Dell XPS 8300: The Pre Built Hackintosh That You Can Buy From Any Store

We generally recommend that you build your own Hackintosh, since setting up Mac OS X is a lot easier when you know exactly what parts your computer uses. There are very few prebuilt desktop computers that have been confirmed to work with Mac OS X. However, if building your own computer is not practical, you've still got one good option: the Dell XPS 8300.

The Difference Between Chimera and Chameleon

Since Mac OS X cannot normally boot from PCs, Hackintoshes use their own special bootloaders to start the operating system. Nowadays, people have two main choices in Hackintosh bootloaders: Chimera, the bootloader supported by tonymacx86, and Chameleon, the bootloader supported by pretty much everyone else. Unfortunately, the difference between Chimera and Chameleon isn't very clear, which is why we've put together a short explanation to end the question once and for all. 

Is your Hackintosh's second monitor lagging? Try switching ports.

In the past, one of the monitors in my dual-monitor Hackintosh setup would always lag when I did anything processor-intensive from the other monitor. For instance, all of the apps in my first monitor would experience a performance drop whenever I watched fullscreen videos in my second monitor. Luckily, there's an easy fix available. It turned out that the problem was with the connector ports on my graphics card.

Choosing The Right CPU For Your Hackintosh

Choosing the right processor for your Hackintosh is usually a pretty straightforward process. Just about any standard Intel processor will work. However, the choice becomes much more complicated once you get into the details, which is why we've put together this short guide on how various lines of computer processors work with Mac OS X.

How to set your Hackintosh bootscreen to a widescreen resolution (VESA modes)

At boot time, your Hackintosh's bootloader can only display the basic resolutions programmed into your graphics card; these are known as VESA modes. VESA resolutions usually aren't widescreen, so if your Hackintosh uses a widescreen monitor, all of the images on your bootscreen may be stretched and distorted. This can be fixed by changing the VESA modes in your graphics card, but it isn't easy.

What Mountain Lion Means For Hackintoshes

OS X Mountain Lion will be released to the public this July. Though the front-end of OS X will remain mostly unchanged by this impending update, it does include a few Hackintosh-friendly updates under the hood.

The Right Graphics Cards For Your Hackintosh

After your motherboard, the graphics card is the most important part of your Hackintosh. However, Mac OS X wasn't designed to support a wide variety of graphics cards, so it's not always clear which graphics card is the best choice. To answer this question once and for all, we've put together this guide on choosing the right card for your own Hackintosh.

Enable the NVIDIA GTX 670 on Mac OS X Lion (experimental)

Mac OS X Mountain Lion will add support for NVIDIA's GTX 600 series and AMD's Radeon 6900 series of graphics cards. However, if you want support right now, it is now possible to enable full resolution and graphics acceleration for the NVIDIA GTX 670 in Mac OS X Lion, by following alfa's method.

The Complete Guide To Backing Up Your Hackintosh With Carbon Copy Cloner

Though Hackintoshes are usually pretty stable, you can never be too careful when updating your Hackintosh's version of Mac OS X. You don't want to lose your personal files if your Hackintosh becomes unbootable-- always make a backup! With Carbon Copy Cloner, backing up your Hackintosh is nice and easy.

The Difference Between Unibeast, myHack, and Kakewalk

LAST UPDATED: December 22, 2012

Unibeast is by far the most popular installation software for Hackintoshes, but alternatives like myHack and Kakewalk have their own followings, respectively. However, it is not completely clear what the difference between these three tools is. Forums that support myHack and Kakewalk specifically avoid talking about Unibeast, while forums that support Unibeast specifically avoid talking about myHack and Kakewalk.

To answer this question once and for all, I've put together a comparison of these three pieces of Hackintosh software. For each app, I summarize its feature set, and then compare its capabilities to the other two apps. The results may surprise you.