Hania PC… well… it needs macOS

Hello, after a recent and viral post with our, mine and my daughter, about Hania – our new PC – for my Ph.D. work… I would like to tell you a story with a happy ending. I always dream of a unique and beauty Mac Pro, which is, in my opinion, well… a dream machine for any researcher, especially in AI/ML field. Do not get me wrong… I love Open Source, and I really seriously take any software license… During my MEng level studies, about 15 years ago, I have fallen love with GNU/Linux. All of my work and my Master Thesis were done on Gentoo Linux, the best of that time, in my opinion. And I did everything on Linux at that time… enough will be told that all experiments for my Master Thesis were done during about 8 night hours by the Bash script that leverages many of the open-source components. And I even got approval to use the Nuvola icon set by one of the KDE contributors ;-). I sent an email and got support and good luck wishes for my Master’s Thesis work. So, I love Open Source, really. I am taking care of any License… so what about Hania PC and macOS license… well, I think the good God gave us ayes, we can close sometimes… So dear Apple, please forget that… but I install macOS on Hania PC simply because I do not have enough money to buy a dream computer from you… and also because I wrote an email to the marketing and sponsoring department of Apple, and you did not even respond to help me buy it cheaper. So please forgive me. I tried AMD GPU drivers on the Kubuntu/Ubuntu 18.04.4, and there was beauty experience with games like the Codemasters Dirt4, an example, but my research and leveraging the GPU was a disaster. Instead of ~24 FPS, I got 0.08 FPS, so AMD, come on?! Is that your driver for pro-users of your GPUs? Anyway, let’s move to the fan part… the spec I want to remind you about…

SPECIFICATION (ALL FRIENDLY NAMES IN BRACKETS WERE MY DAUGHTER’S IDEA)
Case: NCase M1 V6.1 Black (Hania)
Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix Z390-I Gaming M-ITX (Marta)
Central Processor Unit: Intel Core i9-9900K, 3.6GHz, 16 MB, BOX (Monika)
Central Processor Unit Cooling AIO: Asus ROG Strix LC 240 AIO CPU Cooler with Aura Sync RGB (Oliwia)
Random Access Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 64GB 3000MHz CL16 (Ola i Zosia)
Solid State Drive for OS: Western Digital SSD 2TB SN750 NVMe (Magda)
Graphic Processor Unit: XFX AMD Radeon VII 16GB HBM2 (Renata)
Power Supply: Corsair SF Series SF750 750W 80 PLUS Platinum SFX (Lucja)
Operating System: macOS Catalina
MOST IMPORTANT: WiFi and Bluetooth Replacement: BCM94352Z (DW1560)

Now, you may wonder how to do it? I found GitHub someone brilliant who made OpenCore EFI content for very similar specs, but it was for an already working system and with a very detailed description. You may look for it as well. The tip is to look for the Motherboard name, including the Hackintosh phrase. But be patient. EFI, as I mentioned, is not for installation. Based on the OpenCore documentation, you must do it independently. Sorry, I will not provide a solution because it took me about 2 hours to experiment over the weekend… and also, you have to play with experimenting if you want to make a similar system… now, how it looks in Sepia like very early morning lights?

Hania-Hackintosh-Design

Now you maybe wonder if I really achieve the goal of the fast-performing OpenCL? Well, let me answer that OpenCL works perfectly! For the first time in CIFAR-10 set training, I reached 100% detection of the 5/5 cases of tricky images I chose for the classification test. It never before happened, and I repeat that several times because any research should repeat to avoid luck on the first try ;-). But the performance that was really important to me was on the inside car video I made on my own, and to remind you, on GNU/Linux, it was 0.08 FPS only, so dramatically low, on macOS, I got… well, look on the image that is worth the thousands of words ;-).

Hania-Hackintosh-OpenCL

So, 24 FPS!!! On MP4, that was 1080p@60. It is better than CUDA v10 on GNU/Linux with the NVidia Titan RTX! Really cool, right? So, what does it mean? If Apple drivers developers are better than those who work at AMD? Why AMD GPU on macOS is so well optimized? Why on GNU/Linux is suitable for games but not for OpenCL? If Apple forgives me for this little educational experiment? I do not know! You have to answer yourself… ;-). If you have any idea of any answers, feel free to add a comment down below ;-). Thanks for reading!

Hania-Hackintosh-System

In the end, I would like to have three more photos! “…simplicity is the pinnacle of sophistication…” right?! ;-).

HaniaPC01

HaniaPC02

HaniaPC03

Nice? ;-). Here you have Hania-PC EFIs ;-).

p ;).

One Reply to “Hania PC… well… it needs macOS”

  1. Pingback: Ph.D. Hanna (Hackintosh) is Ready – iblog.isowa.io

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