simsalabim Posted March 22, 2018 Share Posted March 22, 2018 our uni has an exclusive contract with dell so all machines are dells here. We can however choose which one, so even a 7910 with 12core Xeon is an option. I'd like to replace my aging mac with a beefy machine but a mac pro is simply out of budget. A 7910 however is not. With the discount that the uni gets, I can get a 32GB 8core (Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2630 v3 @ 2,4GHz) machine with a AMD FirePro™ W4100 2 GB (4 DP) GPU for about 2200€ which is really a good deal...the question of course is : can I get a hackintosh running on this ? I am an experienced mac user and i'm not afraid to spend a whole day on this, but if you guys say that it is simply not possible, I won't bother.in the latter case, is there another high-end dell that DOES work as a hackintosh ?many thanks ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Hervé Posted March 22, 2018 Administrators Share Posted March 22, 2018 In principle, any recent PC or workstation is Hackintoshable as long as it bears hardware compatible with OS X/macOS. We're talking CPUs, chipset, graphics card to name the most critical parts. The rest (audio, LAN, wireless, etc. ) can always be supported through add-on devices. Xeon E5-2630 v3 is Haswell-EP generation & Intel X99 chipset so should be supported OOB or without too much bother. Maybe you'll need the VoodooTSCSync to properly handle all the CPU cores. Other than that, I cannot imagine any issues. Have a look at RampageDev's X99 dmg section of the forum if necessary. AMD FirePro W4100 (Cape Verde chip) is also understood to be compatible though you'll probably have to fake a Radeon HD 7xxx id and install add-on kexts such as Verde or WhateverGreen that are required to support AMD 7xxx graphics. https://github.com/vit9696/WhateverGreen You can Google for all of this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simsalabim Posted March 23, 2018 Author Share Posted March 23, 2018 my main concern is that I don't want to buy a 2500$ machine only to realize that i'm stuck with windows. If you say that is is 100% certainly doable, I might go for it Will things like handoff and continuity work ? are there tips that you can give that might make my work easier ? Like opting for (or against) a specific type of video card or other stuff ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Hervé Posted March 23, 2018 Administrators Share Posted March 23, 2018 Understand, we're not going to give you any such commitment for such purposes here. Maybe you ought to look for a MacPro on the 2nd-hand market. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simsalabim Posted March 23, 2018 Author Share Posted March 23, 2018 sorry, i didn't mean to extort any commitment ! It is just that I'm a bit scared Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Hervé Posted March 23, 2018 Administrators Share Posted March 23, 2018 Indeed, you should be. What you envisage is not exactly very serious for the targeted professional/working purpose. Who would you be calling for support? Your local IT or good souls on Internet forums? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simsalabim Posted March 23, 2018 Author Share Posted March 23, 2018 I *am* the local IT guy our uni would never support this. We can get a mac, but with the current mac prices I'd be happy to get an i5.. My current macbook is almost 4 years old and I'm envious of my collegues who get a speedy Xeon Dell for half the price. I think I will risk the jump with the 7910 : I read as much as I could about hackintosh and I still have my macbook to work on until the dell is operational. I'll give myself one month to try and after that I reinstall windows and pass the dell to a collegue. I have only 2 more minor questions : - Would you recommend partition-splitting the internal SSD in a win-boot and a mac-boot partition ? - I can get a high-end SSD (NVMe PCIe class 50) which means the dell will have a FlexBay disk controller (intel RST-e). These are quite a bit faster but might introduce Hackintosh troubles. Is this a valid fear or would you consider this solvable with enough patience ? cheers and have a nice weekend ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Bronxteck Posted March 23, 2018 Administrators Share Posted March 23, 2018 well being a tower form factor at least it has room to expand if things do not work out of the box. worst case I guess you can always add a graphics card or a hard drive. maybe you can see if any Macs used the same hardware by cross checking at everymac.com you can do a sort then look at intel macs only to cross reference. that should also give you an idea of what SMBIOS profile to emulate for your machine. I would think it might be some sort of Mac Pro. at least by cross referencing you have a better idea what your up against. you can also try google some of the parts or chipsets and add the words osx or Mac to the search Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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