Mac Mini Hackintosh

Mac Mini Hackintosh. The goal of this guide is to create the perfect Mac mini alternative using the Intel NUC Ha des C anyon (NUC8i7HNK/NUC8i7HVK) and macOS This guide is not for setting up a Hackintosh for any other machine For a general Hackintosh guide the Vanilla Hackintosh Guide is highly recommended and is the main source of inspiration for this guide.

Hackintosh mac mini Since there hasn’t been a Mac Mini update in years I thought I would make this quick guide on how to get a “New Mac Mini” where you can add up to 16GB of ram and as big of a 25″ SSD/HDD you can find while saving a couple hundred dollars in the process The processor in this NUC is the same one found in a specced out 2015MacBook Pro 13 @ $1599 (31GHz dualcore Intel Core i7 processor Turbo Boost up to 34GHz).

Mac Mini Killer: Broadwell NUC Hackintosh Hackintosher

What I BoughtWhat We&#39re Going to NeedFinding A MotherboardProcessor Video and RamStorageAddOn BoardsCase and Power SupplyWins and LossesBottom LineLet&#39s start out with the configuration I&#39m rocking I bought the highestend i7 processor offered by Apple I configured it with 8GB of RAM with the plan to upgrade it myself to 32GB I added the 10GB Ethernet port and 1TB of flash storage Also Apple Mac Mini (2018) review The little Mac that could If you&#39re curious about why I chose this configuration I&#39ve documented my reasoning here All told the machine cost $1999 from Apple I also spent $288 on some Corsair Vengeance Performance 32GB (2x16GB) 260Pin DDR4 SODIMM (PC4 21300) RAM from Amazon That made my total cost $2287 So here&#39s the question Can we build a Hackintosh for less? Let&#39s plan out the parts we&#39re going to have to source to make this work I like to start with the mobos highlighted on TonyMac86 because the community there has really thought out what it takes to make a Hackintosh that works Motherboard The starting point is the motherboard The challenge here is to find something that&#39s as small as a Mac Mini Ideally that would probably be a miniITX board but the lack of slots may cause some issues Processor I bought a Coffee Lake i7 processor in my Mac Mini According to the GeekBench app running on my machine that&#39s an i78700B processor According to CPUbase there&#39s not much difference in performance between the 8700 and 8700B except the B is the mobile processor variant Both have the same speeds and feeds Video The onboard video for the Mac Mini is adequate not fantastic Even so we&#39re looking for Intel UHD Graphics 630 compatibility which fortunately will come with the processor RAM I didn&#39t subject RAM to a huge evaluati The TonyMacx86 site recommends two motherboards for Mac Ministyle machines the ASUS ROG Strix H370I Gaming and the Gigabyte H370N WIFI Both of these are known to work with MacOS Mojave Unfortunately they don&#39t have the specs we need and with only one PCIe slot there&#39s no way to get there from here I wanted to stick with a knownworking mobo so I worked my way up the TonyMac buyers&#39 guide to the Prolevel motherboards Also Mac Mini 2018 Cheat sheetTechRepublic The site recommended two ASUS ROG motherboards one of which was in the midthree hundred buck range and the other over $400 By contrast the Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaminghad similar specs (it also had Bluetooth) but is available for $12995 on Amazon From CNET Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming specs We&#39ll start here It supports the memory we need the flash storage the USB 30 ports has a huge range of ports (Including a PS/2 mouse portbecause) It also has two PCIe Gen3 x4 slots which we&#39ll be using later It al While the Mac Mini has a 6core i78700B we&#39ll spec out an i78700K desktop class processor It also has 6cores but it runs at 37 GHz (turbo up to 47) This is faster by a bit than the Mac Mini&#39s 32 GHz (up to 46 GHz) We&#39ll take the win where we can find it Our chosen processor also gets us the onboard Intel UHD Graphics 630 which puts us on parity with what&#39s in the Mac Mini The best price I found with a minimum of shopping around was $369 from Newegg That brings our total system cost up to $49994 Also 2018 Mac Mini blocks Linux here are alternative small form factor PCsTechRepublic Next we&#39ll add RAM When I bought my RAM two weeks ago it was $28849 Earlier today it was up to $41099 but now as I type this it&#39s back down to $30999 That&#39s the thing with RAM Prices fluctuate A lot I found a better deal at Crucial with a 32GB kit of DDR4266 SODIMM RAM for $27399 Since I generally like buying RAM from Crucial anyway it&#39s a win We&#39ll add that to our t I just ran a quick Blackmagic Design storage speed test I&#39m getting 2712 