Configuration limits of Hackintosh

Hey everyone, just after a little advice from anyone running hackintosh systems for Resolve, and more specifically how far they've managed to push them. I've found a little info on this already but it's a few years old, so a 2014 refresher would be great.

At the moment the base system will be a Gigabyte Z87 UD7 thunderbolt motherboard with a 4770K CPU. I haven't worked out the configuration options for the GPU's but this is where I need to draw on any experience!

Firstly, Decklink cards, yay or nay? (As in working without issue, not whether I need one )

Secondly, dual GPU purely for image processing, for example two GTX770 4GB? Everything I've seen seems to suggest this is ok.

Now regarding a basic GPU for the GUI, is it ok to just use the on board graphics for this?

Anything else I should be considering? This will be using Mavericks unless there's a good reason not too. If anyone has one working dual boot with Win8 that would also be excellent.

Cheers!

Am I allowed to bump threads? I think by the time the post was approved it was on the third page!

I am running Resolve on a Hackintosh based on a X79-board: up until now I do not do anything over 2K scans using an age-old "Decklink HD extreme 3D".
I am running mountain lion, very important is a solid array: mine is pretty basic, a 3x 2TB RAID 5 array based on the Highpoint Rocketraid PCIe card.

Everything works wonderfully, excepting the quirkiness of the Decklink audio-drivers: every 3rd or 4th boot, they just don't load and I have to re-boot. But yes, this also sometimes happens with WIN 7 - it is a dual boot system. I wish someone at BMD could crack this mystery which has plagued many users overs the years.

In order to use the raid with both systems I use PARAGON's NTFS utility for the OSX side of things. The raid is formatted NTFS.

You have to know what kind of material you will be working with to decide if the old Decklink cards are good enough. Also what outputs you need. As far as Hackintosh goes, well if you are a bit computer-savy, there is no better way, value-wise. I personally never had any major problems, been running Hacks for the last 6 years.

I'm waiting to see if any Thunderbolt2 motherboards are working (e.g. ASRock Z87 Extreme11 AC Motherboard), and if the R9 290X boards are supported.
A pair of those on a board with more than 10 SATA ports = a rig I can do all my work on.

I'm running a Z77 board at the moment.
http://www.adamroberts.net/blog/davinci ... sh-part-1/

Been rock solid for over a year. Does not like 10.9.2 tho.

Things to note:
The onboard GPU is not supported in Resolve. I'd also not bother with it as it shares your system RAM and to get it to work properly on a Hack is a pain.
Adding additional cards to a Z77/Z87 boards will drop the x16 slots to x8. The ASUS board I'm using has a processor on the motherboard to overcome this by doing some sort of switching. It report both slots as x16 tho I suspect they are not full x16. I'm running a dual 670 4GB GPU system.
I'd move away from using a PCI IO card and use a Thunderbolt based IO card to free the PCI bus.

Thanks for the advice so far all. Personal thanks to you Adam, it's your blog that set me down this path to start with. Extremely helpful!

Ok so it sounds like PCI lanes could be an issue on the Z87 boards, and I should forget the onboard GPU.

Adam do you run your GUI out directly via the 670's or are they purely for rendering? At first glance it looked like I required 1 x basic Nvidia card for the GUI, 2 x 670/770/780 cards for rendering, and a Decklink SDI for the reference monitor. I appreciate that's a lot to squeeze onto the board but figured if the GUI card and SDI card are really only outputting a monitor signal and nothing else the strain would be negligible (But hence the question about configuration limits). If I'm going to get a performance hit through lack of lanes with the dedicated GUI card I guess it's best to save the money and ditch it all together.

Peter_r - The main board I'm looking at is the Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD7 TH which is Thunderbolt 2.0. Seems the Gigabyte Z87 boards are the easiest for the hackintosh, plus they have UK based RMA should you have a problem with it. It's an expensive board but with even Thunderbolt 1.0 barely seeing PC's yet it's still at a premium.

