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I do have an AMD Hackintosh, I don't see any reason you wouldn't be able to use these as a dev Hackintosh machine. It's gorgeously fast with my Ryzen 2700x, eat

I do have an AMD Hackintosh, I don't see any reason you wouldn't be able to use these as a dev Hackintosh machine. It's gorgeously fast with my Ryzen 2700x, eats compilation time like no one's business and it's stable. And it's something around 1/4th the price of the same horsepower from native Intel Macs. I can't imagine the cost delta of a EPYC Rome Hackintosh to its Intel counterpart. It's not like I cheaped out either, I have the same cheese-grater like anodised dark grey aluminium case with impeccable internal structure for easy upgrades. (Link to case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcNsHS2U8RM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcNsHS2U8RM)

bitL 7y ago
Do you have drivers for everything? Do you think it would work on a Threadripper with many NVidia GPUs as well?
- leemailll 7y ago
  Many nvidia card don't have driver for mojave or catalina. No 9xx nvidia gpu or later on can work
  - pmjordan 7y ago
    Correct, the built-in drivers only cover the "Kepler" architecture, as that was the last one that Apple used in a Mac. The 3rd party Nvidia drivers which support more modern GPUs are only offered up to macOS 10.13 High Sierra. The technical background for this is that Metal and OpenGL acceleration requires the GPU driver bundle to be loaded into a process's address space. (effectively a dynamic library) With 10.14, Apple has enabled the "library-validation" codesigning flag just about everywhere, which means that only libraries signed by the same developer as the process's main executable or by Apple can be loaded into a process. Hence, 3rd party GPU drivers won't load in WindowServer for example, which makes them dead in the water. Apple could of course implement an exception or sign Nvidia's driver, but so far it looks like they're not interested. Perhaps there will be a solution to coincide with release of the new Mac Pro which once again contains PCIe slots you conceivably might want to fill with Nvidia cards, but I wouldn't count on it. (FWIW, my company maintains the macOS driver for one of 2(?) manufacturers of USB graphics adapter chips, so I have a pretty good idea of how the macOS graphics stack works.)
    - leemailll 7y ago
      Someone on reddit suspect apple’s stance against Nvidia in this driver signing carnage is because they are not happy with Nvidia about cards in MacBook Pro
      - ianai 7y ago
        What did nvidia do?
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        jdietrich 7y ago
        There was a lawsuit and a recall program because of the premature failure of Nvidia GPUs in 2008 to 2010 MBPs. https://www.macworld.com/article/1154456/nvidiagpu-macbookpro.html https://www.macworld.com/article/1154456/nvidiagpu-macbookpr...
        giobox 7y ago
        They screwed over much of the laptop industry in the late 2000s. Google "Nvidia bad bumps fiasco" or "Nvidia bumpgate". This left the major computer vendors (Dell/HP/Apple etc) with very large bills due to the high failure rate of these Nvidia GPUs in laptops. It was right after this that Apple stopped using Nvidia, I've always assumed bad blood over this was a major factor. The cost to Nvidia ended up in the hundreds of millions (based on charges one can see in quarterly filings from this time), the total cost of the failures industry wide is pretty hard to establish given laptop manufacturers weren't exactly in a rush to let customers know the extent of the issues...
      - pmjordan 7y ago
        As a driver developer, I've been on the receiving end of stuff breaking due to changes in macOS many a time. Based on my experience, I find it much more likely that Apple simply does not care about this problem/does not consider it a problem. By that I mean they are not willing to assign developer resources to the situation because from their point of view it is not a supported configuration, plain and simple. The fact that it ever worked is largely accidental as far as they are concerned. One of their highest priorities at the moment appears to be to remove any 3rd party code running in the context of Apple processes. For examples, you don't need to look far: kext -> DriverKit/System Extension transition, hardened runtime, etc. The Nvidia driver breaking is just a consequence of that increasing lockdown. The simplest solution would be to allow nvidia's code to run in the context of core system and user processes again (kernel, WindowServer, just about any GUI app) which presumably is not palatable to them or they wouldn't have made the change in the first place. The alternative would be to farm this type of driver out into a sandboxed user process. (Nowadays this means DriverKit.) Aside from potential performance issues, this would be a lot of work, so it's probably never going to happen unless literally millions of end users start complaining.
- rolleiflex 7y ago
  No, generally if you're doing the Hackintosh the modern way, you pick your components beforehand from those supported by Mac OS natively (which are excellent components you should already be picking regardless, with the exception of GPUs), and then the only thing you need is the SMC driver I mentioned. I didn't build this machine for Hackintosh, so I have a few drivers (4-5 I think? It tends to need fewer and fewer every OS X update), but that's it. > Threadripper with many NVidia GPUs as well? Yes, it works with Threadripper, but not with NVidia GPUs, but that's because regular Macs don't work with NVidia GPUs as well. My understanding is that it's a standoff between NVidia and Apple largely due to NVidia's poor behaviour the last time NVidia was included in Macbook Pros around 2012.
