A little bit of background on why I did this. I have been using the Mac Pro 5,1 Mid 2010 for around 8 years the machine its served me well and never skipped a beat. The main purpose for this machine is pro music production for use with Cubase (I am now using Version 10) and I am a heavy user of working in the box therefore I use a ton of virtual instruments / software libs and FX plugins. With all the software advancements over the years including some of the software vendors now starting to make use of AVX in CPU architecture my old workhorse was finally starting to slow down and get a little glitchy which was becoming more noticeable especially over the last 6 months. This was probably due to being forced to upgrade Mac OS To 10.13.x for some of the software updates I needed for support purposes etc.. This lead me to a conclusion… I need a new machine! At first, I looked at a new Mac Pro, however the issue is there is the new cheese graters were not available yet and I don’t really want to spend 5-6 thousand on an entry level Pro machine… No thanks Apple! Refurbed 2013 trash cans were around 3 Thousand with the spec I wanted…. So, I turned to the Hackintosh community I must admit I was a little worried when I first took this on.
Between the oodles of vids on you tube, TonyMac’s site, here and there (Including the vanilla guide) I was able to take the plunge building myself a powerful machine based on the I9 9900 CPU. I managed to build this for well under 2 grand (UK Pounds) which is a fraction of the price of the equivalent that you can get from apple!
Here are the exact specifications:
- Intel I9 9900k Retail unlocked 'P0' (Not overclocked Yet) – Idle Temps in my studio sit at around 26 degrees
- Gigabyte Z390 Designare MB (Rev 1 @ Bios Version F5) – did not have to change too many settings here just disable IGPU and remove intel virtualisation stuff
- HyperX HX432C16PB3K4/32 Predator DDR4 32 GB (Kit 4 x 8 GB), 3200 MHz CL16 DIMM XMP (Certified config in QVL)
- Fractal R2 Black case (removed HDD bays for better airflow)
- Alphacool 11446 Eisbaer LT360 Water Cooler Mounted at top of case (as it's designed to run above the CPU block for better liquid circulation) CPU temps don't exceed 50c at 4.2GHZ turbo boost - Think I can get this better!
- Samsung MZ-76E500B/EU 500 GB 860 EVO SSD (For Mac OS and Music Production apps)
- Samsung 970 Pro 1TB NVe block (MB Mounted - not fussed about losing some Sata) = This is for Fast load Libs and Cubase projects - 2TB WD HDD (Other Production Libs)
- 2 X Samsung 850 Pro 512 GB (These were salvaged from the other Mac Pro in Mac Raid which just worked when I plugged them in)
- EVGA SuperNOVA 750 G2, 80+ GOLD 750W PSU
- Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8Gb (1 DVI, 2HDMI, 2DP) all 3 of my monitors work first time, no lag, no issues across DP, DVI and HDMI
- Texas Instruments based generic Firewire 800 card (This runs my UAD Apollo Sound interface without any issues)
- Dynamode BlueTooth 4 Dongle (For my Bluetooth Apple Keyboard and keypad)
- Have not had a chance to try Thunderbolt yet however it is detected in system
- I am running Mac OS 10.14.5 Mojave Did not have any problem with logging into iTUNES / App store or iMessage (have not tried Face time because I don't use it)
(Other Notes) I used the Clover Boot to create my Mojave boot USB and Clover configurator to create my fully configured EFI using vanilla guide. Touch wood I have not had any issues yet.
I have a tone of external SSD's and HDD drives working directly from the USB ports and via a USB hub. I know that ther is a 15 device limit however I have not hit this quite yet. I am also using one of the USB - C ports for one of the SSD drives
All my new Cubase production projects are working with no issues and I am happy to say that even the one’s which were struggling with audio drop outs and stutters the machine handles them without a care or a sniff!
Here is a link to my working EFI if anyone wishes to build this machine: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1tJZCAGQNS7j6aT90kmOwanwxepaYbXg2
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