Ninetto - Thanks for the advice. The raid is being handled separately so I'm just concerned with the tower for now, how difficult did you find getting it up and running on an X79 board? All trade offs I suppose. More PCI lanes on X79 but no Thunderbolt. Great info about Paragon NTFS though, had forgotten all about that.

The X79 board, with the right processor, will give you more PCI lanes but you'll have no Thunderbolt.

I have 2 GTX670 cards on my Hack. I use one to drive my GUI. This means I get to use the GPU in After Effects and FCPX. It is then used for GUI and GPU in Resolve and supported by the 2nd GPU.

My reference is connected via Thunderbolt (UltraStudio mini monitor) and my footage lives on a Promise Pegasus Thunderbolt RAID. I render to an internal drive.

For most of the work I do this is powerful enough. I get realtime playback on BMCC RAW footage.

The X79 board, with the right processor, will give you more PCI lanes but you'll have no Thunderbolt.

I have 2 GTX670 cards on my Hack. I use one to drive my GUI. This means I get to use the GPU in After Effects and FCPX. It is then used for GUI and GPU in Resolve and supported by the 2nd GPU.

My reference is connected via Thunderbolt (UltraStudio mini monitor) and my footage lives on a Promise Pegasus Thunderbolt RAID. I render to an internal drive.

For most of the work I do this is powerful enough. I get realtime playback on BMCC RAW footage.

Hi Adam,

Did you ever boot in windows or linux? And if so, what happens to the thunderbolt connected devices? They work the same as in OSX?

Regards
Pepo

Setting up the X79 for Mountain Lion was easy, but then I have built about 10 Hackintoshes in my geeky career.

I have no thunderbolt devices so this is not a factor for me.
It also seems like every week there is a new version of thunderbolt (http://www.techpowerup.com/mobile/200064/next-gen-intel-alpine-ridge-thunderbolt-controller-detailed.html), and in my experience it is best to wait-and-see before jumping on the bandwagon of major hardware innovations.

What is a factor is the extra PCI-lanes with the X79, and that is why I mentioned RAID. If you are using an internal RAID card, you will really need those extra lanes. Dealing with this "separately" is probably not the right attitude, you know: the knee-bone is connected to the thigh-bone, etc etc etc

Good luck with your machine.

Well it is only the third gen TB, and what they really should have done on TB 2, TB2 should really have been TB 1.5 as all they did was allow full bandwidth in each direction instead of half in each direction so it didn't merit a full version number upgrade

@Font1,

Did you ever complete this build? I have the Z87X-UD7-TH it works like a dream! The Thunderbolt was a little tricky for some reason you have to activate the firmware by installing Windows then rebooting into OSX...

I am however having one major issue. for some reason my Decklink HD extreme 3D cannot be recognised by any of the Blackmagic or 3rd party software. on closer inspection it is not even recognised in the system profile.
I have other PCIe cards in there and as this card works with OSX I assumed I would have no problem installing it into a Hackintosh.

@Ninetto,

I notice you have this card working! where there any special steps you had to take? any help would be greatly appreciated!

Currently testing a Gigabyte X79-UP4 motherboard with a i7-4930K cpu with 2 R9 280X GPU. Getting sound operational has been an issue but solved using a Maya44Xte sound card. Some minor issues with the display ports but everything else is rock solid. Luxmark render testing is giving scores around 5150 using 2gpu+cpu. BruceX renders in less than 17 seconds. Geekbench 3 around 25800 so is as quick as the 8 core trash can. I am confident the full version of resolve will run ok based on Luxmark. I hope to test 4K on the new samsung monitor once I get my hands on one

The nice thing about most of the X79 boards is that they now support a single Xeon CPU so you can take it up to a 12 core if you wanted to

I have the Z87X-UD7-TH it works like a dream! The Thunderbolt was a little tricky for some reason you have to activate the firmware by installing Windows then rebooting into OSX...

I am however having one major issue. for some reason my Decklink HD extreme 3D cannot be recognised by any of the Blackmagic or 3rd party software. on closer inspection it is not even recognised in the system profile.
I have other PCIe cards in there and as this card works with OSX I assumed I would have no problem installing it into a Hackintosh.

