Another newbie trying to build a Hackintosh

[Asterra]

So. With luck, perhaps the info which is hopefully revealed in this thread will be of use to other newcomers.

 

I'm going to try to build a Hackintosh. One of my highest priorities is the goal of minimizing installation & operational anomalies. For example, one fellow in one thread mentioned a lingering inability to check system ram info. Things like that are unsettling, even if their impact appears to be essentially benign. Clearly, the art of building a Hackintosh is a bit of a work-in-progress, and the OS is so particular about its hardware parameters that it almost seems one is guaranteed some hiccups along the way.

 

The only way I can imagine building a box with absolutely zero problems at the end of the road would be to obtain precise component and installation info from another individual who had a completely successful result. Personally, I'm probably not going to be able to go that route, but it behooves me to at least come close. And it would appear that each individual component needs to be considered at length.

 

Personal budget: Realistically, $500-600. If I feel like taking a risk with finances, I could go over. I'd break this down to a CPU costing up to $200, and the rest.. whatever fits.

 

What I plan to do with the Mac: Extensive audio and video editing, mostly.

 

What I already have, and hope to be able to use:

 

Graphics card. I have two cards. A GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB, and an ATI Sapphire HD 4870 512MB. If I were to guess, the ATI seems to be the one I might prefer to use. But this is a guess. Perhaps there are reasons why one or both of these cards will never work in a Hackintosh configuration. Perhaps the ATI does work, but only in a dubiously functional state, or with buggy drivers, etc. Perhaps I will need to buy something completely new after all.

 

What I'm going to be buying for certain:

 

CPU. As with most components, I'm at a bit of a loss here. For a start, do some CPUs work while others don't? But getting beyond even that basic issue, what about the number of cores? Benchmarks seem to obfuscate the question of whether a Core2Duo or Core2Quad is faster, and the specific question mark is what sort of CPU would work best in Leopard?

 

Ram. I drool at the prospect of being able to use 8GB or more. That's what I'm shooting for here. 8GB to start, with the option of using up to 16. There does seem to be a certain degree of incompatibility with some ram types or brands, though. About all I've nailed down so far is that I want DDR2 240-pin.

 

Motherboard. Going by the forum here, Gigabyte would appear to be the only possible manufacturer to go with. That's fine by me. But which? There are cases of certain models having high DOA rates, or bad COM ports, or a BIOS which lacks certain important (for a Hackintosh) settings. Plus I really would like to be able to have 16GB, though I can forego that option and live with 8GB if finances dictate.

 

Hard drive(s). Actually, I haven't read about any telling compatibility issues with hard drives. I'll probably do what some have been doing: Buy a Raptor for system files, and offload data to an adequate bulk drive. A further plan is to use the bulk drive as a dual platform drive, so I can boot Windows XP off a third drive in the same box (this new box will, after all, be a considerable upgrade from what I'm currently using).

 

DVD-ROM burner. Lots of people mention a specific LG Black drive. Is there a particular reason? Most burners are $25 like said LG. Pioneer's drives are widely acknowledged (at least, if one visits burner enthusiast forums) to be more or less superior to the rest, so I have to wonder if LG simply happens to enjoy the best or only compatibility with a Hackintosh.

 

Items whose necessity are in question:

 

Case & power supply. For all that I know, in my manifestly layman capacity, there may be solid electrical considerations at play which dictate that I must buy a case and/or PSU which fit a certain spec. The PSU in my current PC (Antec True 550 550W) happens to be one component I feel could serve in my next box, but I could be gravely mistaken. And I suppose that goes for the case as well.

 

Sound card. Here's a big unknown. I don't even see people talk about sound cards here. Not even when they list components. I've got an Audigy 2 ZS which I think is rather adequate. But I can absolutely understand if said card - or perhaps all audio cards on the market - doesn't work in a Hackintosh configuration. I don't even really have a clue what people do for audio in their Hackintosh, excepting of course the prospect of using a motherboard's onboard audio. Since audio is somewhat important to me, I can't help but regard that option with little enthusiasm, even if it is an option.

 

As I mentioned before, probably the wisest route I could take - barring responses to this post - would be to find somebody else's success story and sort of use that case as a starting point to base my own purchases on. To get anything more precise than that, I must ask the knowledgable folks here. So my thanks in advance for any advice or suggestions!

