Sub 500$ hackintosh?

[LtCmdrData]

I beg to differ on the processor choice if you're going to to iOS development. I'm a full time developer since 1996 (yes back on Classic MacOS and then in Pascal and C++). Currently I develop mostly for iOS and recently also in Vapor (a Swift backend for web development). Xcode is really a resource hug: needs a lot of RAM and a lot of processing power while compiling.
Don't be skimpy on RAM to, you'll have a lot of apps open. I usually have 15-20 apps running. My minimum setup is : Finder, Mail, Calendar, Safari, iMessage for basic productivity (5 in total), Xcode, iOS Simulator, Sequel Pro, Brackets (text editor used for HTML/CSS), Rested (for API testing), Terminal (6 in total), Slack for chatting (Vapor has a great Slack community) (1) and Chrome + Firefox for testing (2). So my minimal setup is 14 apps open. I usually close Chrome & Firefox to fire up Parallels which I use for testing from Windows. My next Mac or Hackintosh will have an i7 AND a lot of RAM (currently I have 16Gb, which maxes out my current computer and is just enough)

 

[trs96]

The title of the post is Sub $500 Hackintosh? If the OP spends $300 + on an I7 how would they stay under budget ? Maybe a non-K I5 would be a better choice. They may not run as many apps simultaneously and therefore not need 8 threads of an I7. It is nice to have but the total cost has to be considered in the decision. Anyway, Elfin decided to go with an I5-6600K which should perform adequately for what he wants to do.

 

[LtCmdrData]

@trs96 : I know that budget is an issue. Just wanted to point out that sticking to a budget may bite back. Been there done that. At this moment I always wait a bit longer until I have the budget for the needs. Rather do that than buy something that is frustrating. The more ElfinHilon10 knows the better

 

[ElfinHilon10]

@trs96 : I know that budget is an issue. Just wanted to point out that sticking to a budget may bite back. Been there done that. At this moment I always wait a bit longer until I have the budget for the needs. Rather do that than buy something that is frustrating. The more ElfinHilon10 knows the better

Thanks for the advice. I did opt to get a little bit higher (dropped the GPU), and instead got 16GB of RAM and an an i5-6600k. I'm still under the 500 mark by about 20 bucks. I may upgrade to 32GB in the future, but for now, this is fine enough since I'm still learning swift and development.

 

[LtCmdrData]

@ElfinHilon10: great, sounds good. Can you post your final configuration I have an intern working for me this summer and maybe I'll configure this Hackingtosh for him. Does the motherboard also support an i7 ?

 

[ElfinHilon10]

Yep! It will support an i7 as well, even overclocked. The biggest thing to keep in mind though, is that I used some pieces I had in other machines. I also got kinda lucky with ebay and certain specials. I don't think this would be something that you'd be able to do realisitically, and I honestly spent more than 500 on this build, with the caveat that I bought several pieces to the build years back.

Just a rough draft so far:

Case: BitFeenix Prodigy M with Window
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z170N Gaming 5
CPU: i5-6600K
Cooler: Cryorig H7
RAM: 16GB of DDR4 RAM (Team Dark)
GPU: ASUS GTX Strix 960 2GB
SSD: 256 GB Samsung 840 EVO
PSU: CX450M corsair Semi Modular PSU

I'm taking the motherboard from this build out my current hackintosh and replacing it with an ATX Z170 MSI PRO motherboard that cost me 70 bucks off ebay brand new. I'm also taking the SSD out of my old hackintosh, as well as a GTX 960 from an old computer I had.

All I needed to buy was the case, motherboard replacement, CPU, Cooler, RAM and PSU. So the under 500 I spent was also due to the fact that I had quite a few pieces left over. That being said, you could still probably do a similar build for under 700, possibly even really close to 600.

 

[ElfinHilon10]

Just a quick update. I used the hardware listed above, and I have a perfectly working system. iMessage, bluetooth, wifi, sound over DP->HDMI and my GPU all work. Ethernet and USB 3.0 all work as well! It's been amazing.