bmoose Posted October 12, 2008 Share Posted October 12, 2008 I saw a post in another forum where someone had built a Mac for under $250 so I thought I would try the same for anyone ordering in the UK. I managed to get the price to £228.49 with a copy of Leopard, so if you already own it then it would only be about £145. I just wanted to run these specs by everyone to see how compatible they would be, they look like they would work OK. Motherboard, CPU and Graphics - £57.16 Gigabyte GA-GC230D - Includes 1.6Ghz Dual Core Intel Atom 330 processor, Onboard video (Intel GMA 950), Sound, LAN, SATA, USB, IDE. RAM - £12.94 Corsair 1GB 533Mhz DDR2 HDD - £25.98 Maxtor 160GB Optical Drive - £13.85 LG 20x DVDRW Sata Case + PSU - £29.99 EV Shiny Piano Black with 400W PSU Operating System - £85 Mac OS X Leopard Total - £224.92 Hopefully, if we can prove this to be compatible hardware then this will be useful for UK buyers. EDIT - Changed Mainboard to Intel 945 GC with Intel Atom 330 (Dual Core) processor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick14 Posted October 12, 2008 Share Posted October 12, 2008 why not get the dual core atom it for the same price Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bmoose Posted October 12, 2008 Author Share Posted October 12, 2008 Yeh, can't argue with that logic. Didn't realise it had been released already but thanks for the heads up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nebulOSX Posted October 12, 2008 Share Posted October 12, 2008 I think I may build myself a super cheap desktop, can people confirm that everything is supported? sorry to sound n00bish but this would all work correctly with boot132? I have never built a computer before but want to get into it. I have been running OSX86 on an acer laptop for the past year and its been fantastic EDIT: cuting off the leopard retail DVD price and adding another gig or RAM makes £156... that really is good! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nebulOSX Posted October 13, 2008 Share Posted October 13, 2008 OK, Shall i just be the guinea pig and buy the parts and tell you all how this setup works? i'm just gonna bite the bullet and order these parts, as I said, I have never built a computer before so here goes.. Can someone confirm these are the right parts? Gigabyte GA-GC230D i945GC Socket 479 (built in Atom 230 1.6GHz) onboard VGA 6 channel audio mini ITX Motherboard LG GH20NS15 20X SATA DVD?RW/DL/RAM - Black Bare Drive OEM EV Shiny Piano Black/Silver Slim MicroATX Mini Tower Case - With 400W PSU 20+4pin, 1x SATA, 1x PCI-E Maxtor STM3160815AS 160GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 8MB Cache - OEM Corsair 1GB DDR2 533MHz/PC24200 Memory Non-ECC Unbuffered CL4 (x2) I will order when money comes through from college, get education maintenance, should be here in a week or so... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bmoose Posted October 13, 2008 Author Share Posted October 13, 2008 I am going to order these parts soon as well, I'm pretty confident that they will work. NebulOSX, I recommend you use the new Atom 330 Processor and mainboard as it has a dual core processor. I will post a link later on, I am in a lecture right now. Or you could search for it on Lambatek, thats where i saw it cheapest. EDIT: The new board can also take 667Mhz memory so you may want to upgrade that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nebulOSX Posted October 13, 2008 Share Posted October 13, 2008 ok cool.. that mobo certainly sounds nicer.. If this system works I might build a few for my family Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Baron Posted October 13, 2008 Share Posted October 13, 2008 Try microdirect.co.uk for components. The mobo for example is a fiver cheaper... http://www.microdirect.co.uk/productlister...mp;se=GA-GC230D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bmoose Posted October 13, 2008 Author Share Posted October 13, 2008 Here is the link to the Atom 330 Mainboard. http://www.lambda-tek.com/componentshop/in...;prodID=1606310 The same site has the 230 Atom for about £45 as well, so if you want to make it even cheaper than thats the way to go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nebulOSX Posted October 13, 2008 Share Posted October 13, 2008 Thanks a lot bmoose... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nebulOSX Posted October 15, 2008 Share Posted October 15, 2008 Ok people, please keep in mind that I am a total n00b at building computers, never done it before.. can someone tell me that these parts are all good and compatible with each other? thanks a lot, will be ordering very soon if all is ok.. D945GCLF2 board with Intel atom 330 1.6ghz EV shiny black piano case Maxtor 160gb HD Corsair 1GB ddr2 Pioneer DVD-R Will I need any extra cables etc? Any tips from anyone about building computers? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bmoose Posted October 15, 2008 Author Share Posted October 15, 2008 No everything should come with it. No additional stuff should be required. If you need any help when the computer arrives just ask, I have not used these components before but have built many PC's. Its a probably a good PC to start with as the CPU and graphics are already done for you. Installing CPU and HDD is very easy and the RAM isn't really difficult either, just gotta make sure everything is inserted correctly. Good luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nebulOSX Posted October 17, 2008 Share Posted October 17, 2008 Ok, another 4 weeks or so until I get the money to pay for this thing, applied for several jobs also, so hopefully not long until I get some proper income.. how long ish until you get the system and try it out with OSx86 bmoose? At least I should get conformation if its a decent hackintosh or not.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stnelson Posted October 17, 2008 Share Posted October 17, 2008 The D945GCLF2 board only support one DDR ram slot. The picture they show is wrong in your link. This is what it looks like http://www.mini-box.com/Intel-D945GCLF2-Mini-ITX-Motherboard So you'll have to buy one 2gb ram stick, instead of two 1gb. BTW everything on the board is compatible. Take a look here http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=113623 Ok people, please keep in mind that I am a total n00b at building computers, never done it before.. can someone tell me that these parts are all good and compatible with each other? thanks a lot, will be ordering very soon if all is ok.. D945GCLF2 board with Intel atom 330 1.6ghz EV shiny black piano case Maxtor 160gb HD Corsair 1GB ddr2 Pioneer DVD-R Will I need any extra cables etc? Any tips from anyone about building computers? