Isolation Day 6: My Dream Hackintosh

For the last few months, I’ve been trying to find out what it would take for me to put together a decent Hackintosh computer. The build has a few specific prerequisites.

Prerequisites & Reasoning

1. Run Both macOS and Windows

While I mainly use macOS for day-to-day tasks, some of the software I use just won’t run on Apple's operating system.

2. Cope with 3D Software Like Blender or WYSIWYG

I’m starting to develop my 3D modeling skills in Blender and have found that my laptop just isn’t cutting it when rendering out files. WYSIWYG suffers from similar performance bottlenecks, as it simulates live lighting for concerts and other events in real time.

3. Receive Camera Inputs, Act as a Video Switcher, and Stream to YouTube

Eventually, I would like to have the ability to take this computer to events as an all-in-one broadcast solution. It needs to enable me to plug multiple video inputs directly into it, and then either record the feed to the hard drive, stream it to YouTube, or do both simultaneously.

4. Serve as a Plex Home Server

When at home, I tend to watch TV and films that I already own. It would be great to have a system that doesn’t turn into a pile of goo when it needs to transcode 4K video on the fly (unlike my current Mac mini).

5. Edit and Render 4K Video Using DaVinci Resolve

Editing 4K footage is incredibly hardware-intensive. While I can edit 1080p videos fine—just about—I currently have access to a 4K camera but am completely unable to do any meaningful editing of the footage on my current setup.

6. Play a Game or Two from Time to Time

While it doesn’t happen often, I would like to occasionally fire up a game or two without the frame rate dropping to an unplayable four frames per second.

The Parts

So, after a few months of intensive research—COUGH watching YouTube videos COUGH—I think I’ve finally figured out the exact hardware setup I’m looking for.

Note: It looks like the original wishlist plugin broke! Don’t worry, though—I’ve completely updated my Hackintosh design since writing this post, and you can check out the revised plans in my newer workstation build posts.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to buy any of it for me (unless you really want to! 😂). This was just the only plugin I could find at the time that would let me create a clean hardware wishlist that wasn't locked into WooCommerce.

So, what do you think? Is there an essential component I’m missing here (aside from the actual capital to buy the parts)? Do you think a build like this will be powerful enough to handle the workload, or is there something you would change? Let me know in the comments below—I’d love to hear your suggestions.