A Christmas present to myself this year: rebuild my desktop into a Hackintosh…

Ever since I gave into Lightroom and started using my macbook for photo editing, I had been missing my desktop’s larger monitor and faster processor. Since I can’t run Lightroom on Linux, and since I can’t stand booting into Windows, the only solution is to get  OSX on my desktop 🙂

Now, I really had no intention on buying new desktop parts, as my existing Core i7 920 and MSI X58 mobo were still plenty fast for me (even after +4 years). After making a few failed attempts on that system though, I researched easy/common hackintosh systems and found that Gigabyte motherboards are usually the best for simple OSX installation. So, I used this as an excuse to upgrade my comp and bought a new  mobo+cpu+ram  and re-used my  gpu+ssd+case  to give me the following hackntosh build:

Parts List

• GA-Z77-DS3H
• Core i5 3570K
• GTX 480
• 8GB Crucial RAM
• Vertex 2
• Mountain Lion

   
–            First boot!                           –              New internals              –

This post is not a how-to, but more of some additional info and tips on building a CustoMac; some notes for future reference regarding my experience doing this.

Installation

• Tonymacx86.com Unibeast OSX intstall guide. <–(start here)
• Gigabyte BIOS settings
• My current Mtn Lion GA-Z77-DS3H Kext Files and /Extras.
• Multibeast config:

Misc Notes

• Having an existing Mac is essential for setting up the OSX installer
• An extra computer comes in very handy when needing to lookup/download stuff on the internet while the other comp is down
• I had to remove my GTX480 and use the onboard i5 graphics when installing OSX, otherwise I would get kernel panics.
• After the OS was installed, and after I pre-installed the CUDA drivers, I could use the Nvidia card again
• Useful boot flags for installing: -v -x -s GraphicsEnabler=No
• Do not use an existing ‘real-macintosh’ Time Machine restore features/settings during the hackntosh installation
• Taking the average of all the hackintosh guides on the internet is inevitable, but invaluable

My intention is to eventually have the exact same configuration on my desktop and laptop. I have done this for years using Ubuntu before I got my macbook, but now I want to sync my OSX experience between devices.

Yup, I converted my linux desktop to a hackintosh mainly for the sake of photo editing … and it is nice to have all my systems sync’d to the same setup.

 

…

 

[Update]  Using Lightroom on Multiple Computers

Ok, so it quickly became apparent that simply using rsync to sync changes between Lighroom on my desktop and laptop is a bit annoying. The lrcat catalog file is a database and not simply a folder or simple text file that can merge/update changes easily.

To help automate this, my solution (as well as many others on the interwebs) is to sync the Lightroom 4 Catalaog.lrcat database file with Dropbox, and then use rsync (or a shared drive) for the actual photo files.

To set this up, all you need to do is:

• Create a Lightroom folder in Dropbox
• Place the most recent versions of your Lightroom 4 Catalog Previews.lrdata and Lightroom 4 Catalog.lrcat files into that folder
• Disable sync in Dropbox for the previews (those can be local); use selective sync feature in Dropbox to de-select sync for the previews folder
• Tell Lightroom to use the catalog file in Dropbox (both machines!)

Some tips to keep thing running smoothly though:

• Only have one Lightroom open at a time. There is a ‘.lock’ file that tries to prevent this anyway, but it is wise to completely shutdown Lightroom before opening on the other computer
• Make sure the ‘Develop Presets’ folder (where the presets are stored), and the photo directory structure,  are sync’d on both computers
• If you are not using a shared/networked drive for the pictures (I’m not), you must make sure to copy over the actual photos to each machine before loading Lightroom when switching computers

Syncing the Lightroom catalog with Dropbox works quite well for me so far!