Hackintosh vs Mac mini vs iMac

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Handle9

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#270297 3-May-2020 01:57

I'm looking for a new project to look forward to.

Mrs Handle has decided to go back to Mac and we've bought her a nice shiny MacBook Pro. On a whim I've repurposed a Dell e7440 I had lying around to be a Hackintosh and it's gone very very well. I'm very much enjoying the experience and MacOS is a much better beast than when I used it several years ago.

I'd like to work towards a nice desktop machine which begs the question whether we just buy an iMac, get a Mac mini or build a Hackintosh. I'm intrigued by building a Hackintosh from scratch but I'm not sure whether I want the hassle of maintaining it long term. It does have the benefit of giving me a good option to dual boot / go back to windows in the future.

A 5k iMac would probably be the best experience but it does start getting pricey when a Mac mini with a nice 4k screen would be perfectly adequate. I can also go eGPU with the Mac mini so it would seem to have a decent hardware pathway if I get a reasonably grunt one with an OK SSD.

Anyone had experience making this type of decision? I probably won't do anything for 2-3 months as I want to have the money saved and buy everything in one hit, which ever way I go.

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#2475585 3-May-2020 08:21

If you can afford it, just buy a mac, updates wont break your pc all the time.

If your happy to troubleshoot updates and fix broken things, build a hackintosh.

I've dabbled in the past but just cant be bothered anymore.

Voice gives context

jamesrt

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#2475601 3-May-2020 09:23

My current setup is MacBook Pro; with a Bootcamp partition to dual boot windows [for occasional things]; and Parallels Desktop so I can run that Bootcamp without rebooting [most of the time I don't mind the small performance overhead of the VM].

Works for me; but YMMV if that was translated into a larger 'Desktop' style machine.

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#2475687 3-May-2020 10:03

Handle9:

I'm looking for a new project to look forward to.

Mrs Handle has decided to go back to Mac and we've bought her a nice shiny MacBook Pro. On a whim I've repurposed a Dell e7440 I had lying around to be a Hackintosh and it's gone very very well. I'm very much enjoying the experience and MacOS is a much better beast than when I used it several years ago.

I'd like to work towards a nice desktop machine which begs the question whether we just buy an iMac, get a Mac mini or build a Hackintosh. I'm intrigued by building a Hackintosh from scratch but I'm not sure whether I want the hassle of maintaining it long term. It does have the benefit of giving me a good option to dual boot / go back to windows in the future.

A 5k iMac would probably be the best experience but it does start getting pricey when a Mac mini with a nice 4k screen would be perfectly adequate. I can also go eGPU with the Mac mini so it would seem to have a decent hardware pathway if I get a reasonably grunt one with an OK SSD.

Anyone had experience making this type of decision? I probably won't do anything for 2-3 months as I want to have the money saved and buy everything in one hit, which ever way I go.

I've been faffing with emulator software and hardware ever since I got the 'Transformer' software which turned my Amiga 500 into an XT machine; have been hooked ever since.

I wonder if this is worth a blog on how you get on; I've wanted to try doing a hackinoths just for the challenge of it!

________

Antoniosk

Handle9

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#2475874 3-May-2020 15:29

antoniosk:
Handle9:

I'm looking for a new project to look forward to.

Mrs Handle has decided to go back to Mac and we've bought her a nice shiny MacBook Pro. On a whim I've repurposed a Dell e7440 I had lying around to be a Hackintosh and it's gone very very well. I'm very much enjoying the experience and MacOS is a much better beast than when I used it several years ago.

I'd like to work towards a nice desktop machine which begs the question whether we just buy an iMac, get a Mac mini or build a Hackintosh. I'm intrigued by building a Hackintosh from scratch but I'm not sure whether I want the hassle of maintaining it long term. It does have the benefit of giving me a good option to dual boot / go back to windows in the future.

A 5k iMac would probably be the best experience but it does start getting pricey when a Mac mini with a nice 4k screen would be perfectly adequate. I can also go eGPU with the Mac mini so it would seem to have a decent hardware pathway if I get a reasonably grunt one with an OK SSD.

Anyone had experience making this type of decision? I probably won't do anything for 2-3 months as I want to have the money saved and buy everything in one hit, which ever way I go.

I've been faffing with emulator software and hardware ever since I got the 'Transformer' software which turned my Amiga 500 into an XT machine; have been hooked ever since.

I wonder if this is worth a blog on how you get on; I've wanted to try doing a hackinoths just for the challenge of it!

I was really pleasantly surprised by the hackbook - it was maybe 2 hours from starting to having a functional machine. The only issue with it is wifi/Bluetooth which will work with a compatible wifi card.

It's fairly gutless though - it's a dual core i5 4200u hence the interest in something a bit gruntier.

Handle9

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#2475949 3-May-2020 18:33

jamesrt: My current setup is MacBook Pro; with a Bootcamp partition to dual boot windows [for occasional things]; and Parallels Desktop so I can run that Bootcamp without rebooting [most of the time I don't mind the small performance overhead of the VM].

Works for me; but YMMV if that was translated into a larger 'Desktop' style machine.

