Updating my Hackintosh hardware

[lucam16132]

It's time to update my Hackintosh CPU and motherboard. I have been using a Core i7-6700K with Gigabyte motherboard and NVidia GeForce GTX970 for the past 4-5 years and I need to modernize the platform. Power supply, memory, and hard drives are working great and I would like to keep them.

I am considering a motherboard/CPU swap with a Core i9-9900K. I have looked at the Buyer's Guide and the Gigabyte Z390 AORUS and Asus ROG MAXIMUS motherboards are recommended. Any notable difference between the two that would steer me one way or the other?

I am currently running macOs Sierra (10.12). When I upgrade the hardware, I am also considering updating the OS to Mojave. I have seen the thread about lack of NVidia driver support in Mojave. I guess I have three options:

1) Upgrade to High Sierra or stay in Sierra and keep GTX970 graphics card. I am not sure if Core i9-9900K is supported in Sierra and/or High Sierra
2) Upgrade graphics card to Radeon card and go to Mojave
3) Use on board graphics chip and go to Mojave

I use the graphics card for two monitors (2560x1440) and for Photoshop CC acceleration. I value simplicity and would prefer a solution that is robust with little fiddling. Any advice is appreciated.

This is my current plan:

- Update directly to macOS Mojave using this guide https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/update-directly-to-macos-mojave.260654/ using current hardware
- Swap hardware and connect hard drives
- Boot
- Update BIOS settings

Am I missing anything?

Thank you for any advice or suggestions you may provide!

Cheers!

 

[pastrychef]

I have an Asus Z370 motherboard and a Gigabyte Z390 motherboard. I used both with an i9-9900K. In my opinion, hackintoshing on the Asus Z370 was MUCH easier than the Gigabyte Z390. It has taken me several weeks to get everything working well on the Z390. However, I still don't have native NVRAM and all indications are that Z390 will never have working native NVRAM regardless of brand and/or model. Any Z390 build threads you see that claim "everything working" are not telling the whole story.

I overclock my i9-9900K. For overclocking, the Gigabyte Z390's VRM is far superior to the Asus Z370's. On my Gigabyte, I was able to hit 5.2GHz with 1.330v (I only tested this briefly and went back down to 5.0GHz @ 1.255v for 24/7 usage). On my Asus, I need 1.320v for four cores 5.1GHz/four cores 5.0GHz. On the other hand, my RAM was more stable on the Asus at its XMP profile than the Gigabyte. On the Gigabyte, I had to make manual adjustments and lower RAM clock speeds to achieve stability.

I've never personally done it, but two different users claimed that they successfully ran Sierra on my Z370 build thread. I expect the same of Z390. Personally, I don't see any point to this and want to run the latest version of macOS.

Again, in my opinion, if you are going to continue using macOS, get rid of anything Nvidia and move to an AMD GPU. It's obvious Nvidia has given up on macOS. AMD GPUs just run so much better with macOS.

The biggest advantage of Z390 over Z370 is support for 128GB of RAM, if you need that much...

Note:
The only reason why I switched from Z370 to Z390 was because I was having an issue where my Z370 system could not wake from sleep with a Radeon VII installed. Sleep/wake worked perfectly with every other video card I stuck in there, including Vega 56, RX 560, and GT 640...

My Z390 does wake from sleep with the Radeon VII installed.

 

[lucam16132]

Thank you, that's very helpful. I'll do some research on ASUS motherboard. I would like to be able to increase the RAM to 128GB (I currently have 64GB). I use the computer primarily for astrophotography image processing and it is very RAM intensive.

 

[pastrychef]

Thank you, that's very helpful. I'll do some research on ASUS motherboard. I would like to be able to increase the RAM to 128GB (I currently have 64GB). I use the computer primarily for astrophotography image processing and it is very RAM intensive.

If you need 128GB of RAM, Z370 is not an option because it only supports up to 64GB.