[roowan]

too much text. This can also been written in 5 sentences Very confusing. The Board gives almost to any question an answer!!!

 

use onboard sound, that's what the most hackintosh user do. They work very good. Mine for example is a ALC 888, most of the gigabyte mainboards use this. Overall, Gigabyte would be a good choice for you.

 

I use the EG31MF-S2 (70$) which is fully compatible, but it just supports 4 GB RAM, which is to me enough. Why do you need 16GB or 8 GB of RAM. What are you going to do. With 4 GB RAM I can smoothly open 2 Virtual Machines.

 

I have the E7400 Intel CPU, stock speed is about 2.8 GHz which I oc'ed over 4 GHz (130$)

 

Buy the cheapest DVD-Burner, you won't have any problems, NEC for example. (20$)

 

NVidia 9600GT works very reliable. Installed via NVdarwin or via EFI-String. You don't have to install any driver or anything else if you chose the EFI method. Very easy. Your Geforce 7xxx should also work via EFI-String.

 

HDD doesn't matter, buy as much as you need. (100$)

[Purple Puppy]

What an essay! Kindly refrain from using such circumlocutionary language on the forums: it may present itself as quite a hindrance to people who are not proficient in English or do not have sufficient time to read through it.

 

Anyway: It seems that ATI Radeon 4870 is more and more likely to work in OSx86, considering the new Mac Pros also use the card. I am not quite up to date with the latest developments though, so I am not sure. It is, however, certain that the Mac Pro's 4870's ROM has been dumped.

However, I'd think that the Geforce 7800GTX will probably work very well since drivers for Geforce 7-series are quite well-established.

 

The person before me has summed up everything else pretty nicely, but way underceeds your budget. But I think that you should go for a slightly better motherboard, and, if you want, a quad core CPU. For example, this combo ($285):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDet...st=Combo.181182

 

That motherboard, a respectable GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P, appears to work quite well with OSx86 and supports up to 16GB of RAM on four slots. However, in order to have 16 GB of RAM you would need four 4GB modules, which is too expensive at the moment so your best bet would be to get 8GB - four modules of 2GB. Also, RAM is amazingly cheap when bought in 2GB modules, so it's only $135.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16820231195

 

Your 550W Antec power supply will work.

 

Buy the cheapest DVD drive.

 

Use the onboard sound on the motherboard, unless you really need the extra audio processing power (but always bear in mind that in the absence of drivers, even the best sound card would be useless)

 

Any hard drive would work, but it's better to invest in better quality (less likely to lose all your data), faster speeds (faster boot up times and file access times; useful for video editing), larger capacity (obvious). One might want to decide on all the other components and then buy the best hard drive that can be bought with the remaining money.

[leot351]

Hello, I am not very fluent in English so please excuse my grammar, etc. I am also interested in building my own "hackintosh". The reason for building one instead of buying one is that they are insanely expensive here as compared to building a PC. I have done a bit of research and learned that certain motherboards and some cpu's will not be compatible with the OS. I have built 3 pc's in the past, 1 Windows, 1 Gentoo and 1 Ubuntu so I am fairly familiar with hardware. If someone could please suggest a hardware list that would need minimal setup, I would be very VERY grateful! Thanks in advance!

[Doug the Impaler]

I'm a big fan of Gigabyte's motherboards, especially for something running OS X. The reason is that the Intel chipset Gigabyte boards seem to have OS X-friendly LAN chips and audio codecs (Realtek 8111C and ALC888 or ALC889, usually).

 

I'm building a server box for time machine on an EP45-UD3L (because my Athlon setup is still not 100% stable in the hard drive department), which is a P45 chipset with, as mentioned above, very Hackintosh-friendly components. In fact, if you look for boot CDs, you'll see there's one available for the EP45-DS3L, which is the same board except for some voltage circuitry. Same 8111C LAN and ALC888 audio.

 

You definitely need all-SATA devices if you're going to build a Hackintosh and not slice-and-dice the OS. I have a LiteOn DVD-RW that works peachy-keen.

 

The video card you have should be fully supported with minimal fuss - the 7000 series is very widely supported.