIOS startup screen is on the second monitor now, but the displays in OS are ordered the same.

Also, I finally discovered a fix to a minor but annoying USB bug. I was having shoddy performance from my front USB ports. After switching my front USB cable from #1 to #2, it's working perfectly - both USB 3.0 and 2.0! Thanks to Stork for his post on this. [Updated] Stork's Thunderbolt Build: i5-3570K | GA-Z77X-UP5-TH | GTX 650 Ti | Mountain Lion

Also, just Geekbenched the three latest iMac System Definitions. I believe it was already established that 12,2 tests best, but I wanted to try it for myself. Sure enough: 12,2 - 14871 / 12,1 - 14822 / 13,1 - 13857

Thanks all!