NVMe, 5k, Target Display Mode

[Helmi74]

Hey there,

planning to build a desktop replacement for my iMac I had already looked across the June buyers guide and have some imaginations of what to buy build but I have few questions left:

1. For a 5k 60Hz setup, what GPU/graphics card should I use at minimum? The Mac Pro buyers guide suggests a GTX950 which looks nice but I wonder if it'll be enough. I'm not planning to do high end gaming but I am definitely looking to play some Cities Skylines or similar.

2. Are NVMe drives supported? There are quite some nice drives out there. should be interesting to use them in comparison to Sata SSDs.

3. will I be. able to use my late 2012 Mac in TDM as a Monitor and also probably use my Mac Bluetooth keyboard and mouse with the Hackintosh? I will have another Monitor for Setup but for daily use in the beginning it would be good to reuse the iMac as Monitor.

Thanks in advance for helping me find answers.

Frank

 

[Gabeloooooo]

Do NOT get a NVMe drive for hackintosh. Ways to get it to work, but all unstable with caveats. Besides, the NVMe speed increase you'll only notice in very specific disk intensive tasks, not day to day use.

 

[Fl0r!an]

NVMe needs a 3rd party driver or patches to Apples NVMe kext. I wouldn't recommend that at the moment. A m.2 AHCI SSD will provide almost the same performance and works 100% OOB.

For 5K@60Hz any Nvidia GPU with at least 2 DisplayPorts is sufficient. I'd search for benchmarks of your games to choose the correct GPU. It's going to get expensive if you want to run your games at native resolution and high settings though.

Target Display Mode requires Thunderbolt video output. It might be possible to use something like the Asus ThunderboltEX II to merge your GPU's video output into the Thunderbolt data stream of your motherboard. I don't know if this is enough for Apples TDM to work, but it's a starting point for research.

Bluetooth accessory will work fine if you install a proper bluetooth dongle.

 

[Cobra2187]

What about installing the Win10 on the M.2 drives and the Mac OS X on an SSD? I am getting ready to put together everything next week. right now I am needing to buy a Graphics card. I have a brand new Crucial 750gb SSD I picked up on Amazon Prime day for $139.99 but still want a M.2 Drive. I am replacing my Mac Pro Hex(late 2013) with this Small form factor Skylake build.