Hackintosh?

[0db]

I'd like to use Finalcut on a real Mac but I don't have enough budget to buy a new Mac and personally, I do not trust second-hand computers.

So I am thinking about making a Hackintosh, but I am not so convinced it's a good idea.

I haven't found a good guide yet but found this website.

What do you think guys about?

[Someone]

Why Final Cut? Davinci Resolve (that even has a capable free version) runs on all 3 major OSs.

[Ampera]

Making a Hackintosh, I'll have you know, is a criminal violation of the Mom Co. License Agreement.

[0db]

Why Final Cut?

I have also tried "Olive", which is declared as "a professional Open-Source Video Editor for macOSX, Linux, Windows7++", but for me it's unstable, it crashes too often, and worse still it's not productive at all.

Davinci Resolve is better than Olive, but FinalCut is the simplest and most productive I have ever tried.

[0db]

Umm, concerning the question: are Hackintosh Computers Legal? Even if I buy MacOSX from their Apple Store?

I have just reread again their license agreement and found I hadn't understood it correctly because when you "buy" OS X software from Apple, you are subject to the terms of Apple’s end-user license agreement, and the EULA provides that first, that you don’t "buy" the software but rather you only "license" it, and here my misunderstanding: of course you can pay for a License from their Apple store, but the agreement tells you that you can run macOS only on an Apple computer.

[Someone]

FinalCut is the simplest and most productive I have ever tried.

Still doesn't sound like its worth the extensive effort of a hackintosh. If productivity matters buying a Mac mini should be a no brainer.

[brucehoult]

FinalCut is the simplest and most productive I have ever tried.

Still doesn't sound like its worth the extensive effort of a hackintosh. If productivity matters buying a Mac mini should be a no brainer.

That's fine if your needs will be met by a Mac Mini -- and the latest refresh looks pretty decent.

I've built several Hackintoshes over the years, but the reason is that I've wanted a high performance programming machine but the Mac Pro goes in a different direction -- they have high end GPUs, massive I/O capability, can take massive amount of RAM and things like this. Which I don't need. I just want lots of fast CPU cores, high turbo speed on single-threaded code, and a moderate amount of RAM. And support for multiple high resolution monitors that will show crisp text in small point sizes, but I don't care at all about 3D.

If you want the stuff that Apple puts in the Mac Pro then they are a pretty good deal and you won't save much if anything at Dell or others. It's just that my needs are different.

I built a Hackintosh using an i7-860, I think about eight or nine months before Apple started to sell an iMac with that CPU.
I built a Hackintosh using an i7-4790K, similarly I think six months before Apple started to sell an iMac with that CPU.

I guess I could have just waited for those iMacs, except they cost an awful lot more than I spent, largely because they come with a built in large high quality screen. I prefer to buy my screen separately and keep the same screen over multiple generations of computer. I was using an ancient Apple 30" 2560x1600 screen for about a decade. I've now switched to Samsung 32" 4K monitors (multiple).

I haven't built a Hackintosh recently because my work has switched more to Linux, and my 2011 17" quad core i7 MacBook Pro does everything I usually need from a Mac. I also have a 2011 11" dual core i7 MacBook Air which works well for travel (I'm typing this on it now, in a hotel room).

I also can, if necessary, crank up OS X in VirtualBox on my 32 core 128 GB RAM ThreadRipper Linux machine. That's slightly slower than Hackintoshing it would be, but not too noticeable.

Both Hackintoshing and running in a VM technically violate the license agreement. In practice you're never going to have any problems doing this. Apple seems to only care if you are building and selling Hackintoshes on a commercial basis.

I never had any technical problems Hackintoshing. It's probably a bit dodgy to take some random cast-off PC and decide to Hackintosh it, especially if it's something proprietary. The smart thing to do is to buy a motherboard that uses peripherals that are supported by OS X as standard. Then everything Just Works. The Hackintosh sites have lists of Asus, Gigabyte etc motherboard which work well. The only thing that is normally a problem is the sound chip. On my Hackintoshes I had to run a small script to reinstall the sound drivers after any major (and occasionally minor) system updates. Things like ethernet, wifi, hard disks and SSDs, video cards were never a problem. The system was always usable enough to boot it up, log in, and use it to reinstall the sound driver. It would be a different matter if the video card sometimes didn't work or something like that, but that's never happened to me.

[NiHaoMike]

Buy a junk Mac (doesn't have to work, can be very old indeed) and replace the parts with PC parts. Now you're running OS X on an "upgraded" Mac.

[james_s]

Building a hackintosh is fun but if all you want is a computer to use then it's more trouble than it's worth IMO, you always have to watch out for updates that might break it and you have to choose hardware carefully to find stuff that is compatible.

Nothing wrong with second hand computers, I've got lots of second hand PCs in various uses, format and install fresh and it's as good as new.

[magic]

Making a Hackintosh, I'll have you know, is a criminal violation of the Mom Co. License Agreement.

