Motherboard for M-ITX Hackintosh Build

IrishMetalhead

My mate is looking for a systm to use as a Hackintost for photoshop dual booted with Windows for gaming, the reason for the ITX form factor is because he want's it small and would love to use the BitFenix Prodigy white version:

http://www2.hardwareversand.de/Mini/60295/BitFenix+Prodigy+Mini-ITX+Geh%C3%A4use+-+wei%C3%9F%2C+ohne+Netzteil.article

We're planning on either using a 2500K or 2600K depending on his budget come ordering time so what would be the best mobo to support installing a Mac OS?

srsly78

Lots of fun trying to fit a proper graphics card into those small cases :pac:

Serephucus

@srsly: The Prodigy is actually a great little case. It'll easily take, and cool, a 680.

@IrishMetalHead: Probably this one is your best bet.

IrishMetalhead

Serephucus wrote: »

@srsly: The Prodigy is actually a great little case. It'll easily take, and cool, a 680.

@IrishMetalHead: Probably this one is your best bet.

yup the prodigy was not only designed to fit full graphics card but a full water cooled system aswell =P

was looking at that board earlier but would i need to mess with the bios or would it support it on the fly?

Serephucus

Why would you have to mess with its BIOS?

IrishMetalhead

i thaught the bios have to support the max os's thats why i'm asking about compatibility

srsly78

Z77 board doesn't need bios flash for new chips, Z68 boards do.

Serephucus

To support the max OSs? I'm confused.

I can't think of any reason why the board would need a BIOS flash.

srsly78

Something to do with UEFI and linux probably. This isn't a problem with standalone boards, only a problem with OEM machines that are configured to only boot signed os I think.

J-blk

Serephucus wrote: »

To support the max OSs? I'm confused.

I can't think of any reason why the board would need a BIOS flash.

It's not exactly to support Mac OS X itself but rather to do with power management in the OS itself - e.g I have an ASUS P8Z68/Gen.3 and I'm running Mountain Lion on it. On my board, without flashing a custom BIOS, things like sleep would not work at all and I'd also have kernel panics in some instances. So yes, some boards may need a BIOS flash, though it is not always essential. In a lot of cases you can get away without the BIOS flash with some compromises (e.g sleep not working) and with many boards it's not needed at all.

OP, your best best for a Hackintosh is actually a Gigabyte board - they are the most compatible out of the box. Have a look here:

http://tonymacx86.blogspot.ie/search/label/CustoMac

srsly78

I knew hackintoshes were a lot of hassle, but didn't know about bios flashing for it... Would it not be a lot easier to run photoshop on windows?:pac:

PseudoFamous

I was dual booting OSX and Win7 for a while last year.

Specs at the time were 2500K, Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3, 560ti, and either 8 or 12GB of RAM. Worked grand, followed a guide from somewhere and had no major issues at all. When I got my SSD, I decided to not bother reinstalling OSX as I wasn't using it anyway.

J-blk

srsly78 wrote: »

I knew hackintoshes were a lot of hassle, but didn't know about bios flashing for it...

It's not that much of a hassle . The BIOS flash is not really an issue on a lot of motherboards either - most people starting out go with a Gigabyte board anyway since it doesn't need that kind of messing at all. I just had bought everything before I decided I'd try my hand at hackintoshing (I have "real" Macs and prefer the OS, only really use Windows for gaming and nothing else).

srsly78

I meant it was hassle finding compatible parts. I tried it before and ragequit pretty quickly coz my gear wasn't suitable :pac:

J-blk

srsly78 wrote: »

I meant it was hassle finding compatible parts. I tried it before and ragequit pretty quickly coz my gear wasn't suitable :pac:

Yeah, if your gear is not pretty much out of the box compatible, it can be a major pain getting stuff to work - the tonymacx86 guides I linked to are pretty good though, at least if you haven't bought anything yet, like the OP by the looks of it.

Solitaire

Ugh... sorry, no overt discussion of hackintoshes allowed, Apple has a funny habit of suing people who even say the word