I've been a Mac user for 14 years now, but always on the "right" (genuine Apple) side of the fence

But now I need to upgrade my home machine (old eMac G4 1.25Ghz) and I'm broke and the best I could possible get was a Mac Mini, and I realize that hackintosh is the way to go now, but the last PC I've build was, maybe, 6 years ago (AMD K7 1.4Ghz).

I've passed a few hours on the wiki page looking for compatible components to build my machine with the less troubles possible, and I'm about to shoot myself, 'cause almost every component has something that does not work...

I know (more or less) what I want, so I wold like to ask for people who may have a similar configuration and could help me out. I pretend to buy the components at a local electronic store (I'm from Portugal, do not know much stores for components, if some european could me provide some links to some stores it would be apreciated).

I'll use this computer mainly for music (Digital Performer 5.13), and what I really need is:

- Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
- 4Gb of RAM
- DualHead Graphics Card (that suport two 24" displays 1980x1200)
- Two hard drives (one for system and software, other for audio files)
- Fully working USB ports
- Fully working Firewire ports
- Fully working ethernet port

So my main question is: what mobo and graphics card?
And if possible where to buy it in europe, ´cause my local store just have Asus.... (or suggest me a nice Asus board and graphics card)

Check my signature. I have the same setup. Works great but i have not used my firewire yet although leopard recognize it on my motherboard.

I'm from europe as well but i do not know any european wide webshops. it bought it all from local stores.

greets,
mj

I too was feeling the bite of apple hardware cost. I put so much into my PPC g5 and then this whole Intel thing happened and my cheese grader just wasn't cuttin it.

The gigabyte ep35s, Asus p5ks, and some intel g31 or g35s, are working the best right now and you can find guides for 100% in the installation section of the forum. 8800gt is a great choice, although apparently some of them are defective. See my sig for my recommendation, easy as pie to install. I wish i had a q6600 tho 8(.

Do you use an external audio interface? Is that what the firewire is for?

same here mac for 23 years, but the "alternative" is not really behind.
check signature (restart dont work, means you have to press the powerbutton twice)

My set-up is in my sig. I could probably get restart and shutdown working if I used some of the newer install guides but my system is steady and reliable as it is, for now.

Go for all SATA interfaces, no IDE.

My motherboard has 2 firewire ports and 8 USB ports (add in the ports in front of my case and its brings the total to 3 firewire, and 10 USB). All work.

I used EFI strings to get audio, graphics card, and time machine working. Supposedly you need an efi string for lan too, which I've done, but I haven't tested the lan with or without it yet (using wireless).

Haven't tried any sound above 2.1.

Haven't tried a connecting a floppy drive either.

Thanks for the answers!

I'm so used to plug'n'play that some of the language is to strange to me Apart from being Portuguese and english is not my main language, I dont know what means that a need a "string" to have my network working. I will further investigate in the foruns.

And, yes, firewire is for one of my audio interfaces (the studio one). At home I have a M-audio FastTrack so I'm not worried at all that the onboard audio works, I dont care for that as long USB works...

Thanks once again.

Check out my sig, everything works great!

Hi!

Somewhere in this forum I saw something about having to patch the bios, or else teh motherboard would not recognize de 4 cores. Does anyone known something about this?