How to speed up your Hackintosh's boot time in Mountain Lion 10.8.0

After I updated my Hackintosh from Mac OS X Lion to Mountain Lion, the amount of time it took Mac OS X nearly doubled. The boot time of my SSD increased from 20 seconds to 40 seconds, while the boot time of my normal hard drive increased from 1 minute to 2 minutes. If you're experiencing similar problems with your Hackintosh after making the upgrade to Mountain Lion, you've come to the right place; it turns out there's an easy solution after all!

Enable HD 4000 graphics on your Hackintosh (updated)

OS X Mountain Lion added support for Intel HD 4000 integrated graphics this week. However, it does not work by default on Hackintoshes. To enable graphics support for HD 4000, you have to install the newest version of Chimera bootloader and make a few adjustments.

How to install OS X Mountain Lion on your PC with Unibeast

LAST UPDATED: January 3, 2013

If you're interested in running Mac OS X, but you don't want to pay ridiculous prices for a normal Mac, then a Hackintosh just might be for you. Right now, the newest iteration of OS X is 10.8, known as Mountain Lion. Installing Mountain Lion on a PC is pretty much the exact same as installing Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion). This guide is based off tonymacx86's method for installing Mountain Lion, except that we cover it with more detail (and pictures!).

Enable HD 4000 graphics on your Hackintosh (experimental)

By default, Intel HD 4000 integrated graphics are not supported by Mac OS X. You cannot change the screen resolution on a Hackintosh that uses HD 4000, and there's no graphics acceleration. However, in the recent Macbook Pro software update, Apple included graphics drivers that added support for Intel HD 4000. Though nobody was initially able to get these drivers to work with Hackintoshes, this has finally changed.

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.