MB/s on reads and 2640 MB/s on writes That&#39s the number we&#39re looking for in NVMe flash drive Crucial offers what they call a budget NVMe M2 SSD but the fastest they get to is 2000 MB/s reads and 1700 MB/s writes By contrast the Samsung 970 EVO M2 2280 1TB PCIe Gen3 X4claims 3500/2500 MB/s While benchmarks and claims never match real world performance it&#39s definitely in the ballpark of what I&#39ve been seeing This is where the Apple Tax seems extreme I paid an extra $600 for 1TB of solderedin flash storage The Samsung 970 EVO stick is a mere $22799 That brings our total system cost to $100192 Now we have some decisions to make Assuming the onboard WiFi on our mobo actually works which is always a big question with Hackintoshes we have three capabilities missing 10Gb Ethernet four USBC/Thunderbolt 3 ports and Bluetooth 50 We have only two PCIe slots so which do we choose? There&#39s not all that much right now that utilizes Bluetooth 50 but I have a server right here in my office that supports 10Gb Ethernet So we&#39ll need to find a board for that This is a big challenge because it&#39s not just what board you buy but which board has components that Apple supports I&#39ve always found that the Intel Ethernet boards are the most compatible across the board so I&#39m going with an Intel X540T2 Ethernet Converged Network Adapter For the record I don&#39t know if this board works with Mojave it just has a better chance because it&#39s Intel Also Apple MacBook Air (2018) review Apple&#39s veteran ultraportable gets a facelift The Intel Ethernet board is available from Neweg Unfortunately the ATX motherboard costs us the ability to build a small formfactor machine If we were willing to sacrifice either the 10Gb networking or the extra USBC ports we might have been able to go with a smaller case But the whole point of this exercise is to see if we can build a Mac Mini clone and what it would cost That means we want to include as much of the Mac Mini&#39s capabilities as possible and that means we need a bigger case Also How I learned to stop worrying and love USB TypeC Here I kind of took the easy way out There are so many fullsized ATX cases out there that searching for just the right one was just not worth the effort Instead I chose Amazon&#39s Choice which is a Rosewill ATXmidtower design What makes it ideal for our needs is that it includes the case a 500w power supply and fans That&#39s $6999 This brings our total cost to $131601 I spent $2287 for my Mac Mini from Apple with added 32GB of RAM For just about a thousand dollars less we were able to configure a similar Hackintosh machine So is that it? Does that mean that you can get a better cheaper Hackintosh than a Mac from Apple? It really depends on what you want The Hackintosh we built does have more USB 30 ports and an old PS/2 mouse connector You won&#39t be able to use that but it&#39s there for conversation Don&#39t get me wrong I would have loved to save a thousand bucks But I&#39m not thrilled with the tradeoffs Here&#39s what the extra thousand dollars spent on the Apple product buys you Far less setup hassle Yes the RAM install was hairy but there&#39s no hassle wondering if all the parts you&#39re buying will work or are even available Thunderbolt 3It seems that it&#39s nearly impossible to add Thunderbolt 3 to a Hackintosh While USB 31 speeds are nice four times faster is four times faster When it comes to external GPUs and external storage f The bottom line is simple You&#39re going to pay a thousand bucks more for an Apple Mac Mini with the specs I chose But with that thousand bucks you get a much more convenient and hasslefree build and user experience way faster communications and a much smaller footprint While it&#39s true you can build a cheaper PC or a Hackintosh than the Mac Mini it is unquestionably NOT true that you can clone the Mac Mini as a Hackintosh Not even close The Mac Mini is a really special little machine and that&#39s why I for one am glad to see it back in the product line with the capabilities it offers It&#39s why I bought one and didn&#39t build a Hackintosh Also No Apple hasn&#39t activated a secret Mac repair kill switch yet But as always what you do depends on what you decide If you need or want the benefits the small Mac Mini provides buy one If you&#39re budgetconstrained don&#39t mind fighting configuration files and reboots until your machine doesn&#39t crash and don&#39t mind a much bigger Video Duration 19133 min.

You can build a Hackintosh for cheaper than a Mac Mini, but

Apple&#39s $699 M1powered Mac Mini is a lowcost machine with surprisingly speedy chips Dan Ackerman/CNET I&#39d turned my DIY computer into a Hackintosh It&#39s not something Apple supports and it.