My last personal hackintosh is on its way out. Potential hardware failure. Unsure where to go next.

[Thrashavich]

First.. A little bit of background. I’ve put together over 40 hackintoshes in my life. Mostly around the snow leopard - mavericks era. I currently have my last personal hackintosh on its last legs. It is showing possible signs of hardware failure and I’m looking for guidance as to where to go from here. My experience was exclusively with clover and I never familiarized myself with OpenCore or port mapping.





My current rig:

macOS Catalina 10.15.7

Clover 5123

Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 7 (F15)

1TB 970 EVO nvme

i7-8700K @ 5GHz - all core

CryoRig H7 cooler

AMD Radeon VII 16GB HMB2

64GB DDR4-3200 (4x16 G.Skill)

ASUS PCE-AC68 AC1900 wifi card

EVGA 850 Gold PSU

~12 case fans



Also a 1TB 970 EVO plus with Win11





Both operating systems are experiencing instability and hard crashes.









My primary use case:

Mostly file management daily; ingesting, copying, sorting photo and video files.

Occasional video editing of H.264 1080p60 4:2:2 10bit video.

Common photo editing of 33MP uncompressed RAW .ARW files.



All editing done within the Adobe creative suite.



I WILL NOT be working with 4K video or RAW video in the near future.



My upmost priority is performance and stability. Secondary perks would be portability / power efficiency.











Considerations for the next step (supposing I cannot salvage my current system) :



***I am rather unwilling to learn OpenCore but I am completely open to paying one of the established Ukrainian businesses to walk me through a complete personal install myself***



*2* I have no hands on experience with apple silicon performance *2*





I’m juggling these four options.


1.) $1,649 M2 Pro Mini
-12/19/16 cores

-16GB RAM

-1TB SSD



2.) $1,759 15” M2 Pro Air
-8/10/16 cores

-16GB RAM

-1TB SSD


3.) $2,029 14” M2 Pro MacBook Pro
-10/16/16 cores

-16GB RAM

-1TB SSD



4.) ~$1,550 Hackintosh
-i7-13700K (16 core)

-Whichever AIO cpu cooler

-ASUS TUF Z690 plus WiFi

-32GB RAM (G.Skill Flare 2x16GB DDR5-6000)

-2TB Samsung 990 pro nvme

-PowerColor AMD 6800XT

-Whatever phanteks case and fans

-Corsair RM850X





If my researching leads me to believe correctly… this hackintosh may not necessarily be a “golden build” however there shouldn’t be any issues with hardware compatibility and I should theoretically be able to achieve a stable and fully functional Sonoma build.





I already have a monstrous windows PC for recreational things such as gaming.





In this situation, which option would you go for?



Is apple silicon so good that I can forego the raw power of a hackintosh in favor of absolute longevity / official hardware support?



Or will I miss out on that Intel / Radeon power?



Or are the M2 options I listed above overkill for my purposes?



Thanks in advance to anyone who took the time to read and offer input.

**** please note that all listed prices are in USD and all parts mentioned are in stock and readily available for purchasing.

 

[scottkendall]

First.. A little bit of background. I’ve put together over 40 hackintoshes in my life. Mostly around the snow leopard - mavericks era. I currently have my last personal hackintosh on its last legs. It is showing possible signs of hardware failure and I’m looking for guidance as to where to go from here. My experience was exclusively with clover and I never familiarized myself with OpenCore or port mapping

My current rig:
macOS Catalina 10.15.7
Clover 5123
Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 7 (F15)
1TB 970 EVO nvme
i7-8700K @ 5GHz - all core
CryoRig H7 cooler
AMD Radeon VII 16GB HMB2
64GB DDR4-3200 (4x16 G.Skill)
ASUS PCE-AC68 AC1900 wifi card
EVGA 850 Gold PSU
~12 case fans
Also a 1TB 970 EVO plus with Win11

Both operating systems are experiencing instability and hard crashes.
My primary use case:
Mostly file management daily; ingesting, copying, sorting photo and video files.
Occasional video editing of H.264 1080p60 4:2:2 10bit video.
Common photo editing of 33MP uncompressed RAW .ARW files.
All editing done within the Adobe creative suite.
I WILL NOT be working with 4K video or RAW video in the near future.
My upmost priority is performance and stability. Secondary perks would be portability / power efficiency.


Considerations for the next step (supposing I cannot salvage my current system) :

***I am rather unwilling to learn OpenCore but I am completely open to paying one of the established Ukrainian businesses to walk me through a complete personal install myself***

*2* I have no hands on experience with apple silicon performance *2*
I’m juggling these four options.

