DrNomis_44's Hackintosh Build

[DrNomis_44]

So, I had a yarn with my mate, who I have been helping with his guitar rig, and I asked him if he had any spare computer cases he didn't want any more, and he said he did have some and that he'd bring them round to my place, I might use one to re-house all the hardware in my Windows 10 64Bit Desktop DAW PC, and use any remaining ones for the Hackintosh, might do some work on it tomorrow just mainly testing the motherboard out to see if it truly is good, might install Windows XP Pro on it using the two spare 80Gb HDDs, cause I have a disk image of Windows XP Pro SP3 that I can use to burn a disk from, I may even be able to hook it up to my Wireless NBN Router via a LAN cable to get it online, or, I may have another way to get it online, anyway, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it, I could even try installing Ubuntu Linux on it, just for some fun.


If it turns out I can't get OS X Snow Leopard to run on my Hackintosh, perhaps I could use it to build a home server.

[Dedman]

I use my older computers as a render farm. If I'm doing a really big image with lots of CPU intensive effects I boot up a couple of computers and let them share the load (network rendering, the software shares out sections of an image to work on depending on the machines specs, pretty clever). I haven't needed to do since building this rig, but it sure helped out in the bad old days when I was messing with animation . Not sure if you can do that with sound apps. Check newegg.com for parts prices, might still be cheaper to buy from the US.

[DrNomis_44]

I use my older computers as a render farm. If I'm doing a really big image with lots of CPU intensive effects I boot up a couple of computers and let them share the load (network rendering, the software shares out sections of an image to work on depending on the machines specs, pretty clever). I haven't needed to do since building this rig, but it sure helped out in the bad old days when I was messing with animation . Not sure if you can do that with sound apps. Check newegg.com for parts prices, might still be cheaper to buy from the US.

Cheers mate, I seem to remember reading an article in one of my magazines about using two computers together, I think the article was in a magazine called Computer Music, the idea was to use one computer to run the DAW and the other to do all the DSP for the plugins, something along the lines of what you're talking about in your post, yeah I reckon that is pretty clever, you get more processing power that way.

[DrNomis_44]

Okay so I've decided to download and burn a DVD of the latest version of Ubuntu Linux, I'm going to use it to test out the ASRock motherboard to make sure it is all working properly, I don't have a spare Sata DVD drive I can put in the case that has the motherboard installed in it so I'll have to use one of the DVD drives in my DAW PC, I'll be buying some new DVD drives for my DAW PC soon, I may be able to hook the computer I'm working on up to my Wireless NBN Router by a LAN cable so I can get it online to download any necessary drivers.


Update:


Well, downloading and burning the Ubuntu disk image to a DVD didn't work, my Laptop decided to crash right in the middle of burning the disk, I suspect that the DVD I was using was no good, as Murphy's Law would have it, I have no good spare blank DVDs, so I tried using my Genuine Microsoft Windows 7 64Bit installer DVD, had much better luck but I got a message saying that the DVD wasn't a genuine one when I could see it as clear as day that it was Genuine, anyway, just in the process of getting all the Windows 7 Updates downloaded and installed...Computers, what a headache they are, so much for the so-called Digital revolution, eh?


Update 2:


Just finished installing all the Windows 7 64Bit drivers on the Hackintosh PC, looks like everything is working like it's supposed to so far, all usb ports, including the 3.0 ports seem to be working.

[DrNomis_44]

Update:


Okay, so I've tried installing Ubuntu 16 on my Hackintosh PC for testing purposes, and it's looking a bit grim, the computer seems to be spontaneously shutting itself down for no apparent reason, the cause could be one, or all, of the following:


1, Flaky Motherboard.

2, Flaky Power Supply.

3, Flaky Ram.

4, Flaky Graphics Card.

5, Flaky HDD.


I'm going to try installing Windows 10 Threshold 2 on the Hackintosh PC and see if it runs better.

[kimball492]

Doc I would say ram is ok as it came out your other PC. Try upgrading the bios for the motherboard, see how that goes. Check your graphics card is seated properly recheck your cables to see if there all nice and tight.

Bios download
http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z77%2...wnload&os=BIOS

Drivers
http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z77%2...oad&os=Win1064

[DrNomis_44]

Doc I would say ram is ok as it came out your other PC. Try upgrading the bios for the motherboard, see how that goes. Check your graphics card is seated properly recheck your cables to see if there all nice and tight.

Bios download
http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z77%2...wnload&os=BIOS

Drivers
http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z77%2...oad&os=Win1064

Cheers kimball492, I'll give that a go tonight, I have tried swapping out the graphics card for the one that was in my DAW PC (it says Sapphire on the Graphics Card's heatsink and apparently it's an AMD Radeon R7 200 series card), and so far the Hackintosh PC hasn't fallen over, I'm thinking that the other Graphics Card ( an ATI Radeon HD 4870 512Mb) I had in it was probably drawing too much power from the Power Supply and it was shutting down due to overloading, best theory I can come up with so far, but I guess it won't hurt to do a Motherboard Bios update, although that can be risky, if the Bios update fails, that could render the motherboard unbootable unless I was lucky enough to find a replacement Bios Chip.


I'm going to give updating the Motherboard Bios a go shortly.

[kimball492]

Hey Doc, I update my motherboard bios all the time . But you have to feel confident doing it. If the new graphics card seems to be working ok I'd leave it. All the bios updates do is remove bugs from previous versions and sometimes make PC run cooler faster and no crashes. Bit like upgrading your operating system. Let's hope graphics card has solved the problem.

[DrNomis_44]

Hey Doc, I update my motherboard bios all the time . But you have to feel confident doing it. If the new graphics card seems to be working ok I'd leave it. All the bios updates do is remove bugs from previous versions and sometimes make PC run cooler faster and no crashes. Bit like upgrading your operating system. Let's hope graphics card has solved the problem.

I've just gotten back online after updating the ASRock Z77Pro4-M Motherboard Bios, it seems to have been successfully updated, the previous Bios version was P1.60, and the updated version is P2.00, you could think of a Motherboard's Bios as being like a mini operating-system, the Hackintosh PC seems to be liking the new Graphics Card so far, I'm going to try leaving the Hackintosh PC running for an extended period of time as a way to "Soak-Test" it, if the Hackintosh PC keeps running without spontaneously shutting-down, then I'll assume that everything's okay, I've been thinking of upgrading the Power Supply in my DAW PC from a 600 Watter to something like a 750 Watter, or maybe an 800 Watter if I can get one for a good price, if so, then I'll put the 600 Watter PSU in my Hackintosh PC, I also need to buy a couple of new Sata DVD Burner Drives, two new Optical Mice, and two new Keyboards at some stage.


I checked in Windows 10 Device Manager, and everything seems to be working good, so far there's no "Unknown Devices" issues.

[kimball492]

The 600 watt power supply would be fine with the build Doc.