This guide was something I put together as I was trying to build a fully functional hackintosh for Programming. I am primarily a Windows user and I thought of upgrading to an iMac until I was horrified when I found the prices I would be forced to pay. After a lot of searching I managed to have a good understanding of how Hackintoshes (and macOS) works and started writing my thoughts and ideas down. After a lot of time (close to a month of tinkering) I managed to complete this project with a fully functional Hackintosh that cuts through 4K footage like butter. Quite literally everything is working perfectly.
There's a number of terms i'll be using throughout this guide - I'll outline a few of them and their definitions here:
- Clover - this is the bootloader we'll be using. Real macs have a custom firmware that allows them to boot macOS. PC hardware needs a little help to get this working; Clover helps us achieve that. It also handles kext injection, ACPI renames, kext patches, and a ton of other functions.
- Kexts - the word "kext" is actually the combination of Kernel Extension; and you can think of kexts simply as drivers for macOS.
- Config.plist - this is the file that tells Clover what to do. It's an XML formatted property list (looks very similar to HTML) and is one of the most important parts of setting up your Hackintosh.
- GIGABYTE GA-Z87X-D3H Motherboard
- Intel Core i7-4790K Haswell 4.0GHz
- Sapphire Radeon RX 570
- 16GB 1600mhz DDR3 memory
- Corsair VS450 Power Supply
- 120 SSD and 1TB HD