Back in early 2017, I decided to build a Hackintosh for some reason since I want something more powerful. I decide to take the x99 route. I considered building something around the Intel x99 platform back in 2016 since there is more cores and memory expandability.
Of course, installing it have become easier since the early days when you have to mess around with kexts and custom kernels while hoping a system update doesn’t break the whole system. Nowadays, it’s trivial and you only need to create a normal macOS installer to a flash drive on an actual Mac and then plop the Clover bootloader. Afterwards, you will have a working system, that is if you use a consumer Intel platform.
Installing macOS on an Intel X99 is a lot trickier. It’s a lot harder when macOS Sierra came out. While I did get it to work, some things didn’t quite work right such as the Wireless being flaky, USB ports not recognizing devices properly, sleep not working among other things. It got better with High Sierra, thanks to the work to kgp’s work.
While his setup uses an Asus X99-A II which is a slightly lower end board, I used a Sabertooth X99. While there are some differences such as the board having 1 less PCI Express X16 slot while having dual Ethernet support, everything works the same. The system while work great under High Sierra worked a lot better under macOS Mojave. At this point, it’s close to a golden build with mostly everything working, including sleep. It handles intensive tasks great, especially running more than 5 virtual machines. The only thing that does not work is the temperature sensors as iStat Menus won’t recognize them. Aside from that, it works great, probably better than Windows 10.
Also, if you want to do this build, I highly recommend not to use a nVidia GPU. It seems tempting since AMD have been behind the GPU game. I highly recommend any AMD Radeon Vega GPU. You can even go for the Radeon VII and it will work with the latest version of macOS Mojave. I believe that the AMD Navi GPU support will get added in macOS 10.15.
Should you go out and build a Hackintosh? There are some risks. While this breaks the EULA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act added a new provision for anti-circumvention that allows the end-user to circumvent protections. In short, you aren’t going to get into trouble doing it, as long you legally obtain a macOS installer from a real Mac.
Moreover, there are rumors that Apple may switch to ARM processors, thus putting an end to this. Still, I have my doubts. While the newest iPad Pro is as fast as a 13-inch Macbook Pro, it’s running a mobile OS. Once you have a computer with an ARM processor, it may perform slower running a full desktop operating system. Still, running full desktop operating systems on ARM is not new. Microsoft now has a ARM64 version of full Windows running on ARM and people got that running on a Raspberry Pi. Still, I have my doubts.
Even so, installing macOS on non-Apple hardware have become easier, it’s still not for the faint of heart and you have to tinker a lot and having to solve problems as they arise. Still, it’s an option for those who are yearning for another expandable Mac that is more like the older Mac Pro towers. If you want something that just work and afraid of the Butterfly keyboards (a problem that is overblown to proportions), a Mac Mini or iMac would be a better choice with some external hard drives and an external Thunderbolt 3 GPU.
If you really want to replicate the setup I made, the files to get it working along with a guide is here.
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