Hackintosh: XFX 6870 Quad Display Revealed
Things you need to know
When I first use Mac, that was an astonishing experience I've never had, as Steve Jobs promised. As both an entertainment platform and a development platform, it has been and going to be the best choice from computers on the market. Still, I must admit that Mac is the expensive computer despite its awesomeness. Yes, the awesome experience I had on that machine is not possible without highly optimized connection between Hardware and Software like no other existing Operating Systems have. Since Apple started to ship intel architecture based Mac, the movement called Hackintosh begun. That is the attempt to run the Mac OS X on DOS/V hardware. Once you had a correct hardware configuration, you are able to have PC running OS X, in other words, Poor Man's Mac. PC Mac won't promise you a literally perfect Mac experience; however, taking account the half the price, Hackintosh is the best choice if you want a cheap Mac. In this entry, I will provide the complete guide building PC Mac with specified M/B, CPU and GPU. Like I said, OS X designed to run on specially designed hardware, the most important thing is to choose right hardware. I'm going to use following components listed below. The goal is to build the PC Mac with quad display enabled(one from DVI, one from HDMI, two from DP), audio enabled and networking enabled(RadeonHD6870 supports up to 6 displays on Windows).
Note: Although the procedure in the sequel might work in other component configuration, it is strongly recommended that checking other blog posts or something mentioning about hardware configuration similar to yours(Focusing on MB and GPU).
If you want to check out whether your PC is able to run OS X, google keywords: Unibeast, CustMac, osx86. The search results will help you a lot. (I think you will do that anyway)
| Component | Identity | |
|---|---|---|
| M/B | intel DP55WG LGA1156 Motherboard | |
| CPU | intel Core i7 870 | |
| GPU | XFX RadeonHD6870 | |
| SSD | Sumsung 830Series SSD 128GB | |
| RAM | UMAX DDR3 1333 2GB x 4 | |
| PSU | Corsair TX850 | |
| DISP | LG E2241 (1920x1080) x 4 |
Requirements
Unfortunately, to proceed, you have to meet all the requirements listed below.
- Mac running Snow Leopard or greater
- USB thumb drive with 8GB or greater capacity
- Mac OS Lion Install Package purchased on Apple App Store
- HDMI cable
- DP -> DVI Active Converter Buy on Amazon x 2
- Basic knowledge of building PC from parts
- Patience
That's all you need, now you are ready to enter the Hackintosh world.
Step1 - Getting ready your PC
We don't want to encounter a trouble caused by extra hardware like PCI cards and USB devices, so before beginning the installation process, please unplug all unnecessary hardware from you PC. All you need are MB, CPU, PSU, RAM, SSD you will install Mac on and GPU.
Step2 - Install OS X Lion on your PC
Go to UniBeast: Install Mac OS X Lion Using an All-In-One Bootable USB Drive
Follow the instructions.
Note: Do not go over STEP4 If you finished install and booted from HDD, come back here. I will cover all MultiBeast post installation procedure.
Step3 - Post installation set up
Open up MultiBeast and install drivers shown in the picture. Since DP55WG uses Realtek ALC889 chip and intel 1000e Ethernet chip, we are going to install that drivers over MultiBeast. Once you install all drivers listed below, your Hackintosh is ready to use. Make sure not to install DSDT from DSDT database on tonymacx86.com with the option: UserDSDT Install. It will only gives you a Kernel Panic after reboot. Instead of using DSDT from website, you are recommended to use EasyBeast. EasyBeast basically enables you to boot the OS X from HDD without USB bootable thumb drive we used in installing process. If you don't want to install MBR to your disk, then keep it unchecked. In that case, you need thumb drive to boot up the machine. After installation, Audio I/O and Networking should be working perfectly. In the next section, I will show you how to enable 4 ports on XFX RadeonHD6870.
Step4 - Enabling ports on GPU
Now, this part is the main purpose of this article. We are going to enable 4 displays on a Mac! We can NOT use lower DVI ports because Mac Pro only has one DVI port! Actually, there is a way to activate it. Check out the forum post: Getting XFX 6850 connectors working if you want to step in to the really dangerous zone. Unless you do that, the ports you can use are 4 ports listed below. If your display natively supports DP, you don't need miniDP->DVI Active Converter.
Note: You need an Active Converter not a Passive Converter.
Upper DVI port -> LCD1
Lower DVI port -> Disabled
HDMI port -> LCD2(max resolution 1920 x 1080)
miniDP1 -> miniDP--DVI Single-Link Active Converter -> LCD3
miniDP2 -> miniDP--DVI Single-Link Active Converter -> LCD4
To enable the ports, you have to choose right Profile and Ports. To do that, you change boot.plist file in your
/Extra/
directory. If you followed my instruction, then you will find the
/Extra/org.chameleon.Boot.plist
file. It's an xml file. Open it up with Vim text editor, and change these lines:
<key>Kernel Flags</key> <string>ncpi=0x3000 darkwake=0 AtiConfig=Duckweed AtiPorts=5</string>
Add this line to avoid flickering display via miniDP at login screen. You might want to change the values according to your display specification. Without this lines, you have to reconnect DP every time you boot up the machine!
<key>Graphics Mode</key> <string>1920x1080x32</string>
After reboot, you have 4 displays working. That's it! Enjoy your Hackintosh!
