Is this a good build ?

[AndrewH]

So after checking eBay / CL + others for a week or so looking for a more powerful computer than my 1.66CD Mac Mini that has been acting as a Leopard server for the last few months I have decided to go ahead and piece together a Hackintosh that is far more powerful that any current Mac except for the Mac Pro, and I did it at less than $600 shipped, so here's what I got:

 

Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 2.33GHz

GIGABYTE GA-G31M-ES2L

OCZ SLI-Ready Edition 4GB (2 x 2GB)

XFX HD-487A-ZHFC Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Xigmatek MIDGARD-W Black

Thermaltake TR2 430W

LG DVD Burner Black

Arctic Silver 5

Firewire PCI Express Card

 

I currently have the same exact graphics card in my Mac Pro, and it's WONDERFUL, a very powerful / capable card, I flashed the card to work in my Mac Pro, and I'm hoping that I can do the same thing for this computer, that way no hacks / drivers are necessary, I don't see why it wouldn't because the card in my Mac Pro works under Windows as well, so if someone knows something I don't, please stop me before I flash it.

 

Other than that does anyone see any big issues? I pretty much picked all of the components that are known to work very well together, because I need this computer to be rock solid, it will be replacing a Mac Mini, and picking up some other tasks such as VPN / Media server (2 AppleTVs) / File Server / Time Machine / Torrents / as well as taking some of the HD video encoding load off of my Mac Pro, I have already purchased all of this stuff, but now that I think about it, I may just go ahead and upgrade the CPU to the Intel C2Q Q9550S so I can save some power seeing as this is going to be on 24/7, I don't really care if audio works, nor do I care if it goes to sleep.

 

Also, I have a retail copy of Leopard Server that I will be using, does the installation for the most part go exactly the same for OS X Server as it does for plain OS X ?

 

It's been a long time since I switched from PC to Mac, but with the current offerings from Apple, I can't justify spending another $2500+ for a Mac Pro just to be a home server...

 

I currently have a 13" uMBP, Mac Mini, 2 x AppleTVs, 8-Core Mac Pro, 2.2ghz SR 15" MBP, and basically a whole slew of Apple accessories like Time Capsule, AEBS, Airport Express, iPhone(s) etc etc.

 

I appreciate everyones input on this matter!

 

Thanks,

Andrew

[broken]

Overall looks like a pretty good build.

 

I am running the same ES2L mobo and the Q8200 processor and they are fantastic together.

 

I would make sure to get the revision 1.1 of the that motherboard. Its been reported by several users that the revision 2.x has an unsupported NIC on board. You would have purchase a separate network card in that instance. The rev 1.1 versions NIC is supported.

 

I have no experience with that video card, but it sounds like you do...so you should be fine.

 

 

Unsure about OS X Server. If you do install it successfully, we would all love to hear about it.

 

 

 

Also, if you decide to go with the Q9550S cpu, you will need to make sure your motherboard has the latest, non beta bios installed other wise its unsupported and probably wouldn't boot. But if you buy the board brand new, it most likely will have the latest bios installed. Mine did when I bought it about 6 weeks ago from a local Microcenter.

[AndrewH]

Overall looks like a pretty good build.

 

I am running the same ES2L mobo and the Q8200 processor and they are fantastic together.

 

I would make sure to get the revision 1.1 of the that motherboard. Its been reported by several users that the revision 2.x has an unsupported NIC on board. You would have purchase a separate network card in that instance. The rev 1.1 versions NIC is supported.

 

I have no experience with that video card, but it sounds like you do...so you should be fine.

 

 

Unsure about OS X Server. If you do install it successfully, we would all love to hear about it.

 

 

 

Also, if you decide to go with the Q9550S cpu, you will need to make sure your motherboard has the latest, non beta bios installed other wise its unsupported and probably wouldn't boot. But if you buy the board brand new, it most likely will have the latest bios installed. Mine did when I bought it about 6 weeks ago from a local Microcenter.

 

Thank you for your input, I figured that Leopard Server ran on the same core as OS X, so I figured it would generally be more or less the same route to installation, as Server basically just adds server options, everything else is essentially the same, but I will let you guys know how it goes!

 

As I've been reading a lot around here, I don't see very many (or any) people flashing the gfx cards with modified ROMS that work in both Windows and OS X, that's how a lot of people are using PC 4870s in a Mac Pro. I think that I'll take the one I've already flashed out of my Mac Pro and pop it in to make sure it works first.

 

Also, do you have any benchmarks for your system? As I'd like to see the performance, I have no doubt at all it's going to blow my Mac Mini out of the water, which is GREAT because I want it to do so much, but it's just not powerful enough.

 

Thanks!

[broken]

Also, do you have any benchmarks for your system? As I'd like to see the performance, I have no doubt at all it's going to blow my Mac Mini out of the water, which is GREAT because I want it to do so much, but it's just not powerful enough.

 

Thanks!

 

How about 32 bit Geekbench Score?

 

 

 

Thats at the stock 2.33 GHz speed, no OC'ing.

 

Should be well over 2x the score of what your Mini gets in just cpu power alone.