Thin mini itx iHack

[HeyItsGabe]

Hello everyone I am new to the forum. I was thinking of building an all in one hackintosh (iHack), but for this I would have to use a thin mini itx board. I was thinking of using a Gigabyte GA-H87TN board http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4754#ov . I was reading the compatibility list and noticed the H87N-WIFI is a compatible itx board, but I can't find any research saying if the H87TN is compatible. If someone knows it would be greatly appreciated. Also, the H87TN is an 1150 socket. Thanks for your help guys.

-Gabe

 

[leonardofogo]

Hi there...

The h87 chipset is supported by Hackintosh, so most probably this TN will work. You may have to tweak here and there to work 100%, but I'm sure it will work.

You should see what video, audio and ethernet chip this motherboard has. If it is the same as the H787N you can be guarantee it will be working fine...

I would not encourage taking a unsupported board by the community as a first Hackintosh tho, to build your first hackintosh can lead to issues and many headaches. Without the community there to help you out with certainty, only good guesses (that may be correct), i would not venture myself.

I have myself a H87N-wifi, it is very small! I was even thinking ripped off when i sow how small that board was! And there are many amazing build guides on that board online...

Why exactly do you want a TN?

 

[HeyItsGabe]

So I compared the h87n-wifi and the h87tn, http://www.gigabyte.us/products/comparison/list.aspx?ck=2&pids=4601,475 , The boards don't have the same audio or lan chipset. I know it isn't encouraged by the community to try something with a new board becase nobody has really had experience with it. However, I want to use the TN because it is a thin itx that can be used in all in one computers. I want to build something similar to an iMac for the smaller footprint and I like all in ones. I will definitely need to do some research to see if it is even possible to pull off an ihack with this board though.

-Gabe

 

[leonardofogo]

So I compared the h87n-wifi and the h87tn, http://www.gigabyte.us/products/comparison/list.aspx?ck=2&pids=4601,475 , The boards don't have the same audio or lan chipset.
-Gabe

Ok, you can get around the sound issue in case the on board does not work. you can always get a external sound card... there is a very small inexpensive one available. it is compatible and tiny.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/External-US...pt=US_Sound_Card_External&hash=item461cc0fdf3

also if the ethernet does not work (most of them do BTW) you can always use a wifi card. i use a really good one in my build. support 2.4 and 5.0 Ghz... or you can always get a usb to ethernet cable that is used on the Mac Air.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Atheros-AR9...US_Internal_Network_Cards&hash=item25822672d0

 

[potemkin]

There are some Gigabyte thin its builds on this site using the Ivy Bridge CPU.
Check them out. They are not as straight forward as recommended builds.
New Egg has a case that puts thin board in base of mount for LCD..an all in one.
In fact Gigabyte has some all in ones ready to go basically,but no one has hacked them to my knowledge.
As far as 87 thin.. it seems many have tried or thought about it.. apparently no reported success.
On the other hand there has been success with NUC which is even smaller.
Some big box AIO have been tried also.

 

[alancurry]

The GA-H87TN is a different beast than the other Gigabyte boards I've used before.

I'm not a bios expert by any means but I think this is pretty much a UEFI only board.

Unibeast would not boot the board at all. I was about to go down the path and learn DSDTs in depth to see if I could get to boot.

Last night, I decided to give Clover a try and sure enough, I was able to get Mavericks installed. I am not anywhere close to finishing the install but I'll post my findings as they come available.

Alan

 

[sweikese]

Hello,

i stumbled upon your post about installing Mavericks on a GA-H87TN. Good to see somebody else struggling with a GA thin mini itx board. I'm wondering how you are doing so far?

Why am I asking this: I'm trying to kind of do the same thing, though I'm using a GA-B85TN which is almost the same if I'm not mistaking (according to the manual)

First things first, i've set the bios to optimized defaults and disabled secure boot. There's not a lot more to set, the bios options are very (very very) basic.

After trying different installers (Chameleon, Clover), What I've reached so far:
- install mavericks to a SSD (msata) by only using -x as boot option
- ... that's about it... pfffff

After the installation, the SSD is not bootable. It simply doesn't appear in the list of bootable devices and I can't boot to it. Even when I boot from USB, I can not choose for the SSD (only boot from USB).

I'm having a hard time to get passed this annoying situation.

Hope to hear some ideas from you or anyone else of course.

UPDATE:
-------------------

Only one guide worked for me:
http://www.tonymacx86.com/mavericks...-how-install-os-x-mavericks-using-clover.html

 

[alancurry]

I've add my install guide here:

Alan's Thin mini-ITX: GA-H87TN - i3-4330 - HD4600


Alan