EULAs have no legal basis in copyright law or anything. It's a scam by greedy corporations and only Americans (and not even all of them) are brainwashed enough into "social order" and "democracy" to tolerate this madness.

[olkipukki]

FinalCut is the simplest and most productive I have ever tried.

If productivity matters buying a Mac mini should be a no brainer.

Are you using Mac Mini without eGPU to work with Final Cut? Really? 

Actually, the latest Mac Mini 2020 is just pathetic, they kept CPU from 2018 model and increased min SSD storage from 128GB to 256GB  for same price 

[olkipukki]

I also can, if necessary, crank up OS X in VirtualBox on my 32 core 128 GB RAM ThreadRipper Linux machine. That's slightly slower than Hackintoshing it would be, but not too noticeable.

There is a 3rd option to run it in KVM!
I have tried under PROXMOX underhood, it's works fine.

You can PCI/USB/GPU passthrough dedicated hardware and literally have a full running systems (such as Windows/Linux and Mac OS) at the same time with a minimum performance degradation.

[olkipukki]

Davinci Resolve is better than Olive, but FinalCut is the simplest and most productive I have ever tried.

Did you tried Vegas Pro?
I think - Windows only, a friend of my bought (voucher + promotion) it for 50% of Final Cut price and seems happy enough...

[0db]

Software-updates are mandatory for me, hence I give up with Hackintosh.

[olkipukki]

MacMini is based on BGA version of desktop 65W 8th gen CPU, which Intel didn't offer for 9th gen, and even if they do, the lack of hyper threading is a downgrade unless you get the 8 core version (which actually has hyper threading, not 6 core or 4 core desktop SKUs).

In terms of IPC, 6th=7th=8th=9th. In terms of max frequency, 6th<7th~=8th~=9th, so there's no solid performance boost either.

10th gen desktop CPU is still far away.

Apple has used mobile segment CPUs in the past, nothing stopped them to do same this time.
They just don't bother and increased a minimum SSD storage do not look too ridiculous and satisfy a crowd with a "new" release.

Unless you'd rather live with those wimpy 15W (cTDP up to 25W) i7-1065G7 or i7-10710u, there's no 10th gen CPUs for you, at least for now. And there's no way a 25W CPU can beat a 65W CPU that's only 2 years older.

Do you think, for example i7-10750H, slower than two years old current offering?

[brucehoult]

Unless you'd rather live with those wimpy 15W (cTDP up to 25W) i7-1065G7 or i7-10710u, there's no 10th gen CPUs for you, at least for now. And there's no way a 25W CPU can beat a 65W CPU that's only 2 years older.

My experience is a 15W i7-8650U in a NUC narrowly but consistently beats a 65W i7-6700 in a tower.

[Someone]

Unless you'd rather live with those wimpy 15W (cTDP up to 25W) i7-1065G7 or i7-10710u, there's no 10th gen CPUs for you, at least for now. And there's no way a 25W CPU can beat a 65W CPU that's only 2 years older.

My experience is a 15W i7-8650U in a NUC narrowly but consistently beats a 65W i7-6700 in a tower.

Yes, there are some outlier parts that really push the compute/watt metric and make it hard to predict real world performance. Unfortunately many of the benchmark workloads are so short they don't see the full cost of throttling.

[brucehoult]

Unless you'd rather live with those wimpy 15W (cTDP up to 25W) i7-1065G7 or i7-10710u, there's no 10th gen CPUs for you, at least for now. And there's no way a 25W CPU can beat a 65W CPU that's only 2 years older.

My experience is a 15W i7-8650U in a NUC narrowly but consistently beats a 65W i7-6700 in a tower.

Yes, there are some outlier parts that really push the compute/watt metric and make it hard to predict real world performance. Unfortunately many of the benchmark workloads are so short they don't see the full cost of throttling.

My usage is build / compilation of various software taking typically from 20 minutes and up on this class of machine. Everything is *well* into maximum throttling long before that point.

[brucehoult]

My experience is a 15W i7-8650U in a NUC narrowly but consistently beats a 65W i7-6700 in a tower.

I had a 8550u laptop (8650u without vPro), and it got constantly beaten by an older 6700HQ laptop in long computing sessions (gaming with the same eGPU, per se).
They have the same core count, the same architecture, and slightly improved process. 15W can hardly match 45W, let alone 65W.

In a laptop, yes. I also have an i7-8650u Lenovo X1 Carbon and it takes around 30% longer than the same task on the NUC due to throttling back to around 2.1 GHz instead of 2.8 GHz.

BTW, in a NUC, they relax TDP to cTDPup (25W) if thermal allows.

Sounds about right. That's certainly what my Kill-A-Watt shows. 6W at idle, around 28W flat out. Quite good cooling in those tiny boxes (at a cost in noise) and certainly far better than a typical laptop.