I'd like something with a few more cores and the RAM tax on notebooks is insane. At least on the desktops (iMac 27 inch and Mac mini) I can BYO RAM.

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#2475951 3-May-2020 18:41

I tested this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeXBJWSCC30 for fun.

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Handle9

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#2521321 12-Jul-2020 03:09

Given the whole Apple Silicon thing coming I bought a Lenovo M93P and Hackintoshed it with Catalina.

I also tried Opencore for the first time. Overall it's a very good and runs very well as a simple desktop machine running Catalina. For around NZD$375 I have a quad core machine with 16GB of ram and a 500GB SSD running Catalina.

I still need to get it to run at 4K out the display port but even at 1440p60 it's very good for a cheap machine for 12 months. I have USB display link dock running 2 Dell 2209WA so it's great productivity setup.

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#2521361 12-Jul-2020 09:29

I love my Mac mini. They have recently had a minor update.
Don’t forget to check the Macrumors Buyers Guide to see exactly when models were released and when a likely update will come around.

Cheers,
Joseph

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#2521367 12-Jul-2020 09:50

I upgraded to a 5k iMac last year and its fine although my old 2007 iMac is still OK for browsing and Zoom. Have Parallels for running PC games but run it on an external drive with a Mojave Partition as the games are 32 bit (could run it on the internal drive).

If you are newish to Mac then you should not have trouble with older 32 bit apps like me.

JessieB

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#2521414 12-Jul-2020 12:40

I have been running an Intel NUC 8i5beh as a hackintosh, and it has been working well. Not as quiet as a true Mac mini though. I have also been playing around with an HP Elitedesk 800 G2 SFF. It was easy enough to find other peoples' OpenCore configurations and get it going as a Hackintosh. Just lately I have been playing around with para-virtualization on the G2. I am using Proxmox software (free for home use), and have installed two graphics cards - a gtx 1050ti for the windows 10 VM, and a gtx 710 for the Mac VM. Each VM has its own sata drive as well. Quite impressive what can be achieved with relatively cheap older equipment.

Handle9

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#2521491 12-Jul-2020 17:23

JessieB:

I have been running an Intel NUC 8i5beh as a hackintosh, and it has been working well. Not as quiet as a true Mac mini though. I have also been playing around with an HP Elitedesk 800 G2 SFF. It was easy enough to find other peoples' OpenCore configurations and get it going as a Hackintosh. Just lately I have been playing around with para-virtualization on the G2. I am using Proxmox software (free for home use), and have installed two graphics cards - a gtx 1050ti for the windows 10 VM, and a gtx 710 for the Mac VM. Each VM has its own sata drive as well. Quite impressive what can be achieved with relatively cheap older equipment.

Yeah Opencore is great. Boots much faster than Clover and there are lots of EFI folders around for standard type machines. I'm probably going to rebuild the e7440 Hackbook with Opencore at some point, I might do that one from scratch, just to learn how. I will of course backup my EFI folder so when it does horribly wrong I can revert to Clover.

The m93p tiny is very quiet, it's a bit bigger than a NUC and fairly comparable to a Mac mini in size. I'm pretty happy for the cash and when I inevitably upgrade it can be very easily repurposed into something else, maybe a Plex server.

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#2521494 12-Jul-2020 17:34

I am a long time Mac user (decades) I have tried Hackintosh and my experience was that it's a horror show. I would opt for genuine Apple products such as iMac, MacBook or Mac Mini with vanilla MacOS the whole user experience would be way better unless of course you want to tinker and get a stomach ulcer. I use Linux to do my tinkering.

When my 5K iMac dies I will replace it with a Mac Mini and MacBook Air.

Here is a crazy notion, lets give peace a chance.

Handle9

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#2521528 12-Jul-2020 18:50

MikeB4:

I am a long time Mac user (decades) I have tried Hackintosh and my experience was that it's a horror show. I would opt for genuine Apple products such as iMac, MacBook or Mac Mini with vanilla MacOS the whole user experience would be way better unless of course you want to tinker and get a stomach ulcer. I use Linux to do my tinkering.

When my 5K iMac dies I will replace it with a Mac Mini and MacBook Air.

That's certainly not been my experience. Both Opencore and Clover have been great for me. It needs some patience setting up.

MikeB4

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#2521534 12-Jul-2020 18:57

Like with Linux individual mileage always varies. A few years back I would have reveled in it but now I like to just turn on, log in and get on with it. I will be interesting to hear how it all goes for you.

Here is a crazy notion, lets give peace a chance.

Handle9

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#2521541 12-Jul-2020 19:08

MikeB4:

Like with Linux individual mileage always varies. A few years back I would have reveled in it but now I like to just turn on, log in and get on with it. I will be interesting to hear how it all goes for you.

It's a combination of something to do and being cheap. I can afford to buy another Mac but don't see the point if new hardware is coming. Saying that the first version of Apple Silicon is guaranteed to be a colossal screw up so maybe gen 2 will be better.

Until we go back to somewhat normal work conditions using a desktop Hackintosh is fine.

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