  - ComputerGuru 7y ago
    > My understanding is that it's a standoff between NVidia and Apple largely due to NVidia's poor behaviour the last time NVidia was included in Macbook Pros around 2012. Yes, I have one of those famed 15” rMBPs that many devs say “over my dead body” when you suggest upgrading to a newer model. Zero GPU complaints after the initial bugs were ironed out (and the bad batches replaced). Note that AMD offered virtually no competition to nVidia in either the mobile or the workstation configurations (power or efficiency) up until at least the availability of the R9 Fury a couple of years ago.
    - cududa 7y ago
      A drunk coworker threw my (personal) bag with one of those in a lake. I despise my 2018 MBP.. I miss that thing so much
morsch 7y ago
Impeccable internal structure and rad RGB case lighting as well as a window.
leemailll 7y ago
How about those adobe applications? I heard that PS, Pr, or Ai need special patch to run on amd machines
- rolleiflex 7y ago
  I'm actually a designer, but I stopped using Adobe a very long time ago for unrelated reasons — when they switched to the subscription model. For that reason I didn't even try to run them. I do realise that might be an untenable position for someone in Hollywood since FCPX is not a match for Premiere / After Effects at that level, however, there are plenty of other things that do the job of Photoshop and Illustrator, and they are not alternatives, Sketch is genuinely vastly better than Illustrator, and for Photoshop, there have been quite a few alternatives that the whole class of image manipulation apps got commoditised.
  - leemailll 7y ago
    I still will use adobe apps and the main reason is my university offer them for free. But I agree adobe’s subscription is an overkill for personal use
    - rolleiflex 7y ago
      That's Adobe's way of getting you hooked. It was the same for me at my college. It took me a long time to port my muscle memory to Sketch. If I had an advice to give to my college self, I would advise not even starting with Adobe: if you're a designer and use their tools, the tools you need to make money with isn't even available for sale, you can only rent. So you might end up in a place where Adobe jacks up the price of Creative Suite by 10-100x per month after becoming dominant like Oracle, and you would have to pay your dues to their feudal fiefdom just to be able to continue your profession - else you'll starve. Not a great place to be for anyone.
      - dijit 7y ago
        FWIW that’s exactly why Microsoft office and windows is so prolific, it’s what people know from school so it’s not even a conversation on switching. Even if Microsoft is gauging companies with licenses.
unicornfinder 7y ago
How was it getting things working on your AMD hackintosh? I’m very, very tempted to switch to AMD when the new Ryzen chips land but obviously want to be able to run macOS.
- gravypod 7y ago
  I think a lot of people are installing a really thin distro and setting up KVM that passes through the main IOMMU groups to the the VM.
  - garmaine 7y ago
    For which there is a project on GitHub (OSX-KVM) which does all the hard work for you.
- rolleiflex 7y ago
  I would be cautious about recommending hackintosh to the general public, but for any software guy or gal, it’s a walk in the park. You might need to debug some driver stuff but ultimately there is a possible, perfect state where everything works, given some prior preparation. Same for AMD.
tarcisiocjr 7y ago
Did you manage to get power management working on a AMD hackintosh?
nottorp 7y ago
Pray tell, where are the docs for AMD hackintoshes? Running on Intel atm but the time for an upgrade is coming close. Do you have power management (and sleep) working on amd?
- rolleiflex 7y ago
  Start from https://amd-osx.com/ https://amd-osx.com/. > Do you have power management (and sleep) working on amd? Yes (null-power-mgmt.kext) and yes. Though mind that this is a desktop, so power mgmt. / sleep needs are much less demanding than a laptop. Specifically, the kext works by disabling power management from within OS X. However I have a kill-a-watt and the the power from the plug varies based on the CPU load, so it seems to be behaving correctly. That said, I would not do this on a laptop. Just buy a MacBook Pro if you need that. My hackintosh needs are strictly because Apple (until a week or two ago) just didn’t make a computer as powerful as I needed. I’ll probably just go buy a Mac Pro in the first chance.
  - nottorp 7y ago
    I'm typing this on a MBPro :) With me being a quiet computing / low power fanatic, null power management isn't good enough I'm afraid. Not to mention that amd-osx says "sleep will either work or not". Using a hackintosh desktop for the same reason as you and yes, considering getting a Mac Pro. But it's good to be aware of your alternatives.
  - loeg 7y ago
    As long as the OS uses C-states when idle (and it does) you get the vast majority of Zen power savings, even without touching P-states (clock). E.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzxn1hS7Nq4#t=6m21s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzxn1hS7Nq4#t=6m21s
  - jammygit 7y ago
    Out of curiosity, what tasks do you use those Xeon/thread ripper CPUs for?
    - 7y ago
mamcx 7y ago
I almost go to hackintosh and buy a mini instead, but with the price of the mac pro now is absolutely out of my reach. Making it with AMD is very tempting, but the fear is less compatible and will break even more than intel hackintosh?