@Ninetto,

I notice you have this card working! where there any special steps you had to take? any help would be greatly appreciated!

Did you try the decklink card under windows?

@Font1,

Did you ever complete this build? I have the Z87X-UD7-TH it works like a dream! The Thunderbolt was a little tricky for some reason you have to activate the firmware by installing Windows then rebooting into OSX...

I am however having one major issue. for some reason my Decklink HD extreme 3D cannot be recognised by any of the Blackmagic or 3rd party software. on closer inspection it is not even recognised in the system profile.
I have other PCIe cards in there and as this card works with OSX I assumed I would have no problem installing it into a Hackintosh.

@Ninetto,

I notice you have this card working! where there any special steps you had to take? any help would be greatly appreciated!

Haven't even started it yet chap! Still gathering information. There's also a Haswell refresh due out imminently, so rather than get the 4770K it could be worth waiting for that. Z97 chipset also due out though I think I'd stick with Z87 just for hackintosh support so far.

Hey,

Im currently thinking about constructing a hackintosh VS buying a MacPro......its a large difference i know.
with GPU im really not sure if to go with GTX 770 or a K5000, its important to say that the GTX will give me 8bit color and the K5000 10bit and the station will be used for composting work as well so its a factor for me.

the second thing is that the person building it for me says that ATM there is no mother board that suports thunderbolt 2 and more then 32GB of RAM for hackintosh, and im very unsure of this information and would love to know if some one has a similar setup?

Thanks,

Ilya

I can't count with a solid array on my hackintosh… well not for now. The best I can get it's 6TB on Raid0 for my media files and another HDD setup for backup, exported files, etc. I have thunderbolt so I can easily upgrade to a solid solution in the future.

I need advice on which SATA connectors should I choose for each HDD. I was thinking on using the two 6GB/s connectors for the RAID but I also need speed for my system disk.

Here's the setup for a hackintosh with dual boot on separate drives:

Z77X-UP4 TH
i7 2600K | Antec kuhler 920
32GB G.Skill Ares 1600mhz (CL10-10-10 1.5v)
Cooler Master GX 750W bronze
500TB Hitachi 7K1000 (Win8) - connected to (SATA3 6)
1TB WD Caviar Black (OS X) -connected to (SATA3 5)
2x 3TB Seagate Barracuda (Raid0) - connected to (SATA3 0/SATA3 1) 6Gb/s
1TB Hitachi 7K1000 (Backup) - connected to (SATA2 2)
Asus GTX 780 3GB Direct CU II

The onboard GPU is not supported in Resolve. I'd also not bother with it as it shares your system RAM and to get it to work properly on a Hack is a pain.

What do you mean Adam? Why isn't it recognised on a hack? Can you explain it please?

with GPU im really not sure if to go with GTX 770 or a K5000, its important to say that the GTX will give me 8bit color and the K5000 10bit and the station will be used for composting work as well so its a factor for me.

I'm pretty sure that the Mac GUI is 8bit only so you won't get the benefit of 10bit GUI from the K5000. I could be wrong tho...

The onboard GPU is not supported in Resolve. I'd also not bother with it as it shares your system RAM and to get it to work properly on a Hack is a pain.

What do you mean Adam? Why isn't it recognised on a hack? Can you explain it please?

Resolve does not support Intel HD graphics.

Did you ever boot in windows or linux? And if so, what happens to the thunderbolt connected devices? They work the same as in OSX?

Nope. I hate using Windows so never bothered buying the OS. Sorry.

...The second thing is that the person building it for me says that ATM there is no mother board that suports thunderbolt 2 and more then 32GB of RAM for hackintosh, and im very unsure of this information and would love to know if some one has a similar setup?

Thanks,

Ilya

This is true, at the moment, the max RAM you can use is 32GB on a board that has TB

I can't count with a solid array on my hackintosh… well not for now. The best I can get it's 6TB on Raid0 for my media files and another HDD setup for backup, exported files, etc. I have thunderbolt so I can easily upgrade to a solid solution in the future.

