Alienware Area-51M with Mac OS

Hi, interesting in setup hackantosh in my Area51m and hope that even one of the owner here did that before

I know that Network adapter and wifi will never work right now

however i can replace that with WiFi dongul

but i know that by other way i can install the IGPU


But can it (easily) be turned into a hackintosh?

hope anybody can help get this done

 

Anyone here

 

The only way you can get support for GPU acceleration is either via an external display connected to the Thunderbolt 3 port (it is hooked to the iGPU for it's display outputs) OR by using an AGA with a supported AMD GPU. @ssj92 did a nice video here showing the AGA GPU method:



You can always use a DW1560 wifi card which is supported in both MacOS / Windows.

If you really want a Hackintosh Alienware, the M17/M15 R1 is the best option - you can use the internal display with the Intel GPU and swap the wifi card for a full support machine other than the Nvidia GPU.

 

I dont need the gpu

I 9nly need the igpu

 

I already have area51m man cant solid it

 

In that case using a USB-C to Displayport dongle is the next best option. You can still use his video as a guide to get the install setup. Then you can use the dongle with an external display and it will probably need some patching tweaks to get it working using the Whatevergreen project. If you have really limited desk space you could probably take a 17 inch USB-C external monitor and just lean it right on top of the built in Alienware display while you are doing your MacOS stuff. It is not an ideal solution but is the best that can be done with the lack of Nvidia support in the newer MacOS.

 

So why i need external.diaplay

Mac will never shown if gsycn on u mean

 

The internal display is wired directly to the Nvidia GPU, which has no support on MacOS. So if you want display acceleration support you have to either hook an external display to the TB3 port (driven by the Intel GPU) or do a setup with the AGA using a supported AMD GPU like shown in the above video.

Maybe if we are lucky the next 51M will have a AMD Navi based DGFF module, and if it were a compatible upgrade with the first gen 51M then you could potentially use the internal display using that card. IIRC Dell offered the Radeon RX 560 in their past Alienware 17 R4 so there is a chance it could happen!

 

Good luck getting the iGPU to provide video acceleration. I tried and couldn't get it to work.

You will need to do some DSDT patching and get the framebuffer and device id properly set-up.

I abandoned the project for now and went with a 2017 macbook pro 15" in replace of my 2013 15"

 

Ah, I am glad you tried that. It seemed odd to use the AGA only for an external display for encoding work if the iGPU would have worked. One thing you could try if you still have the OSX install is the Whatevergreen boot option "agdpmod=vit9696". That was needed with my Precision 7740 to allow the iGPU to detect external displays (other than the boot display).