OS X - my experience

The Hackintosh theme is a rather entertaining thing, which I follow and imagine “what is there and how”. Recently there is a need to buy a new PC home. Nothing out of the ordinary, no super computers, the very middle peasant home computer to read news, mail, see pictures, swing movies (well, or why are there still people using a computer at home?). It was here that the thought crept in to me to combine business with pleasure - to assemble a PC that is as compatible with OS X as possible.
Actually, I decided to share my experience in building Hakintosh in this topic, all of whom it may be interesting to ask for a cat.

I love Apple products, but I am not an ardent fan of this brand. OS X is really good, it gives me aesthetic pleasure when using a computer. I have no other objective reasons to use OS X.
Having set the goal of installing the original image of the system from the Mac App Store to a new computer, I proceeded to the implementation of my plans.

The first thing that is of utmost importance for the proper operation of the original OS X on a regular PC is the motherboard. A few years ago, the main difference between Macs and PCs was the availability of EFI on Mac computers — an advanced alternative to PC BIOS. But today, two opposing worlds - Mac and PC are increasingly converging, giving the opportunity to run OS X on a PC without any difficulties. Almost all modern motherboards today carry UEFI. Unified EFI (UEFI) is the result of the evolution of EFI, which is now the standard supported by Intel. The BIOS will finally be supplanted by UEFI for a number of objective reasons. Unified EFI (UEFI) for PC is not the same as EFI on Macs, yet there are differences between them, even if they are not significant. Earlier, when motherboards with Unified EFI (UEFI) were wild, you had to use “pads” between the PC BIOS and OS X as a DSDT (Differentiated System Description Table) containing information about all the key devices that make up the computer , and also about parameters and modes of their functioning. Incidentally, this method is now very widely used, in cases where there is no suitable motherboard. But this is not our method. To build my hack, I used one of the most compatible motherboards made by Gigabyte, which gave me the opportunity to get native and proper power management, computer sleep, operating modes or processor downtime and other amenities, relatively trouble-free audio and network. I opted for the Gigabyte GA-Z77-DS3H, my choice was justified solely by the price.

The second important point is the video card. The main criterion for choosing a video card was the presence of native drivers in OS X itself, the performance of the device faded into the background, as I clearly did not intend to fool around with various injectors, third-party drivers for the video. Play games, convert / edit video, I was also not configured. For me, such a device, with a decent price / performance ratio, was the Asus PCI-Ex GeForce GT 640 HD. This video card works out of the box with native drivers supplied by Apple with OS X.
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The third component of a successful hack is the processor. The choice of processor model is not as critical as in the case of a motherboard or a video card, but still important. So, when choosing a processor, the main thing is that it was not AMD approximately the stone used on a real Mac. I opted for the Intel Core i5-3470, which is used in the reference iMac 3.2 27-Inch (Late 2012).

The remaining components are not critical at all, so I also used the following: SSD Crucial M4 128GB 2.5 "SATAIII - for installing OS X itself, Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 1TB - file system + Windows partition, Kingston DDR3-1600 8192MB CL9 1600 MHz.

Total we have:

• Processor: Intel Core i5-3470
• Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z77-DS3H
• RAM: 8 GB (2x4) DDR3-1600 8192MB CL9 1600 MHz
• Hard drives: SSD Crucial M4 128 GB (SATA 6 Gb / s) and regular HDD on 1 TV
• Video: GeForce GT 640 HD
• And of course the monitor + every little thing in the form of a keyboard, mouse, case, speakers, HDMI cable and other things.

OS X 10.8.2 got up to this configuration with the tonymacx86 method, after presetting the BIOS in the form of enabling AHCI mode for Serial ATA drives, installing Profile1 for Extreme Memory Profiles to acquire 1600 MHz memory, and disabling input virtualization technology in the BIOS I / O (VT-d). By the way, the last ones in the enabled state did not allow to launch the OS X installer without problems.

Everything works just gorgeous, and most importantly native, without third-party drivers and DSDT, just a clean system. All this idyll is broken only by the network, sound and lack of support for TRIM on a non-stock SSD.

So, from a non-native in the system there is only Chimera - a bootloader, Atheros drivers - a network, Audio 887 / 888b - sound, TRIM is forcibly turned on. But this can be solved if you believe the same tonymacx86 (and you should definitely believe), then TP-Link PCI Express Wifi Adapter (TL-WDN4800) - works like a native, without third-party drivers, the same goes for the USB audio adapter Creative Play!

My personal experience, community experience proves that OS X on an ordinary PC is already far from being a wonder, but with the right selection of computer components - OS X installed on a PC is not much different from that installed on Macs.

Happy New Year and Merry Christmas! Have a nice weekend.