I need advice on which SATA connectors should I choose for each HDD. I was thinking on using the two 6GB/s connectors for the RAID but I also need speed for my system disk.

Here's the setup for a hackintosh with dual boot on separate drives:

Z77X-UP4 TH
i7 2600K | Antec kuhler 920
32GB G.Skill Ares 1600mhz (CL10-10-10 1.5v)
Cooler Master GX 750W bronze
500TB Hitachi 7K1000 (Win8) - connected to (SATA3 6)
1TB WD Caviar Black (OS X) -connected to (SATA3 5)
2x 3TB Seagate Barracuda (Raid0) - connected to (SATA3 0/SATA3 1) 6Gb/s
1TB Hitachi 7K1000 (Backup) - connected to (SATA2 2)
Asus GTX 780 3GB Direct CU II

Since your OS drives are standard HD's you'll get no benefit from them being on SATA 3 as they won't go above the speed of SATA 2. Just because the controller on the drive may say SATA 3 doesn't mean the physical drive inside can actually go that fast

Seems like this is fairly popular topic given the price and configurations of the new Mac Pro's; would it be worth organising a slightly more structured thread with known working configurations for Resolve? Especially those involving Decklink cards, Mini monitors or thunderbolt.

The Tonymac site is fantastic for general hackintosh builds, and Adam's side as one build specific for resolve, so if there are more of you on here with functional systems maybe we can get some sort of database going? Would be great if we can include information like playback of typical source material, rough amount of nodes you can create before it starts lagging, etc.

Did you try the decklink card under windows?

Hi Pepo,

Yes tried it in Windows and Hackintosh. Interestingly it does not show up in the Windows device manager either. it is also 100% not the card either as i have 2 and both work in a mac pro 1,1. i am beginning to think it is just the age of the cards...

Here is my build:

GA-Z87X-UD7-TH
i4770K
GA-GTX-760
32 GB Corsair Ballistix Sport
256GB Samsung Evo

@Ninetto
How the hell did you get it working?

Some useful PCIe info for others with the GA-Z87X-UD7-TH if only using one card use slot x16_2 if using 2 x16 slots use x16_1, x16_3 as x16_2 will be disabled. there is also a onboard PCIe IO switch make sure these are all set to on!

Seems like this is fairly popular topic given the price and configurations of the new Mac Pro's; would it be worth organising a slightly more structured thread with known working configurations for Resolve? Especially those involving Decklink cards, Mini monitors or thunderbolt.

I would be more then happy as soon as i get my machine running to be a part of a group like that.

Now, dose any one here use a GTX 780?
I really cant wrap my brain how is it that a K5000 is twice the price but is giving much worst results.
the 10bit 8bit i can get around but i really want to invest in a card that i can be sure i can buy two and be on a safe side with them.

BTW this is the set up im going for: (Hackintosh)

Intel® i7-4770 (8M Cache, 3.40~3.9GHz)
Intel Z87 Express
32GB DDR3
Nvidia GTX 780 (4gb)/Nvidia Titan for render
another GPU for GUI not sure which, Black Magic recommend a K4000 but it looks like an over kill to me
256GB Solid State Drive 6GB/s
1*4 TB raided 0

what would you say?

Did you try the decklink card under windows?

Hi Pepo,

Yes tried it in Windows and Hackintosh. Interestingly it does not show up in the Windows device manager either. it is also 100% not the card either as i have 2 and both work in a mac pro 1,1. i am beginning to think it is just the age of the cards...

Here is my build:

GA-Z87X-UD7-TH
i4770K
GA-GTX-760
32 GB Corsair Ballistix Sport
256GB Samsung Evo

@Ninetto
How the hell did you get it working?

Some useful PCIe info for others with the GA-Z87X-UD7-TH if only using one card use slot x16_2 if using 2 x16 slots use x16_1, x16_3 as x16_2 will be disabled. there is also a onboard PCIe IO switch make sure these are all set to on!

Alex, I think that card might be broken. You should check it in another machine if you can. I have a decklink sdi in a hackintosh (x79) and was a no brainer to install.

Good luck!

