hey everyone, i probably should have posted before i bought, but here it is anyway. these are the main components i have purchased:

EVGA 512-P3-N862-AR GeForce 9600GT Superclocked 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor

GIGABYTE GA-EP35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard

i believe i will be using the kalyway 10.5.2 install disc. i have never built my own pc before, but i wanted to try it out. i would like to make sure i have everything i need as soon as the components arrive. i have done a lot of lurking and searching on this site, but there is just so much information that it is really hard to find exactly what i am looking for. if someone could direct me to a tutorial for my motherboard that would be very helpful. i also noticed that there is a lot of talk on here about dual booting, so i was wondering if i could jsut use boot camp to run vista provided i get leopard to run? i would also like to be able to use my hard drives in both mac and windows, is macdrive the only solution to this? sorry i am so jumbled here, but i wanted to get this thread started because with my luck i am sure that i will run into many problems and you guys here actually know what you're doing. so yeah, basically is this setup alright? anything else you need to know? and which tutorial should i go with since there are so many on this site?

The 9600 GT is not supported... wrong Nvidia Chip (G94)...good for Windows, bad for OSX

ok, not good. i will call them up and see if i can change my order. i was also looking at these 2:

EVGA 512-P3-N801-AR GeForce 8800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card
or
SAPPHIRE 100228L Radeon HD 3850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 AGP 4X/8X HDCP Ready Video Card

will either work, or could you recommend one? i was looking to spend somewhere between 80 and 140 and i would like to be able to play current games, but not necessarily at the highest settings.

thanks for the help btw

Singleslot graphiccards tend to be louder, but for OSX both cards will work.
The 8800 gt could be better for games, but maybee i am just a fanboy...

thank you, i will be calling them first thing in the morning to change my order around. according to their policies it shouldn't be a problem provided it hasn't been shipped yet. is there anything i am forgetting? i got a case that includes a 500 w power supply and 3 fans, mobo, cpu, hard drive, memory and video card. i will use an old disc drive. is a heatsink necessary right away? can i use any old one i have lying around?

Just use SATA Drives... saves you a lot of trouble

the 8400 is a really good processor, the heatsink intel sells with the boxed version is so small and light, it is really funny. If you dont overclock you can use allmost any heatsink...

I would go ATI, ATI has better OSX performance and power efficiency

But that ATI card you posted is AGP! It will not work in your motherboard... Select a PCI express model of it .


A heatsink is a absolute must on a powerful CPU. If you bought a retail package it includes a heatsink though...


here is a guide

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...t=0&start=0


but asking people to find tutorials wont win you any friends im just doing this because im nice... it was on the first page of the tutorials forum... please look before you ask.


No, boot camp does not work. You will have to use one of the dual booting guides on these forums. It is not hard if you follow instructions though. Macdrive is the only way to see mac files on windows that I know of but osx can see windows files...

your old heatsink may not work as it may not support the socket of your cpu

ok, so i think this will be the videocard i will get:
SAPPHIRE 100225L Radeon HD 3870 512MB 256-bit GDDR4 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card
I had a mac, and i thought i remember it not being able to read ntfs formatted drives. is there a way it can? or do i need to format everything in fat32?
i got the retail package so i'm hoping the heatsink will be in there when it arrives.

and thank you for being nice and guiding me to that tut. i have been all over the site and there's just so many different ones and i wanted to make sure i used the right one. i didn't realize there was a specific one for my mobo.
besides the kalyway dvd is there any other software that i need? and the old dvd drive that i was considering using is ide. no good? also have external usb which i figure i couldn't use until i had osx installed, which would be pointless. i didn't get a sata dvd drive because newegg doesn't seem to carry any dual layer dvd burners.

OSX can read NTFS... you dont need to worry about it. Apple wants to make dual booting as easy as possible.

IDE should work... I have a ide drive and it reads fine I have never tried burning.... but i dont see why it shouldn't work... If you have the choice I would go SATA though.

sounds good, i just need the ide drive to install the os, after that i can use my external for burning. ntfs just works natively in os x? i don't know why, but i remember after getting my mac i had to reformat my external hd in hfs to be read.

ok, so the components arrived today and i am going to put the processor in the mobo. some of the directions say to use thermal grease on the cpu, but some don't. is this necessary? i actually think i have some arctic sliver lying around somewhere. if i should use it, where exactly do i put it?

anyone? should i use the arctic silver, i figure it goes on the top, not on the circuits, but should i bother with it? i suppose it couldn't hurt.

