Sandy Bridge-E Intel 2011 Socket confirmed working with Hackintosh
[Update] Intel Socket 2011 does not only support Sandy Bridge-E, but also the upcoming Ivy Bridge-E Chipset, as outlined by one of our commenters. That makes the Socket-2011 Mainboards a perfect choice for a hackintosh system.
Many of us are waiting for an update to the Sandy Bridge (E) Chipset to the upcoming Intel Ivy Bridge (along with the release of new Apple Hardware), that would allow running the new Intel Chipset with Hackintoshed customac systems.
But what about Sandy Bridge-E?
Ivy Bridge will be Quad-Core. If you want more threads and cores, go for SB-E. Sandy Bridge-E as well as Ivy Bridge will have PCIe 3.0. SB-E has 40 PCIe lanes (compared to 16 lanes in Sandy Bridge) as well as 1600MHz memory speed (quad-channel memory) which should be around 33% faster in theory.
There are confirmed builds that can run Mac OSX 10.7 (Lion) as well as 10.6 (Snow Leopard) with the Intel Sandy Bridge-E (SB-E) X79 Chipset. Integrated Graphics are not supported, but who needs them anyway, since the AMD 6990 GPU or the upcoming 7990
Here is a list of the confirmed mainboards:
Asus P9X79 Deluxe (user: vonmolk)
$370 in the US, €299 in Europe
Pro: good build quality (compared to other versions of that board)
Cons: none. The Asus Rampage IV has even better build quality.
Gigabyte GA-X79-UD7 (user: machacks)
€297 in Europe, ??? in the USA
Pro: Awesome board! (nanofunk recommendation). Gigabyte has a longer history of hackintosh-capable boards, so get one of those.
Cons: none, really. Overclocking features could be better.
* ASUS Rampage IV Extreme (user: nfsking2)
$415 in the US, €369 in Europe
Pro: awesome build quality, extreme overclocking support.
Cons: expensive.
The MSI X79 Big Bang XPower II is suspected to work as well (once it becomes available). Theoretically, most of the X79 boards should work, we just have to wait and see what early birds (early adopters) are coming up with. Keep up the great work, ppl! (and don't forget to share your experiences in the comments below)
This post was written by nanofunk on February 6, 2012 and last edited on March 11, 2012
Post categories: apple, beta, demo, diy, examples, experimental, gadgets, hackintosh, hardware, howto, installation, interfaces, news, online, opinions, osx, review, rumors, tweaking, update
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February 28th, 2012 - 21:07
Can you tell me the DSDT info for using the Asus Rampage IV Extreme motherboard in a Hackintosh?
March 6th, 2012 - 23:01
Also need to know method (and DSDT) used fo rthe P9X79 boards… I’m getting “Unable to find driver for this platform” error and kernel panic ;(
March 11th, 2012 - 18:47
thanks for the nice writeup – it is worth to note that the boards you mentioned are also compatible to the upcoming IVY BRIDGE-E plaform. that means investing in a socket 2011 is currently the best thing to do!
March 11th, 2012 - 18:51
@hendrik and @jamie – enik has a detailed information on how to create your own DSDT. Furthermore, you can check the DSDT Database at tonymac.
March 11th, 2012 - 18:52
@earl – did you get a SB-E mainboard for your hackintosh? if so, which did you get?
March 11th, 2012 - 19:02
nanofunk – i ended up getting the MSI Big Bang Xpower II Sockel2011 Mainboard which is said to be great and also has some existing kexts floating around. i will anyway create my own kext, as it is not hard to do. the board has two (2) intel NICs, which are really worth every penny. the performance is awesome. i will post updates here, i just ordered the board :)