budget desktop configuration with i5-9400F

just sharing some details for people with similar needs that may be planning their hackintosh and wondering what works.

I'm developer and have been using mid/top of the line mackbooks for the last 10+ years. Typically I'd connect them to 2 or 3 (with the 15") external screens when at my desk. This worked very well for me until my last 15" macbook with top specs started frustrating me in different ways.

After lots of reading and thinking I set to build a hackintosh with some new & old parts while trying to control the budget so that I don't get burned too much if it doesn't work out well.

My hardware:

• i5-9400F — this is probably the best bang for the buck CPU out there. The lack of integrated graphics caused no troubles whatsoever so far. The cooler that comes with it is cheapish and whines even at lowest revs, but is still quieter than my macbook. The CPU runs at ridiculously low temperatures under normal/regular load
• Gigabyte Z390 gaming X — decent Z390 board priced 50$ or so less than the other Z390 boards typically advised for hackintosh. Has everything I need; the major caveat seems to be that it has only one pcie x16 slot and only one usb 3.1 (irrelevant for me). The mobo has given me zero troubles so far. The audio seems to work, tested it once, but I don't care too much about it. Love it's fan control features
• 32G 3200 memory — detected and runs at max speed with XMP profile 1 enabled
• Saphire RX560 4G — with abs no "injection" or "fixes" in clover runs and is properly detected (a.k.a. out of the box). Drives 3 monitors (27" 4k, 27" Dell U2711, 24"). Runs very cool and practically quiet. I had some issues with the color calibration of the Dell U2711 which I fixed by re-calibrating it with the built-in utility. It's pretty old display and I suspect it's displayport support might be buggy
• the rest is leftovers from previous build. Nothing spectacular or exotic
• the SSD will probably be upgraded soon from M2/sata to M2/pcie one. The prices are extremely low while performance gain will be substantial

I decided not to bother with WiFi card. I use mikrotik routers and for 60-70€ (the price of compatible broadcom wifi card) I can get 5Ghz router or CAP that would connect me to my main access point with best possible quality. Running currently with 2.4Ghz router I got out of my hoarding basket via mikrotik's NV2 proprietary protocol that seems to perform best in the extreme noise in my building.

You can follow any gigabyte Z390 AORUS build manual. I followed the vanilla clover manual from this reddit and the resulting set-up is very clean.

Notable glitches and gotchas: * the only hardware related issue was/is my keyboard — causes immediate wake from sleep. Had to fix it by disabling wake-up on all usb ports with one of the many SSDT GRPW patches. Wish I could disable only one USB port power management * I'm using emulated nvram after wasting some time trying to figure out when/if the native support works. Wasted some time because I did not realize I need to install the RC scripts * there was very stubborn 'Boot OS X install from partition' clover boot entry that initially confused me and made me think my nvram is not working. Solving it required deleting some leftovers from the mojave update.

The end result is very satisfying (comparing to the macbook): * the system runs very, very quiet most of the time. Significantly quieter than the macbook * it feels snappier than the macbook, but I may be imagining. Anyway, I have checked the benchmarks and the CPU I use must be comparable to the mobile i7 I have. It will definitely be less prone to thermal throttling * 2x the RAM with the option to go up to 64G is big improvement. I have tons of tabs open all the time across 3 browsers + VMs, etc. * there is widespread problem with painfully slow waking up when connected to multiple external screen that plagues mac minis but my macbook was suffering too. The hackintosh exhibited similar behavior. Installing the DisplayLink drivers eliminated it (as ridiculous as it may sound). * My good old dell U2711 sometimes does not wake up from cold start. That's nothing new for it, it's known glitch

Best part is I can now wipe my macbook clean and try to trick Apple into replacing it's shitty keyboard without going out of business while waiting for it.