Dad's Hackintosh

This beastly pc was a gift for my dad's 53rd birthday. I've been trying to convince him to replace his 2016 16 inch Macbook Pro, but he really held off on the upgrade for a while. But, after trying to use the Macbook for heavy 4k video editing tasks in Final-Cut he realized that the laptop wouldn't cut it. So that was the very beginning of this ongoing project of a computer. The finished result is what you see here and it's probably one of the most challenging computers I have ever built. This was mainly because of the software situation, I underestimated the work you put in to get MacOS Ventura installed on a non Mac computer. But I am happy to say that it is incredibly stable (as long as he doesn't mess with it) and performs similarly to a $6000 Mac Pro.

For the parts I opted for the i9 12900k because it was a huge upgrade from the 4 core i7 in his laptop, and it came in the best value (in my opinion) micro center bundle with the i9 motherboard and ram for only $400. I also went for an all Noctua cooling setup due to the quality, durability, longevity and most importantly whisper quiet operation as he does music production/recording in the same room as this beast. I also went for two separate 1tb drives to ensure ease of use and compatibility with a dual boot system. The 6800 from MSI was my first choice due to it's compatibility with Hackintosh and value for money when I bought it. I chose The Fractal North because my dad enjoys woodworking when he has the time, and it also has an absolutely incredibly professional yet unique look to it.

The PC boots up to a boot menu where you can select which OS you are using (refer to image 18). And boots up relatively quick for a hackintosh (around 40 seconds). Everything in macos works except wifi and bluetooth at the moment, since his current wifi/bluetooth card is unsupported in macos. So we will likely add a broadcom chip which should be compatible out of the box with hackintosh (but you never know). I will update the part list if I add the chip and it works.

My dad was extremely happy with the upgrade and I am glad that he is. There were many hurdles to overcome when troubleshooting issues and bugs, but after installing the correct Kexts and finalizing bios settings it was ready to go. I hope you all enjoy the build as much as we did, it's definitely one of my favorite builds I have ever put together.