@ alexwordly:

since my board is a X79 I cannot help you with your problem. For the X79 it was simply a matter of installing the BMD-drivers. It just works!

The only tip you might try: in your bios, DISable any devices you do not need... AND

Also check the PCI-E clock options in bios, and set it for something besides AUTO (sorry I do not have your board nor bios and so cannot tell you WHICH settings are available.

When you write " I have other PCIe cards in there"... WHAT exactly?
The Decklink HD card require a 4x slot, although they will also run in 8x or 16x slots. Maybe fiddle around knowing this?

Or maybe try a different slot?

BTW this is the set up im going for: (Hackintosh)

Intel® i7-4770 (8M Cache, 3.40~3.9GHz)
Intel Z87 Express
32GB DDR3
Nvidia GTX 780 (4gb)/Nvidia Titan for render
another GPU for GUI not sure which, Black Magic recommend a K4000 but it looks like an over kill to me
256GB Solid State Drive 6GB/s
1*4 TB raided 0

what would you say?

Which motherboard will you be using? Z87 covers quite a few!

to be honest the comp is build to order from some one who builds regularly, so this is as much as i know except that it has thunderbolt 2.

Bought a new Decklink SD worked first time. Must have been the age of the old cards!

to be honest the comp is build to order from some one who builds regularly, so this is as much as i know except that it has thunderbolt 2.

You could ask them which board it is.

Currently testing a Gigabyte X79-UP4 motherboard with a i7-4930K cpu with 2 R9 280X GPU. Getting sound operational has been an issue but solved using a Maya44Xte sound card. Some minor issues with the display ports but everything else is rock solid. Luxmark render testing is giving scores around 5150 using 2gpu+cpu. BruceX renders in less than 17 seconds. Geekbench 3 around 25800 so is as quick as the 8 core trash can. I am confident the full version of resolve will run ok based on Luxmark. I hope to test 4K on the new samsung monitor once I get my hands on one

I just got this motherboard and CPU combo for a hackentosh. I personally needed the extra sata3 ports and the PCI lanes. I'm a little worried about the sound not working though...any tips or advice or links you could share regarding the issues running that config on 10.9.2?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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I have built Custom Mac workstations (IconicWorkstations) for the last six years. I probably have at least ~40 clients who use DaVinci primarily of my 500-600 machines that are out there. I guarantee you have seen commercials, music videos, or movies that were colored on my hardware.

With an overclocked 6-core on an X79 board you can match the current nMP 3.0GHz 8-core in CPU-power, but have the freedom to use more GPUs or faster ones, add cheap internal RAID arrays, Decklink, 10GbE, etc. You can, of course, go with the same 2.7GHz 12-core CPU the highest-end nMP uses--that is a pricey CPU though. If you take the time to plan out your system then you will be very happy.

As for the actual questions by the OP:
I would recommend an ASUS P9X79 WS motherboard paired with either an i7-4930K or a Xeon E5-1650 V2. Both can overclock to 4.3-4.4GHz with a good cooler.

Get two GPU-level cards and make sure to take advantage of the "use GUI for compute" checkbox, or one massive card like a GTX Titan Black or the upcoming dual-GTX Titan Black on a single PCB. The GTX 770 4GB is also a solid, but more affordable, choice for 2K-4K work. Two GTX 770's are close in price to a single GTX 780Ti or a second-hand GTX Titan. I would recommend one of either of those cards over 2x GTX 770.

Thunderbolt is not on X79 motherboards, but anything Thunderbolt can do you can do cheaper and easier with a different connection. (To be fair, if you want a jack of all trades connection, then TB is nice for that. If you want to do one thing cheaper/easier, then not so much.)


Regarding updates, they only cause you to lose your audio if you have a knowledgeable builder. On some builds, you do not even lose that.

InsanelyMac provides a lot of help, otherwise look for your local builder. You pay a markup, but have a warranty and tech support. If you build your own, find a thread and duplicate their hardware and steps. You can stray on video card somewhat, but be sure you confirm it works first. Most modern Nvidia cards work perfectly well in 10.9.2+

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