1.) $1,649 M2 Pro Mini
-12/19/16 cores
-16GB RAM
-1TB SSD

2.) $1,759 15” M2 Pro Air
-8/10/16 cores
-16GB RAM
-1TB SSD

3.) $2,029 14” M2 Pro MacBook Pro
-10/16/16 cores
-16GB RAM
-1TB SSD

4.) ~$1,550 Hackintosh
-i7-13700K (16 core)
-Whichever AIO cpu cooler
-ASUS TUF Z690 plus WiFi
-32GB RAM (G.Skill Flare 2x16GB DDR5-6000)
-2TB Samsung 990 pro nvme
-PowerColor AMD 6800XT
-Whatever phanteks case and fans
-Corsair RM850X

If my researching leads me to believe correctly… this hackintosh may not necessarily be a “golden build” however there shouldn’t be any issues with hardware compatibility and I should theoretically be able to achieve a stable and fully functional Sonoma build.

I already have a monstrous windows PC for recreational things such as gaming.

In this situation, which option would you go for?

Is apple silicon so good that I can forego the raw power of a hackintosh in favor of absolute longevity / official hardware support?

Or will I miss out on that Intel / Radeon power?

Or are the M2 options I listed above overkill for my purposes?

Thanks in advance to anyone who took the time to read and offer input.

**** please note that all listed prices are in USD and all parts mentioned are in stock and readily available for purchasing.

I have a very similar build as your hack that you say is not stable. Maybe it could be your configuration, as I have Gaming 5 with a 9900k and 6800xt and it still used every day by my wife after I replaced it in February with a M2 Max Mac Book Pro that I am very happy with.

For your use case you could probably get a 32gb Mac mini and then in a few years get the next latest and greatest Mac mini. You could also get a 12 core, 30 core GPU M2 Max Mac Studio for around the same cost as the Mac Book Pro you listed. Keep in mind when you consider cost that when you buy a real Mac you take it out of the box and plug it in and it just works.

 

[Thrashavich]

I have a very similar build as your hack that you say is not stable. Maybe it could be your configuration, as I have Gaming 5 with a 9900k and 6800xt and it still used every day by my wife after I replaced it in February with a M2 Max Mac Book Pro that I am very happy with.

For your use case you could probably get a 32gb Mac mini and then in a few years get the next latest and greatest Mac mini. You could also get a 12 core, 30 core GPU M2 Max Mac Studio for around the same cost as the Mac Book Pro you listed. Keep in mind when you consider cost that when you buy a real Mac you take it out of the box and plug it in and it just works.

It has been perfectly stable since first being built in 2018. The instability is a very sudden and recent development. I picked up a spare NVME so I can test the system with fresh installs of Mac / windows without worrying about migrating my apps off the existing drives which continue to boot succesfully despite crashes when put under load.

If crashes continue on fresh new builds, I will disassemble and reassemble the computer to trouble shoot the hardware as best as I can.

After all of the crashing (and out of desperation to complete my task) I swapped the Radeon VII with a relatively new and known working 7900XTX within windows 11. Wiped and did a full factory reset install of amd drivers and made sure all windows nonsense was up to date. The system continued to crash with the new GPU installed so I don’t think it’s the Radeon VII.

Temperatures remain excellent across the board and the bios appears to be unharmed.



I’m very glad you responded because I was hoping to encounter someone like you. How do you feel your M2 Max mbp stacks up against your 6900XT rig?

Do you use Adobe apps?

Does the M2 shred through whatever you throw at it?

Anything you prefer with your big rig?

 

[c-o-pr]

1.) $1,649 M2 Pro Mini
-12/19/16 cores
-16GB RAM
-1TB SSD

Let's use Geekbench 6 to set a baseline comparison—won't tell the whole story but much better than guessing

Here's your old kit:

Intel Core i7-8700K 4700 MHz Turbo (6 cores)
Uploaded Oct 22, 2023
Platform macOS
Single-Core Score 1549
Multi-Core Score 7277
Radeon VII
MacPro7,1 Intel Xeon E5-2697 v4 2299 MHz (18 cores)
Metal Score 82490

Here's the Mini option:

Mac mini (2023) Apple M2 Pro 3471 MHz (12 cores)
Uploaded Oct 22, 2023
Single-Core Score 2620 +69% (x1.7)
Multi-Core Score 14256 +96% (x2)
Metal Score 79642 -3% (x1) (equal)

 

[Thrashavich]

Let's use Geekbench 6 to set a baseline comparison—won't tell the whole story but much better than guessing

Here's your old kit:

Intel Core i7-8700K 4700 MHz Turbo (6 cores)
Uploaded Oct 22, 2023
Platform macOS
Single-Core Score 1549
Multi-Core Score 7277
Radeon VII
MacPro7,1 Intel Xeon E5-2697 v4 2299 MHz (18 cores)
Metal Score 82490

Here's the Mini option:

Mac mini (2023) Apple M2 Pro 3471 MHz (12 cores)
Uploaded Oct 22, 2023
Single-Core Score 2620 +69% (x1.7)
Multi-Core Score 14256 +96% (x2)
Metal Score 79642 -3% (x1) (equal)

Excellent perspective. I spent a bunch of time eyeballing M2 benchmarks to the hackintosh components I’m contemplating purchasing, as well as the new hack components versus my dying ones but never my dying ones directly to the M2. This paints a good picture of how it all fits together. Thank you.

