Hackintosh - Stay Flexible. Stay Professional.

Tech

June 11, 2017

During my school days, I received my first Macintosh as a present - one of those, at that time innovative, chic silver iMacs. With it, everything began: my affection for the Mac OS and the DAWs like the old Logic 9. Someday, its processing power became too low for my needs and I informed myself about upgrade possibilities. Unfortunately, I had to realise that these "possibilities" were extremely limited and still are till this day. At the beginning, I was satisfied with a simple RAM upgrade - a performance enhancement was fairly noticeable. But after a certain amount of time passed, my old beloved iMac simply could not cope with my requirements. It actually limited my productivity and creativity enormously by its processing restriction. It was time for a new desktop computer and, thus, my search for a suitable solution began...

Because the latest Mac Pro ("trash can" as some of you would call it) did not offer me flexible expandability and a reasonable price, it was not ineligible as my new studio device. While searching for serious alternatives, I read a lot about the magic word "Hackintosh" and the corresponding phenomenal community site called tonymacx86. Once a month, the website operator presents the newest Mac-compatible components, with which you are able to build your own Hackintosh. A Hackintosh is nothing but a DIY Windows computer on which you are able to install Mac OS, thanks to the preselected components. Beyond the monthly so-called "builder's guide" (=latest components list), the website hosts a giant community, which is the central point of the Hackintosh support. It consists of newbies and real pros answering general Q&As or more specific issues.

Since I have built my own Hackintosh, I am an avid fan of this concept! With my broad cassis and the respective components, I am able to upgrade the system or build a completely new one whenever I want. And, without a doubt, this is a must-have for me, whose computer is the centre of the professional work! In the following, I present you my actual build, which is already 3 years old (September 2014), and I will talk briefly about my future upgrade plans.

Hackintosh Components

1. Chassis

To start with everything, your computer components need a safe and probably nice looking home. I decided in favour of a brand-new Lian Li aluminium case instead of an old Mac Pro 5.1 case, which was hyped to be such studio Hackintosh. I attached acoustic foam panels to the inside of all chassis walls (let fan slots open!) to generally improve the isolation and thereby the noise level of the entire machine.

2. Motherboard

The Gigabyte Z87X-UD5H was a great motherboard for me to begin with my first build. Annoyingly, I did not think about Thunderbolt ports or upgrade possibilities/support as I assembled my first Hackintosh. It offers anything but Thunderbolt. If you are not a Thunderbolt user (e.g. for your audio interface), this could be absolutely fine for you. I will focus on this topic next time.

3. CPU

I am super happy with this piece of pure power. This fast i7 processor was in those days one of the fastest available and is still working well for my needs. If you want to overclock your CPU, you have to choose the K-model.

4. RAM

Two pieces of this RAM package equip my motherboard to its maximal RAM power. All four RAM slots are equally supplied with the same power. All in all, 32GB of RAM are available to work with.

5. Graphic card

I do not use the computer for gaming or video editing but wanted to be sure to be able to use a multi-monitor-setup. That was the main reason to purchase an additional graphic card. So, nothing fancy here.

6. Power supply

To keep the noise level of the computer as low as possible, I absolutely needed a quiet power supply. Hint: check twice, whether your selected power supply can easily handle all your components. If so, you have completed this unspectacular buy.

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7. System drive (SSD)

I needed a fast drive for my system, so an SSD was my first choice. Because I thought that I would be able to install the Mac OS and the later installed applications on separated drives, I chose only the 250GB drive. I had to realise rapidly that this is not practicable and therefore the drive far too small. On these grounds, I would suggest you at least a 500 GB SSD!

8. Big Drive (HD)

Next to a fast SSD, I like to have an HD to store big project data. Such hard drives are only used as data archives for me. All project work is done on a flash drive which is highly recommended.

9. WLAN

Nothing important in a studio environment but I wanted the option to have WLAN connection. With that said, I equipped my machine with this dual-band WLAN PCIe adapter.

10. DSP

One of the most important components of this audio Hackintosh is the digital signal processor (short: DSP). The Universal Audio UAD-2 Quad Custom allows me to use the world's finest audio plug-ins which mainly emulate the vintage tone and character of old studio analogue studio equipment.

Thanks to that brilliant invention, these UAD emulations do not need my main CPU power. More power left for the DAW and additional plug-ins and virtual instruments which run on your host system.

Future plans

Of course, there are plans for my future build - my second version of my audio Hackintosh. It will be a big overall upgrade which is long overdue and will probably take place next year.

New motherboard with Thunderbolt 2/3 focus
Thunderbolt PCIe extension
New graphic card (4 or 6GB)
New up-to-date CPU
Professional cooling system (quiet!)
Large SSD system drive (e.g. 1 TB)
More and faster RAM (min. 64 GB)
Poss. additional UAD-2 DSPs

Let's see ;)

Conclusion

A Hackintosh system is very flexible: you can upgrade or customise it whenever you want. One of the most important benefits of such DIY computers is that you save a pile of money compared to an original Mac Pro. It is a must-have for professionals, who want to extend their systems with PCI components like DSPs, sound or graphic cards.

On the other side, an own build can have some issues and, therefore, is time-consuming until the system runs completely stable. In my opinion, a Hackintosh is not suitable for IT newbies. Assembling your own computer comes without warranty and official support from Apple or other companies because you do not own an original Apple device.

As far as I can see, I don't want to miss a Hackintosh system anymore. Especially when Apple is not changing his pro-audio strategy.

7 thoughts on “Hackintosh – Stay Flexible. Stay Professional.”

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Jeff 17. March 2019 at 23:13

Wow, wonderful blog layout! How long have you been blogging for? You made blogging look easy. The overall look of your website is excellent, as well as the content! Keep going!

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Christo 7. June 2019 at 9:17

Hi there,

I wanna know if my PC is gonna be compatible with UAD APOLLO TWIN mkii…

I’m planning to to buy alphine ridge controller along with a TB3 to TB2 adapter

I wanna know if alphine ridge is going to work with NVME along with it

i7 8700

GA Z370 SLI XP

970 evo nvme 500 gb

GT 710 2gb graphics card

2*4TB HDD

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1. AlbrechtProductions 8. June 2019 at 12:29
  
  I have just replied to your email 😉
Winston 26. June 2019 at 5:12

A big thank you for your blog post.

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