cornbred Posted June 28, 2009 Share Posted June 28, 2009 I noticed this Quad Core special the other day on Tiger and was wondering if anyone was using this setup... Intel DG35EC Socket 775 Motherboard Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 OEM Processor Patriot 4GB DDR2 RAM 2GB USB Drive 3DMark Bundle Apex SK-378 ATX Black Mid Tower Case Ultra LS600 Lifetime Series 600W Power Supply It's $350 with a $20 rebate until 6/30. Wait. Now shows "Currently Unavailable" Hmmm... Anyway- I'm basically a Photoshop/Lightroom power user and looking to replace a G5 Dual 2.7. Would this system suffice or do I need to consider an i7 setup? Thanks for any comments or suggestions. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/172707-tigerdirects-quad-special/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
bofors Posted June 28, 2009 Share Posted June 28, 2009 Anyway- I'm basically a Photoshop/Lightroom power user and looking to replace a G5 Dual 2.7. Would this system suffice or do I need to consider an i7 setup? Thanks for any comments or suggestions. You certainly do not "need" an i7 rig, that "quad" special will smoke any G5. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/172707-tigerdirects-quad-special/#findComment-1187748 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zaap Posted June 28, 2009 Share Posted June 28, 2009 Consider the motherboard is the most important choice for a Hackintosh. All the other components revolve around it, and success or failure depends on it. The Intel DG35EC does work- but with some drawbacks. It takes a bit of fiddling to get everything crucial working (sound, LAN, shutdown/restart/sleep). Apparently, it's not a super 'easy' board to get working. If you plan a retail install, you'll likely have to do a lot of trail and error to get everything working, unless you can find a specific install guide. If you go with a distro-install, it'll probably be easier. On the plus side, it's a mATX board that has 4 ram slots and supports 8GB of RAM, a major plus. On the other hand, the bundle doesn't take advantage of the smaller mATX size anyway, so it's moot. Also, in my experience, Intel makes very high quality boards that are stable and rugged. Consult the later HCL wikis [Hardware section, Components 10.5.2 and up] for examples of others using this board, and what they did to make it work. The onboard graphics don't work for Core Image/Quartz Extreme (typical of most mATX boards) so you'll need a compatible PCIe graphics card. I'd highly recommend the EVGA 8600GTS at $30. It's more than adequate for Photoshop, and you simply won't find a better card in this price range- even lesser cards tend to cost more. Check that Tiger hasn't done something stupid like split the RAM up as 4 sticks of 1GB or use less than DDR2 800. If it's 2x 2GB of DDR2 800, leaving you two free slots to later upgrade to 8GB, then great. Allowing say $60 for a SATA hard drive, $30 or so for the graphic card, and $26 for a SATA DVD-R drive (should come out in the $450-range after rebates) and if you're willing to do a little bit of hoop-jumping to get OSX installed on that board, it's neither a stellar deal, or a bad deal for a quad Hackintosh, it's about average. For example, picking parts alacart for a quad Hack (with more than 4GB RAM capacity) looks about like this: EP45-UD3R $105 (After rebate) Q8300 $150 4GB DDR2 1066 $46 Rosewill ATX mid-tower w 500W PSU (plenty of power for a quad) $60 Total= $361, and you'll have to add the same hard drive, optical and graphics card, bringing it to a little more, but with a full ATX motherboard that is better supported (and better stats than the Intel board). Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/172707-tigerdirects-quad-special/#findComment-1187755 Share on other sites More sharing options...
cornbred Posted June 28, 2009 Author Share Posted June 28, 2009 That's what I wanted to know. Sounds like lots of hassle and not necessarily a great deal. I'll look into a EP45-UD3R/Q8300 Setup. Prefer to keep this project as simple as possible. Thanks for the pointers. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/172707-tigerdirects-quad-special/#findComment-1187861 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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