 

[pastrychef]

I vote for M2 Pro Mac mini.

 

[Thrashavich]

I vote for M2 Pro Mac mini.

This comment holds massive weight as you are the brave warrior who helped me get everything in my Radeon VII build working properly.

 

[scottkendall]

It has been perfectly stable since first being built in 2018. The instability is a very sudden and recent development. I picked up a spare NVME so I can test the system with fresh installs of Mac / windows without worrying about migrating my apps off the existing drives which continue to boot succesfully despite crashes when put under load.

If crashes continue on fresh new builds, I will disassemble and reassemble the computer to trouble shoot the hardware as best as I can.

After all of the crashing (and out of desperation to complete my task) I swapped the Radeon VII with a relatively new and known working 7900XTX within windows 11. Wiped and did a full factory reset install of amd drivers and made sure all windows nonsense was up to date. The system continued to crash with the new GPU installed so I don’t think it’s the Radeon VII.

Temperatures remain excellent across the board and the bios appears to be unharmed.

Remove all your overclocking and XMP and let the system run baseline see if that solves your issues if you have not already tried that.

I’m very glad you responded because I was hoping to encounter someone like you. How do you feel your M2 Max mbp stacks up against your 6900XT rig?

Do you use Adobe apps?

Does the M2 shred through whatever you throw at it?

Anything you prefer with your big rig?

My use case is different then Manny peoples, I do architectural work in software called Revit it only works on windows. So I use a remote software to access a windows PC located elsewhere in my house though it does not preform half bad in parallels on the M2. For Architectural rendering I use Twin Motion, and sometimes unreal. I have yet to test if the game mode from Sonoma kicks in with Unreal but it does for Twin Motion. Do I see benefit from the game mode? yes some. I like the laptop because I like I can pick it up and go elsewhere in the house or outside of the house and take the power with me. When sitting at the two different machines I really cannot feel a performance difference. Though the frame rates on the AS hit higher on Twinmotion with the game mode. When I play world of warcraft I see better FPS on the AS then I do on the 6900xt. From what I can tell things that require the GPU only work better if they are coded for AS, if they are using Rosetta it seems like they are preforming mostly the same.

I also might not be pushing the absolute limits either. I only use Adobe stuff very limitedly when I want to encode some video from my GoPro.

 

[etorix]

After all of the crashing (and out of desperation to complete my task) I swapped the Radeon VII with a relatively new and known working 7900XTX within windows 11. Wiped and did a full factory reset install of amd drivers and made sure all windows nonsense was up to date. The system continued to crash with the new GPU installed so I don’t think it’s the Radeon VII.

Temperatures remain excellent across the board and the bios appears to be unharmed.

That leaves memory as the next suspect. What does MemTest report over a few runs?

If you want to build a new Hackintosh without diving into OpenCore, your choices are between

• Exactly replicating a Golden Build here (at least motherboard… and a case with the same front USB ports if you don't want to remap!); or
• Updating your Clover skills to a recent version, which supports your Z690 build (you'll still need to learn about some OC-inherited quirks and do your own USB mapping).

But the reasonable hassle-free choice is a M2 (Pro) mini or MacBook at your liking.

 

[pastrychef]

This comment holds massive weight as you are the brave warrior who helped me get everything in my Radeon VII build working properly.

Reasons that led to my decision:

• We know that X86/X64 versions of macOS will be discontinued soon. I didn't see the logic in continuing to invest in hardware for an OS I know will not be around much longer.
• The M1 Max outperforms my last, most powerful build that consisted of an i9-9900K and 6600 XT while running cool, 100% silent, and sips power.
• The tiny footprint meant that I would regain so much of my desk space.
• On these Apple Silicon Macs, everything is basically built on a single board which means far fewer points of failure and high reliability.

Over the years, I've managed to get macOS running perfectly on quite a few different systems, including the Dell Vostro 3480 and HP EliteDesk G4 Mini which I still use, but I took the plunge on an M1 Max Mac Studio when it was released ~1.5 years ago. On the hacks, I still had to regularly keep OpenCore/Clover and kexts updated. While it wasn't too difficult, it was a chore that I no longer have to deal with. There's something to be said for having everything "just work".

For me, the most challenging thing when going from my hack back to the Mac Studio was having to rethink storage. On my hack, I had 3x 3.5" drives for storage, Time Machine, etc. I moved all those drives to a NAS and it has worked out very well. Besides that, it was an extremely smooth transition.

For my X86/X64 needs, I got an HP EliteDesk Mini. I use it mostly for Batocera (Linux) but also have Windows 10 and macOS Sonoma installed.

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