530sCheapMac

Well, it looks like the only other thread on the site concerning this board has been hidden from search or something. But I am reinventing it as a more hopeful thread. To start: SRSLY. As a refresher: Mac Mini is 6.5 x 6.5 x 2.0 inches. MiniItx footprint is 6.7 inches. *squee* This is the first ever Mini-ITX board with LGA 1156. Yes, that means that this board will take the newest Core i5 + i7 chips. Other attractive features: One PCIe 2.0 x16 slot (which, due to the i5 and i7's on board 2.0 x16 controller, means that literally each bit of traffic to and from your graphics card beelines to the CPU... Lag? NOPE. ) 2x 240-Pin DDR3 slots compatible with up to PC3 12800 (1600 MHz) RAM sticks (So a theoretical limit of 8GB's... yes, this is "meh", maybe even "suck" but IMHO 4 is enough for OS X.) A debugging LED (unheard of in this form factor) I recommend you read Clunk.uk's review of the board (shameless plug) where the reviewer pushes the board to the point of no return to see what it can do. He ran it up to 3.960 GHz on an i7 860 (!!!!!! LOL !!!!!!) on water but apparently killed the board in the process. Anywho, tonymacx86 (BEST HACKER EVER TO HAPPEN TO THE OSx86 COMMUNITY) says "Seems like it would work" (lol I'm SplitFace) but if we keep with it at this rate, I guess I'll be the guinea pig when I buy the board hopefully within a week or two. Wish the SFF-1156-OSx86ing crew good luck!

See, I just cant help but look at that PCI, PCIe2 x1, and PCIe2 x4 slot and even those extra two RAM slots and realizing that I will likely never use them. Curious though, has any one got the SATA-6 ports working?

BUMP. If you have this board, please help the Community!!! Also, give EmpireEFI a shot. This looks very promising.

I am eyeing that IDE drive with a little but less than a smile. Try disconnecting it, along with the windows 7 drive. Remember, small moves. Also, trying pulling out that wireless card, just for now. Did you update the bios to the latest? f9?

windows 7 rtm may be more stable, but I suggest you wait until it is actually released. M$'s honesty track is not the greatest, so rtm may not actually be rtm, and it will start to slowly kill itself the day that 7 actually releases. The only reason I suggested that you not use nVidia's own drivers as opposed to Apple's is, that, well, Apple made them for their exact equipment setup. A chip maker's drivers are often more ambiguous, ie more compatible with other devices and ICs. You will experience more bugs and glitches with the non-specialized drivers, and this will not be outweighed by the benefits of a tiny bit of extra performance granted by THE most up to date drivers. No problem.

1. It's Windows. That WILL ALWAYS happen, no matter what machine it runs on. But fret not, it is not the machine's fault. 2. No. No. They will fail to install. No. Yes, they are. Install the drivers on the Bootcamp DVD. NOTHING ELSE. 3. Yes. But I do not suggest it. Someday, you will use it. If you absolutely must, here is a tutorial. But I suggest you not do it. 4. You will likely find that SP2 will be even buggier, I know I do, but in order to get the best support you need to upgrade to SP2, and use Vista as sparingly as possible, which is the best advice I can possibly give. You're Welcome. Joe.

GlossyWhite over at MacRumors has a theory that Snow Leopard reads your Mac's Model ID to see if it can be installed (reading it for PPC, etc.) Obviously this would help us over here out too, so I am here to request a fast tutorial on how to change a Mac's Model ID (Macmini3,1 to Macmini2,1) for him so he can test his theory. Can anyone help? EDIT: Here's the thing. It IS a genuine mac, so we don't want to do any permanent changes, nor install any unnecessary kexts that would change his system beyond MID. BTW: Here is GolssyWhite's OP:

Huh? so how does the GA-EP45-UD3P make such an easy/well performing hackintosh? Or for that matter any mobo with a P45?

WIN! Thanks for the share!

Up here in igloo land, the upgrade costs $1200, and newegg ships the linked RAM for $550/4GB stick. http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?...N82E16820233082 down in America, there is a 360 dollar discrepancy. But whatever. If you want 8GB, get the sticks yourself, save the money, and quit bitching.

you missed the most important component: the motherboard. we need to know what it is.

haha maybe you have just gotten used to the speed of OS X? try fiddling w\ the options; dedicate more RAM, put the virtual hdd file on a faster drive, dedicate more than 1 core to the machine. I found that adding just 512MB onto an already 512MB gave it an exponentially faster speed on my mom's iMac.

HAHAHA win! "You gotta be super 1337 to do that..."

Please post the nature of the error/failure. Are you having trouble getting to install? Getting installed system to boot? Getting booted system to be error free? If A or B, boot with "-v" as a boot flag and tell us where it stops. If C, please elaborate/supplement with images.

*SEARCH* Seatbelt (10.5.5) Fix