Which Z77/H77 microATX board?

[ellisbodds]

Hi,

I'm thinking of adapting my desktop into a fully compatible Hackintosh.

Specs below:

Core i5-2500K
Asus P8Z68-V/GEN3 (NOT the 'Pro' variant)
2x4GB Corsair Vengeance 1600MHz CAS9
Asus HD 7970 Matrix Platinum
Crucial M500 240GB SSD + storage drives

I don't want more CPU power, so I thought that instead of jumping up to Haswell I'd get a more compatible motherboard and downsize to microATX while I'm at it, with a new case

From what I remember, a Gigabyte board will be the way to go? I had a bad experience with one of their Z68 offerings, and I remember others feeling the same way, so I want to get something on the Z77 or H77 chipset (not bothered about overclocking anymore really) - can I just pick any Gigabyte board and expect full compatibility? I doubt I can find one for sale new at a reasonable price, so I'm assuming I'll have to look on eBay or similar.

Apologies if there's a guide somewhere for this but the latest compatibility guides obviously only look at Haswell boards.

Cheers

EDIT: I should note, I may get rid of the graphics card. I'm aware that it won't be fully compatible with OS X, at least not without some work.

 

[Going Bald]

Links to earlier Buyer's Guides are available on the Home page - scroll down to the bottom and click on earlier pages than the current until you find the last 2013 guide that listed Ivy bridge boards - probably 9 or 10 pages back to get to May or June 2013 BG.

 

[ellisbodds]

Links to earlier Buyer's Guides are available on the Home page - scroll down to the bottom and click on earlier pages than the current until you find the last 2013 guide that listed Ivy bridge boards - probably 9 or 10 pages back to get to May or June 2013 BG.

Aha, thanks!

Not sure the ITX boards would work for me (for instance, only 4 SATA ports and one PCIe slot) and the B75 board also lacks a fair few features, but the Q77 board listed there could work.

I'm assuming other boards could work just as well, even though they're not in the buyer's guide? I assume the buyer's guide is not meant to be an exhaustive list of components that work.

 

[Going Bald]

Aha, thanks!

Not sure the ITX boards would work for me (for instance, only 4 SATA ports and one PCIe slot) and the B75 board also lacks a fair few features, but the Q77 board listed there could work.

I'm assuming other boards could work just as well, even though they're not in the buyer's guide? I assume the buyer's guide is not meant to be an exhaustive list of components that work.

Buyer's Guide from that far back will generally only recommend Gigabyte boards because the others have locked CPU MSR and require you to patch/flash the BIOS or patch the kernel to keep that from causing KP on boot without using NullCPU kext.

 

[ellisbodds]

Buyer's Guide from that far back will generally only recommend Gigabyte boards because the others have locked CPU MSR and require you to patch/flash the BIOS or patch the kernel to keep that from causing KP on boot without using NullCPU kext.

Oh, I meant other Gigabyte boards. Obviously they released loads of 7-series boards, but there's only a few listed. How safe will I be if I pick a board that's not listed there? I don't know how picky I can afford to be given that most places won't stock those boards anymore, so I'll likely have to hunt down a used one.

 

[Going Bald]

Oh, I meant other Gigabyte boards. Obviously they released loads of 7-series boards, but there's only a few listed. How safe will I be if I pick a board that's not listed there? I don't know how picky I can afford to be given that most places won't stock those boards anymore, so I'll likely have to hunt down a used one.

Any of them will work, but try to stay away from the ones with VIA audio and Atheros network chips - they are not supported in OS X. Realtek or Intel network and realtek ALC audio is what you want.

 

[ellisbodds]

Any of them will work, but try to stay away from the ones with VIA audio and Atheros network chips - they are not supported in OS X. Realtek or Intel network and realtek ALC audio is what you want.

Awesome, that's exactly what I wanted to know, thanks.

Now just to wait until pay day and then find a suitable board