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nebulOSX Posted October 17, 2008 Share Posted October 17, 2008 thanks stnelson updated my shopping list it may now be possible that I am getting parts week after next.. Look forward to a my second non Apple "Mac" thanks a lot people EDIT: can anyone find UK site that sells the D945GCLF2 that actually has it in stock? I am looking to buy soon and if nowhere has it I will just buy the single core atom motherboard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nebulOSX Posted October 22, 2008 Share Posted October 22, 2008 OK, I should be ordering the parts either tomorrow or the day after. As I said before I am a total noob with computer building, but not with software. I have an HD which I had in my old desktop pc (3 yr old) can i use that 160gb HD on this hackintosh nano? is there a certain type that works best or is it how the HD is connected? (Sata/IDE... help?) I have a 10.5 retail disc, the original retail dvd and will be using the boot132 method. How would I go about upgrading to 10.5.5, combo upate? do i need to patch it? Thank you all for being so patient. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nebulOSX Posted October 26, 2008 Share Posted October 26, 2008 The part have come and its alive! running 10.5 atm, will upgrade it to 10.5.5 when i get back to do some more tinkering! can anyone supply me with a kext for the audio? according to manual mobo has: Realtek ALC662 codec High Definition Audio 2/4/5.1-channel cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Ajob Posted October 26, 2008 Share Posted October 26, 2008 I think the ALC662 codec is the same as on my Asus P5WDH Deluxe board which works perfectly using Kalyway 10.5.2 and also works perfectly (even with full Dolby Digital 5.1 surround!!!) for me using the Taruga patcher and the correct linux extracted codec text file called ALC662.txt (just search google and the audio section of this forum for solutions). Just checked availability for full system on Ebuyer at grand total delivered of £245.95 !!! - EV Shiny Piano Black/Silver Slim MicroATX Mini Tower Case - With 400W PSU 20+4pin, 1x SATA, 1x PCI-E 134832 434 in stock £29.99 Gigabyte GA-GC230D i945GC Socket 479 (built in Atom 230 1.6GHz) onboard VGA 6 channel audio mini ITX Motherboard 147222 17 in stock £62.41 Crucial 2GB DDR2 533MHz/PC2-4200 Memory Non-ECC Unbuffered CL4 Lifetime Warranty 119263 26 in stock £20.79 Maxtor STM3250310AS 250GB SATAII 8MB Cache - OEM 131214 948 in stock £28.65 LG GH20NS15 20X SATA DVD±RW/DL/RAM - Black Bare Drive OEM 145869 318 in stock £13.82 Cart total inc vat: £155.66 + Supersaver delivery = £160.95 + Leopard (£85) = grand total delivered to anywhere in UK @ £245.95 - not bad Think I might prefer trying to get one of these £199 Asus EEE Box micro-PCs to work on Leopard though ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASUS_Eee_Box http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?id=24512 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nebulOSX Posted October 26, 2008 Share Posted October 26, 2008 Thankyou Bob! I have located the txt file, but can't find the taruga patch app anywhere, can you or anyone post a link or attach it? Thanks! (P.S, this message is written on my new Hac ) EDIT: it works with azalia audio package perfectly Graphics take some work as well, if anyone needs help just ask. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nebulOSX Posted October 27, 2008 Share Posted October 27, 2008 Bootup time is beautiful! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nebulOSX Posted October 31, 2008 Share Posted October 31, 2008 Here are some more screenshots.. Built in the future! Ethernet is recognised out the box. quite a speedy machine for its price, Problems so far.. Shut down hang, sometimes it shutdowns normally, often it just stays hangs while shutting down and takes about 10 minutes to shut down or just doesn't shut down at all and I have to kill it, seemed to do it after installing sound drivers (azaliaudio.pkg) and geting the correct graphics drivers. The board has GMA950 device ID 0x2772, which is the chip that seems to be causing problems, artifacts in text boxes has been my main problem and a fix is being released... hopefully soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cardyology Posted December 12, 2008 Share Posted December 12, 2008 hey guys, I built one of these a while back. I used the gigabyte GA-GC230D though, its exactly the same as the intel board. Its been up & running in my living room for about 3 months now, I pretty much use it as a freeview box. I bought this tv stick and it works beautifully! Im gonna grab another soon. I have 2 questions: has the fix for the video artifacts been released yet? and I used the leo4all v3 dvd to install. Is there any advantage to the retail disc/boot 138 (or whatever its called) method? thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flibblesan Posted December 14, 2008 Share Posted December 14, 2008 Thanks for the information guys. I was looking at building a cheap machine for OSX so based on information in this thread, I'm going to get the following: I'll have to wait until after Christmas though. Hopefully this should be a good little machine. If any of you have the same case, could you please take some action shots of this running so I can see how small it is please. Also does anybody have the 'Little Falls 2' board that I'm planning to get? Does this have problems with the GMA950? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick14 Posted December 15, 2008 Share Posted December 15, 2008 Thanks for the information guys. I was looking at building a cheap machine for OSX so based on information in this thread, I'm going to get the following: I'll have to wait until after Christmas though. Hopefully this should be a good little machine. If any of you have the same case, could you please take some action shots of this running so I can see how small it is please. Also does anybody have the 'Little Falls 2' board that I'm planning to get? Does this have problems with the GMA950? Ower DC7100 is alot faster then an atom Look for a MOBO and look at the E1200 or E5200 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nebulOSX Posted December 22, 2008 Share Posted December 22, 2008 Follow this thread to see whats happening with the revision of the 950 the board has and its issues. I hope a fix is soon! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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