[Someone]

Unless you'd rather live with those wimpy 15W (cTDP up to 25W) i7-1065G7 or i7-10710u, there's no 10th gen CPUs for you, at least for now. And there's no way a 25W CPU can beat a 65W CPU that's only 2 years older.

My experience is a 15W i7-8650U in a NUC narrowly but consistently beats a 65W i7-6700 in a tower.

Yes, there are some outlier parts that really push the compute/watt metric and make it hard to predict real world performance. Unfortunately many of the benchmark workloads are so short they don't see the full cost of throttling.

My usage is build / compilation of various software taking typically from 20 minutes and up on this class of machine. Everything is *well* into maximum throttling long before that point.

There may well be some other differences between the two machines to have such a clear result in that direction, especially when compute benchmarks put the i7-6700 reliably ahead (even against the top score of the i7-8650U, being a configurable part and common on laptops they score all over the place). Its a confusing mess of specs out there and application specific testing is the only reliable way to compare.

[0db]

Comparing choices with Apple ...

MacMini
Intel Core i7 6‑core 8th gen, 3.2GHz (Turbo Boost 4.6GHz)
Ram 8GB DDR4 a 2666MHz
Intel UHD Graphics 630
SSD 256GB
Gigabit Ethernet (Gigabit Ethernet 10/100/1000BASE-T, RJ‑45)
Final Cut Pro X
1839 Euro

MacMini
Intel Core i7 6‑core 8th gen, 3.2GHz (Turbo Boost 4.6GHz)
Ram 16GB DDR4 a 2666MHz
Intel UHD Graphics 630
SSD 256GB
Gigabit Ethernet (Gigabit Ethernet 10/100/1000BASE-T, RJ‑45)
Final Cut Pro X
2079 Euro

MacBook Pro
Intel Core i7 6‑core 9th gen, 2.6Ghz (Turbo Boost 4.5GHz)
RAM 16GB DDR4 2666MHz
AMD Radeon Pro 5300M, 4GB GDDR6
SSD 512GB
Retina 16" True Tone
4xThunderbolt 3
Touch Bar + Touch ID
Final Cut Pro X
3129 Euro

iMac
Intel Core i7 6‑core 8th gen 3.2Ghz (Turbo Boost 4.6GHz)
Built-in LCD, 21"
RAM 16GB DDR4 2666MHz
Radeon Pro Vega 20, 4GB HBM2
Fusion Drive 1TB
Magic Mouse 2
Magic Keyboard
Final Cut Pro X
2979 Euro

[olkipukki]

It is not shipped yet, and no, it won't beat 8700B. They are both 6C12T, and they are both 14nm++ Sky Lake architecture. Minor hacks and tweaks can't cover the 45W->65W gap.

Unless your workload is full of Intel's latest bug-related instructions that got dumbed down for security, I can't see a speed jump between generations.

I doubt that 10750H will be slower, in NUC/Mac Mini form factor context.

I have both, and I have to say I like neither. My 10710u laptop is fast, as Intel set a higher boost speed, but due to the improperly low TDP, it throttles back down to 1.x GHz frequently and stutters.

I can't layout boards in AD while having a Youtube music video opening in the background without hanging the system.

I run AD on MacBook Pro 13" Retina (late-2013) via VM Fusion then I travel and need a quick and mobile access, that's okay, but I would resist to work on daily basis.
Also, ran AD on Mac Mini 2018 (i3, 32GB ram, w/o eGPU) , it's works, yes can do a work in case of emergency, it's pain in a$s...

If I travel a lot and need to be mobile constantly, I would choose something like ThinkPad P7x (with Xeon ideally) that usually certified for all sort of CADs, extra couple kilos is not realy pleasent to carry around, waste time on underpower hardware is more critical for me.

If office space concern, still any mini-itx board with cheaper AMD 3600X will circle around these lightweight laptops and take same space.

In short, right tool for a right job.

[olkipukki]

Comparing choices with Apple ...

Is it for Final Cut?

If you don't need to travel, what is a point Macbook pro?
IMHO, a new iMac (especially 21") would be a worst decision for a full price, Apple didn't update quite a while.

So, Mac Mini left, did you consider your budget for eGPU (enclosure + video card)?

[olkipukki]

I would go with the stock i5 256GB 8GB MacMini, then add RAM and external SSDs later.

No option any more, the base either i3 256GB or i5 512GB

[0db]

Is it for Final Cut?

yes, dedicated to Final Cut.

If you don't need to travel, what is a point Macbook pro?

A laptop may be a bonus for travelling. Currently, I do not travel too much.

IMHO, a new iMac (especially 21") would be the worst decision for a full price, Apple didn't update quite a while.

Considered for two reasons:
- I only here a poor 17" VGA LCD, while the iMac comes with a builtin 21" LCD
- it also comes with a great GPU.

So, Mac Mini left, did you consider your budget for eGPU (enclosure + video card)?

Thinking about it, but which one?