bitL 7y ago

Do you have drivers for everything? Do you think it would work on a Threadripper with many NVidia GPUs as well?

leemailll 7y ago
Many nvidia card don't have driver for mojave or catalina. No 9xx nvidia gpu or later on can work
- pmjordan 7y ago
  Correct, the built-in drivers only cover the "Kepler" architecture, as that was the last one that Apple used in a Mac. The 3rd party Nvidia drivers which support more modern GPUs are only offered up to macOS 10.13 High Sierra. The technical background for this is that Metal and OpenGL acceleration requires the GPU driver bundle to be loaded into a process's address space. (effectively a dynamic library) With 10.14, Apple has enabled the "library-validation" codesigning flag just about everywhere, which means that only libraries signed by the same developer as the process's main executable or by Apple can be loaded into a process. Hence, 3rd party GPU drivers won't load in WindowServer for example, which makes them dead in the water. Apple could of course implement an exception or sign Nvidia's driver, but so far it looks like they're not interested. Perhaps there will be a solution to coincide with release of the new Mac Pro which once again contains PCIe slots you conceivably might want to fill with Nvidia cards, but I wouldn't count on it. (FWIW, my company maintains the macOS driver for one of 2(?) manufacturers of USB graphics adapter chips, so I have a pretty good idea of how the macOS graphics stack works.)
  - leemailll 7y ago
    Someone on reddit suspect apple’s stance against Nvidia in this driver signing carnage is because they are not happy with Nvidia about cards in MacBook Pro
    - ianai 7y ago
      What did nvidia do?
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - jdietrich 7y ago
        There was a lawsuit and a recall program because of the premature failure of Nvidia GPUs in 2008 to 2010 MBPs. https://www.macworld.com/article/1154456/nvidiagpu-macbookpro.html https://www.macworld.com/article/1154456/nvidiagpu-macbookpr...
      - giobox 7y ago
        They screwed over much of the laptop industry in the late 2000s. Google "Nvidia bad bumps fiasco" or "Nvidia bumpgate". This left the major computer vendors (Dell/HP/Apple etc) with very large bills due to the high failure rate of these Nvidia GPUs in laptops. It was right after this that Apple stopped using Nvidia, I've always assumed bad blood over this was a major factor. The cost to Nvidia ended up in the hundreds of millions (based on charges one can see in quarterly filings from this time), the total cost of the failures industry wide is pretty hard to establish given laptop manufacturers weren't exactly in a rush to let customers know the extent of the issues...
    - pmjordan 7y ago
      As a driver developer, I've been on the receiving end of stuff breaking due to changes in macOS many a time. Based on my experience, I find it much more likely that Apple simply does not care about this problem/does not consider it a problem. By that I mean they are not willing to assign developer resources to the situation because from their point of view it is not a supported configuration, plain and simple. The fact that it ever worked is largely accidental as far as they are concerned. One of their highest priorities at the moment appears to be to remove any 3rd party code running in the context of Apple processes. For examples, you don't need to look far: kext -> DriverKit/System Extension transition, hardened runtime, etc. The Nvidia driver breaking is just a consequence of that increasing lockdown. The simplest solution would be to allow nvidia's code to run in the context of core system and user processes again (kernel, WindowServer, just about any GUI app) which presumably is not palatable to them or they wouldn't have made the change in the first place. The alternative would be to farm this type of driver out into a sandboxed user process. (Nowadays this means DriverKit.) Aside from potential performance issues, this would be a lot of work, so it's probably never going to happen unless literally millions of end users start complaining.
rolleiflex 7y ago
No, generally if you're doing the Hackintosh the modern way, you pick your components beforehand from those supported by Mac OS natively (which are excellent components you should already be picking regardless, with the exception of GPUs), and then the only thing you need is the SMC driver I mentioned. I didn't build this machine for Hackintosh, so I have a few drivers (4-5 I think? It tends to need fewer and fewer every OS X update), but that's it. > Threadripper with many NVidia GPUs as well? Yes, it works with Threadripper, but not with NVidia GPUs, but that's because regular Macs don't work with NVidia GPUs as well. My understanding is that it's a standoff between NVidia and Apple largely due to NVidia's poor behaviour the last time NVidia was included in Macbook Pros around 2012.
- ComputerGuru 7y ago
  > My understanding is that it's a standoff between NVidia and Apple largely due to NVidia's poor behaviour the last time NVidia was included in Macbook Pros around 2012. Yes, I have one of those famed 15” rMBPs that many devs say “over my dead body” when you suggest upgrading to a newer model. Zero GPU complaints after the initial bugs were ironed out (and the bad batches replaced). Note that AMD offered virtually no competition to nVidia in either the mobile or the workstation configurations (power or efficiency) up until at least the availability of the R9 Fury a couple of years ago.
  - cududa 7y ago
    A drunk coworker threw my (personal) bag with one of those in a lake. I despise my 2018 MBP.. I miss that thing so much

morsch 7y ago

Impeccable internal structure and rad RGB case lighting as well as a window.

