What Is The Recommend i7 Board For Hackintosh?

[Masterjack]

I want an i7 rig - what board is the current champ as far as EVERYTHING working with not much effort? I'm new to the Hack world and while I can follow a guide - why not start with something that 'just works'.

I would like 8-12 gigs of ram and a nice video card mainly used for photography and video editing. I would like at least 6 SATA ports on my board - may not use them all but I want to have them for future expansion. I will also be dual-booting into Windows 7 64.

Thank you,

John

 

[adamsmasher]

Which i7 are you planning on using? If it's the 1156 socket model then any of the Gigabyte P55 boards are great. The GA-P55-UD2 that I use is the same as the site's creator (which means that it'll be easy to get it running). You can get up to 16 GB of RAM in it and it has plenty of SATA.

 

[Masterjack]

Thank you. I'm planning on the i7-920 chip.

 

[adamsmasher]

That processor is for the 1366 socket so it uses motherboards with the X58 chipset. I've heard that people have gotten it running with Tony's boot CD, but you might have to use patched kernels instead of the vanilla kernel. Audio and Ethernet are the same as in many P55 boards, so you won't have much issues there. I'd take a look at the Gigabyte boards at newegg if you're going to go the X58 route:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010200280%2050001314%201070545356&name=LGA%201366

 

[thelostswede]

It should work as long as you make sure that the audio codec and ethernet solution on the board you're going for are supported in OS X.

But as adamsmasher said, you won't be able to run vanilla kernel unless you get a Xeon instead of a Core i7.

 

[Masterjack]

Thanks guys.... so I understand this - going with an i5 will be more compatible with OSX? I would really like the speed and extra cores of the i7 since I will be doing graphics.

Thanks,

John

 

[adamsmasher]

You could go with the i7 860, which works with the P55 board and is therefore capable of running the vanilla kernel.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115214&cm_re=i7_860-_-19-115-214-_-Product

Pair that up with a Gigabyte P55 board and it's very stable and powerful.

 

[FatShenanigans]

It should work as long as you make sure that the audio codec and ethernet solution on the board you're going for are supported in OS X.

But as adamsmasher said, you won't be able to run vanilla kernel unless you get a Xeon instead of a Core i7.

Normally I just lurk here from time to time but OCD kicked in where I couldn't resist to register and correct the information here.

I have installed and updated no less than three 1366/X58 chipset systems using the vanilla kernel of 10.6 all the way back in August when it was still a developer build no less. I've read dozens of threads and this is the first time I've ever heard this with or without my personal experience.

Where are you guys getting your information? I'm not saying this in a condescending manner since I genuinely want to know where since this is the first time I've ever heard anything of the sort.

All I need is a retail disk restored to a USB coupled with a boot USB and I can install 10.6.0 in about 15 minutes with just Fakesmc2.5 (actually a revised version for speed step for Mac Pro that we made) and IOACHIblockstorageinjector. With both ASUS and Gigabyte I can get native speedstep to work through the DSDT as well.

With the latest bootloaders the processor shows up as Xeon but with Netkas 10.5 and a CPU identification script by Digital Dreamer it will show up as Intel i7-920.

 

[Masterjack]

It should work as long as you make sure that the audio codec and ethernet solution on the board you're going for are supported in OS X.

But as adamsmasher said, you won't be able to run vanilla kernel unless you get a Xeon instead of a Core i7.

Normally I just lurk here from time to time but OCD kicked in where I couldn't resist to register and correct the information here.

I have installed and updated no less than three 1366/X58 chipset systems using the vanilla kernel of 10.6 all the way back in August when it was still a developer build no less. I've read dozens of threads and this is the first time I've ever heard this with or without my personal experience.

Where are you guys getting your information? I'm not saying this in a condescending manner since I genuinely want to know where since this is the first time I've ever heard anything of the sort.

All I need is a retail disk restored to a USB coupled with a boot USB and I can install 10.6.0 in about 15 minutes with just Fakesmc2.5 (actually a revised version for speed step for Mac Pro that we made) and IOACHIblockstorageinjector. With both ASUS and Gigabyte I can get native speedstep to work through the DSDT as well.

With the latest bootloaders the processor shows up as Xeon but with Netkas 10.5 and a CPU identification script by Digital Dreamer it will show up as Intel i7-920.

Thanks for chiming (sp?) in. Yes I too would like to know if it will work Vanilla or not. You can install in 15 minutes, huh? Well - if you are in the Houston area stop by my house once I get the parts... I'll even feed you and throw in a beer or two....

I'm now looking at the i7-930 which just came out and is only $10 more... any thoughts?

 

[FatShenanigans]

It should work as long as you make sure that the audio codec and ethernet solution on the board you're going for are supported in OS X.

But as adamsmasher said, you won't be able to run vanilla kernel unless you get a Xeon instead of a Core i7.

Normally I just lurk here from time to time but OCD kicked in where I couldn't resist to register and correct the information here.

I have installed and updated no less than three 1366/X58 chipset systems using the vanilla kernel of 10.6 all the way back in August when it was still a developer build no less. I've read dozens of threads and this is the first time I've ever heard this with or without my personal experience.

Where are you guys getting your information? I'm not saying this in a condescending manner since I genuinely want to know where since this is the first time I've ever heard anything of the sort.

All I need is a retail disk restored to a USB coupled with a boot USB and I can install 10.6.0 in about 15 minutes with just Fakesmc2.5 (actually a revised version for speed step for Mac Pro that we made) and IOACHIblockstorageinjector. With both ASUS and Gigabyte I can get native speedstep to work through the DSDT as well.

With the latest bootloaders the processor shows up as Xeon but with Netkas 10.5 and a CPU identification script by Digital Dreamer it will show up as Intel i7-920.

Thanks for chiming (sp?) in. Yes I too would like to know if it will work Vanilla or not. You can install in 15 minutes, huh? Well - if you are in the Houston area stop by my house once I get the parts... I'll even feed you and throw in a beer or two....

I'm now looking at the i7-930 which just came out and is only $10 more... any thoughts?

I'm saying that it installs 100% in vanilla without problems. I've tested this as fact several times. What I want to know is where they are hearing or reading otherwise. Once you restore your retail disk to a USB and create your boot disk it's 15 minutes. Well...15 minutes on a solid state drive that is

Get the 930...no problems there since the 975 works great also in vanilla kernel