What was your primary reason for building a hackintosh?

[WilliamLondon]

Mostly, right now for me it's about price of a new Mac (of any flavour), secondly, it was about Apple's not offering configurations I wanted. I've just finished a mid-career "get me out of this corporate hell to which I'm shackled by pursuing a totally unrelated new university degree" crisis so money isn't flush and since I'm going back to software programming, I need a good/fast setup at home. Sadly, the Mac mini is too stale right now for the money and the Mac Pro is simply out of financial reach, so hackintosh it is!

My first machine (20+ years ago) I built myself (Windoze, but boy did it scream at the time) and enjoyed that process immensely, plus it provided function for many years (even after I gifted it to my brother and upgraded my own). At the time I had bought a book on how to build an Apple machine, but the value and savings weren't really there at the time to justify or warrant the expense. Today, however, it is a different world for the hackintosh, thankfully.

Just built my first hackintosh this week (macOS Server/HTPC/home hub...), 3x faster than currently selling (or 2012) Mac mini, but in a Prodigy case into which I stuffed all my external/media drives and replaced my old, slow NAS. That experience went much better than expected.

Now on to the desktop where parts are ordered and in transit, which together will form my new, very fast (hackintosh) developer's dream machine.

 

[951Niisi]

Our apple devices are beginning to outdated. So this is my first Hackintoch.

 

[MacPack]

Originally it was the price : performance ratio. Once I knew I could make my dollar go further and still have a reliable experience I was in. Originally I just wanted something that could out perform a mac mini for the same price. Along the way though I found added benefits I never thought of (but many other do) that keep my from even considering a real Mac desktop. Expandability, choice of hardware, and various cooling choices are not existent in a real mac.

I started out with a H61N-USB3 paired with a 2500K (for the HD3000 graphics) and worked myself through all the wrinkles. Eventually I added in a GT 640 and that little machine ran like charm for about two years (still running in a golf course as an OS X Plex server) before I built my current system.

Currently I am running hardware you can't get in Mac (like many of the people here), Things like have a 2U rack mount case, an E3 Xeon processor (less TDP), and a Pascal GPU (that I just upgraded from a GTX 750ti). If one were to hide the computer some where and put a Apple Cinema Display on my desk it would fool 99% of the people who use it. It would even kind of look like the iMac it pretends to be.

I think this price : performance ration is what really brings people to the Hackintosh. Many of us could have afforded a mini without the money we spent on our builds, but the fact is, for what a mini cost you can have something just as stable but much more powerful. And, hey, you can actually change/add RAM, put in some additional drives and upgrade your GPU.

 

[chrislikesjets]

I built one to render native Apple ProRes that can be accepted by broadcasters. They will not accept anything less than APPLE PRORES because even if a third party solution is licensed by Apple, the quality factor will never be equal to ProRes content rendered out of native OSX ProRes encoders.

 

[WilliamLondon]

Many of us could have afforded a mini without the money we spent on our builds, but the fact is, for what a mini cost you can have something just as stable but much more powerful.

So true. The mini I'll bet is a benchmark for lots of us, price/performance related to the current mini offerings are too out of whack with what you can homebrew. For me I pegged spending at no more than I would have spent on a new mini and what I get out of the deal is faster than their top of the line iMac performers. Sad Apple isn't giving any love to the poor mini (a lovely machine), but oh so exciting what a little ingenuity and gumption can create with the same money.

 

[gareth12468]

I cannot justify the cost for the hardware specification I want with Apple to replace my Mid-2010 iMac.....

 

[Thireus]

Upgradability should be mentioned.

 

[pastrychef]

Upgradability should be mentioned.

Upgradability would require PCI-e slots. No PCI-e slots = not having the specs you want.

 

[Edan2017]

I Built mine for music production , I can't afford the £2000 for an iMac or Mac Pro. I've got a 2012 MacBook pro but I wanted a permanent workstation at home dedicated just to music production. Plus I like to upgrade my computers.

 

[kevink4]

I would like to know what your PRIMARY reason was to build a hackintosh.

I wanted an expandable Mac to replace my 2008 Mac Pro with capable CPU and 4K display. I see now that a top of the line iMac would have sufficed, since it can go to 32GB, but I can expand mine to 64GB later if I want. Of course, the iMac would cost $3599+tax at apple.com, and I paid less than $2000 for mine including display. The only issue with mine is occasional crashes that I've never isolated in the last year. Can stay up for 1-3 weeks.

Of course, my MacBook can crash on occasion coming back from sleep.