leemailll 7y ago

How about those adobe applications? I heard that PS, Pr, or Ai need special patch to run on amd machines

rolleiflex 7y ago
I'm actually a designer, but I stopped using Adobe a very long time ago for unrelated reasons — when they switched to the subscription model. For that reason I didn't even try to run them. I do realise that might be an untenable position for someone in Hollywood since FCPX is not a match for Premiere / After Effects at that level, however, there are plenty of other things that do the job of Photoshop and Illustrator, and they are not alternatives, Sketch is genuinely vastly better than Illustrator, and for Photoshop, there have been quite a few alternatives that the whole class of image manipulation apps got commoditised.
- leemailll 7y ago
  I still will use adobe apps and the main reason is my university offer them for free. But I agree adobe’s subscription is an overkill for personal use
  - rolleiflex 7y ago
    That's Adobe's way of getting you hooked. It was the same for me at my college. It took me a long time to port my muscle memory to Sketch. If I had an advice to give to my college self, I would advise not even starting with Adobe: if you're a designer and use their tools, the tools you need to make money with isn't even available for sale, you can only rent. So you might end up in a place where Adobe jacks up the price of Creative Suite by 10-100x per month after becoming dominant like Oracle, and you would have to pay your dues to their feudal fiefdom just to be able to continue your profession - else you'll starve. Not a great place to be for anyone.
    - dijit 7y ago
      FWIW that’s exactly why Microsoft office and windows is so prolific, it’s what people know from school so it’s not even a conversation on switching. Even if Microsoft is gauging companies with licenses.

unicornfinder 7y ago

How was it getting things working on your AMD hackintosh? I’m very, very tempted to switch to AMD when the new Ryzen chips land but obviously want to be able to run macOS.

gravypod 7y ago
I think a lot of people are installing a really thin distro and setting up KVM that passes through the main IOMMU groups to the the VM.
- garmaine 7y ago
  For which there is a project on GitHub (OSX-KVM) which does all the hard work for you.
rolleiflex 7y ago
I would be cautious about recommending hackintosh to the general public, but for any software guy or gal, it’s a walk in the park. You might need to debug some driver stuff but ultimately there is a possible, perfect state where everything works, given some prior preparation. Same for AMD.

tarcisiocjr 7y ago

Did you manage to get power management working on a AMD hackintosh?

nottorp 7y ago

Pray tell, where are the docs for AMD hackintoshes? Running on Intel atm but the time for an upgrade is coming close. Do you have power management (and sleep) working on amd?

rolleiflex 7y ago
Start from https://amd-osx.com/ https://amd-osx.com/. > Do you have power management (and sleep) working on amd? Yes (null-power-mgmt.kext) and yes. Though mind that this is a desktop, so power mgmt. / sleep needs are much less demanding than a laptop. Specifically, the kext works by disabling power management from within OS X. However I have a kill-a-watt and the the power from the plug varies based on the CPU load, so it seems to be behaving correctly. That said, I would not do this on a laptop. Just buy a MacBook Pro if you need that. My hackintosh needs are strictly because Apple (until a week or two ago) just didn’t make a computer as powerful as I needed. I’ll probably just go buy a Mac Pro in the first chance.
- nottorp 7y ago
  I'm typing this on a MBPro :) With me being a quiet computing / low power fanatic, null power management isn't good enough I'm afraid. Not to mention that amd-osx says "sleep will either work or not". Using a hackintosh desktop for the same reason as you and yes, considering getting a Mac Pro. But it's good to be aware of your alternatives.
- loeg 7y ago
  As long as the OS uses C-states when idle (and it does) you get the vast majority of Zen power savings, even without touching P-states (clock). E.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzxn1hS7Nq4#t=6m21s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzxn1hS7Nq4#t=6m21s
- jammygit 7y ago
  Out of curiosity, what tasks do you use those Xeon/thread ripper CPUs for?
  - 7y ago

mamcx 7y ago

I almost go to hackintosh and buy a mini instead, but with the price of the mac pro now is absolutely out of my reach. Making it with AMD is very tempting, but the fear is less compatible and will break even more than intel hackintosh?