I'm considering selling my imac and my newly purchased HP to build a osx machine which will be faster than either of them. I have a couple of questions about this. Firstly, can an osx machine be built that is as stable as my imac, or will I have alot of problems with stability under osx with my home-built machines. Secondly, these are the components I'm looking at purchasing. From what I can tell, these are compatible with what I've seen on the osx86 site, but can anyone give me suggestions on a DVD burner and a firewire card they have working with no issues?

ASUS P5W-DH mobo
HIS ATI X1990XT video card
Core 2 Duo E6600
2 gig mem
DVD burner?
Firewire Card?

Hi JMan:

I built my under-$500 OSx86 machine last summer (using specs) from OSx86 Project's Wiki. Using some used parts (like 80MB IDE Drive), I was able to build my machine for less than $400. The performance isn't too bad (probably between G5 and Core Solo but slower than Core Duo) because I used Intel Celeron. The system is very stable and I boot into Mac OS X most of the time now. I can burn CD's and view DVD's, but I haven't been able to burn DVD's yet (even with PatchBurn).

Given the right setup: Plenty of RAM, high-end and supported video card and compatible motherboard, you could theoretically build machine faster than Apple's current iMac's.

What do you think?

thankx daniel. I'm sure that the machine I build would be faster than the current imacs. They are running on the 667mhz instead of the 1066mhz buss, which probably wouldn't make a huge difference, but that along with other things could potentially be an improvement.

Im also looking at doing the same, Anyone give out mobo numbers that work perfect? looking to spend no more than, 130$ on the mobo too. thanks

You can build a system that might run faster than an actual mac, but it will never be 100% stable. It could never crash, but that doesnt mean its running fully stable. Plus patching, and software updates (for the core OS), will be an issue. The real deal is still the best IMO.