Did you buy a boxed processor with heatsink? If so, the heatsink has a pad of thermal grease on it...
If you use another heatsink, clean it and apply a small dot of arctic silver on the heatspreader...use a blade to even apply it then...mount the heatsink.

Click to view attachment

you can see how small the heatsink of an 45nm processor is..


Click to view attachment

Yeah you probably have pre-applied thermal grease.... IF not and its an intel retail package you should complain.

ok, i don't think i can go one step w/o having a problem. so i popped in the processor and put the heatsink on and it is the one that you had a picture of above. so now, i was able to easily push in two of the four corners, but the other two won't go down in either position. i don't want to force it too hard, i'm afraid i'll break the motherboard. what am i doing wrong here? the first two went down w/ no problem at all

ok, i got it, i was just being a bit of a pansy and i had to push it down a little harder, it's in securely now. all i am doing now is waitig for my video card and then i will start installation. any point of trying to install with an old video card and then just replace it when mine comes on tuesday?

ok, so next issue. i am preparing the kalyway dvd and a cd with the combo update, and the tutorial package. i have a couple of questions, first for the kalyway dvd, in the root folder along with the iso there is a forlder labeled "add kext to dvd" so i figure there is something i need to do to the iso but there is nothing in the tutorial about this. also, it says to find the graphics card driver. i am using the ati radeon hd 3870. i see that there is a tutorial for this, but it says to not install any kind of graphics-related things during installation. so do i just need to make sure i have the natit drivers available after i install? and how does leopard work w/o any graphics drivers?

ok, so i would like to start installation. from my searching it seems like i should just install the kalyway as it is and then add any drivers i need afterwards. i would just like confirmation that this is the case before i start installing. also i have a 1 tb internal hd and a 1 tb external. should i make partitions or something if i am planning on dual booting with vista or xp? i think i may also have a spare hd lying around somewhere that probably isn't more than 30 gb. what would be the best setup?

Read through the Multi Booting forum.

No one can really instruct you 100% on what you should do, because it has to be based on your own needs.

I can only tell you that for myself, I prefer to keep every OS seperate. I install OSX on its own drive, as if the only drive in the system. Then XP or Vista on its own drive, as if the only drive in the system. At it's most basic- both OS's are then completely independant of each other. I then 'bridge' them by installing Linux (either on a partition, or, better, on it's own drive- which has the advantage of preserving a boot sector for each OS). I then use Linux's GRUB bootloader to boot everything, and a DOS formatted partition on one of the drives as a shared drive by all OS's. Yes, it's a little hardware-excessive, but it's by far the easiest multi-boot method I've found, and if any of the drives happens to crap out, it won't affect the other OS's and thier ability to boot one bit.

just installed leopard kalyway. after the restart the apple log pops up and then i get some kind of crazy static screen, all i can do is restart? what do i do now? i think i remember reading about this, but i don't remember where and i can't find it from a search.

What install guide did you follow?

i used weaksauce's guide. i ended up having to reinstall with an ati driver. that did the trick, and i am glad to say i am currently typing this on my brand new hackintosh. next step though is getting vista also up and running, but from the guides i am reading, most of them have windows already installed and then put on os x. i already have os x and need vista. when i formatted my hd in disk utility i did a 30 gb partition in hfs for the mac boot and a 30 gb fat partition for windows, i was just assuming i could do it that way. and then i have the rest of it formatted in hfs as well. can i just pop in a vista disk and install on that partition? i thought i saw in darwin a way to boot up from any of the partitions on the drive. i would like to get some kind of confirmation before i start installing windows.

also, it seems like i am having some problems with shut down and sleep, it seems like they are mixed up, but i also can't seem to wake from sleep.

so, new problem. i used software update, and after the restart from that i went back to the same graphics driver problem. i decided to go ahead and format the whole drive in ntfs and i am installing vista. i guess i will follow some tuts on hwo to dual boot and install os x that way.