Dan Counsell, on the Hacintosh he built to replace his gaming PC and desktop Mac:

I’ve been running this machine for a couple of weeks now and I couldn’t be happier. It’s super fast and I can easily switch between Mac and Windows. I’ve switched off auto-updates in Sierra. While system updates should work just fine, I prefer to hold off until the community over at tonymacx86 have confirmed there are no issues. This is probably one of the major drawbacks to running a Hackintosh.

If you’re into tech and enjoy tinkering and understanding how things work then you’ll find building a Hackintosh is hugely rewarding.

The performance this machine was able to achieve, at the price he paid, is staggering. On single-core tasks, it’s faster than any Mac Apple currently sells and, if you forgo all the bells and whistles, it can be built for about $1,800.

But of course, the downside to building a Hacintosh is the possibility that software updates could break your macOS install or cause unexpected bugs. And that’s exactly why I’ve steered clear of building one for myself. As much as I like the idea of putting together a PC and installing a fresh copy of macOS on it, I just don’t have the time (or patience) to deal with the potential headaches down the road.