Planning a $2k gaming/design build

[Leang]

Hi guys,

 

I'm a graphic designer by day and video gamer by night. Due to some good fortune, I have a pretty good sized budget that I was planning on using to buy a Macbook Pro, but I gave it some thought and decided to spend it on a nice Hackintosh build instead!

 

Here's what I have so far:

 

Processor: Intel Core i7-950 Bloomfield 3.06GHz

 

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD3R LGA 1366 Intel X58

 

Video Card: EVGA 012-P3-1472-AR GeForce GTX 470 (Fermi) SuperClocked 1280MB 320-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16

 

RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 12GB (3 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333

 

Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s

 

Optical Drive: LG Black Blu-ray Disc Combo SATA Model UH10LS20

 

Case: COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 CAC-T05-UW

 

Power Supply: CORSAIR HX Series CMPSU-520HX 520W ATX12V

 

Monitor x2: ASUS VH242H Black 23.6" 5ms HDMI Full 1080P Widescreen LCD

 

I'm itching to start, but I'm worried that I've chosen something that won't be compatible. The last few days have been spent researching, but at nearly $2000, I would like confirmation from people more knowledgeable than myself. It seems like i7 processors and X58 motherboards play nicely with Hackintosh, and I found another thread that says GTX470 is fully supported. GSkill seems to be the most popular ram choice. I've tried to make good picks based on what's worked for other people. Can anyone chime in and give their thoughts? Maybe a problem area that they foresee?

 

Thanks for any help you guys can give!

[MacUser2525]

Good brand for the power supply but I think you may be a little light on the size probably 650-750w would be better, Tom's Hardware has that video card in the high 300's at full load alone add in the processor at 130w loaded that is damn near the 520w all on their own. Also ram is ram so unless you really think the tighter timings on the ones you have listed are needed there are a couple on the Newegg site that are cheaper including the same as you have listed but at 9-9-9-24 for the timings which money saved could go towards higher rated HX6/750 power supply and if you wanted to save a couple of extra dollars on the power supply for the ram instead then the TX series offer the same benefits as the HX except they are not modular. Also don't know if this will work for you or not but I link to a thread where you can get a pair of Dell U2211H IPS panel if the code is still valid I'm not a big fan of TN monitors so this is really a personal preference sort of thing take it for what it is worth to you. Oh and if you are planning on trying to boot off the SATA3 ports on that board with that hard drive then I am not sure that will work at all the regular ICH10 ports will work fine at the SATA2 speeds they are though. That is all I have at the moment so good luck with the build.

 

 

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforc...80,2585-15.html

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16820226096

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16820231356

http://forums.redflagdeals.com/rfd-exclusi...?prefixid=Comp9

[Leang]

Good brand for the power supply but I think you may be a little light on the size probably 650-750w would be better, Tom's Hardware has that video card in the high 300's at full load alone add in the processor at 130w loaded that is damn near the 520w all on their own. Also ram is ram so unless you really think the tighter timings on the ones you have listed are needed there are a couple on the Newegg site that are cheaper including the same as you have listed but at 9-9-9-24 for the timings which money saved could go towards higher rated HX6/750 power supply and if you wanted to save a couple of extra dollars on the power supply for the ram instead then the TX series offer the same benefits as the HX except they are not modular. Also don't know if this will work for you or not but I link to a thread where you can get a pair of Dell U2211H IPS panel if the code is still valid I'm not a big fan of TN monitors so this is really a personal preference sort of thing take it for what it is worth to you. Oh and if you are planning on trying to boot off the SATA3 ports on that board with that hard drive then I am not sure that will work at all the regular ICH10 ports will work fine at the SATA2 speeds they are though. That is all I have at the moment so good luck with the build.

 

Thanks for the advice! To be honest, I didn't think I'd notice the difference in timings, but I wanted to get the best I could afford. You've convinced me though, and I'm gonna follow your advice. Dropped the RAM a step to upgrade the power supply. Also, the link to the 22" IPS is still good, so I'm in for 2! I'm a bit bummed that the HD won't boot off of SATA3. How can I tell what HD will boot properly?

 

Updated build:

 

Processor: Intel Core i7-950 Bloomfield 3.06GHz

 

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD3R LGA 1366 Intel X58

 

Video Card: EVGA 012-P3-1472-AR GeForce GTX 470 (Fermi) SuperClocked 1280MB 320-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16

 

RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 12GB (3 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333

 

Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s

 

Optical Drive: LG Black Blu-ray Disc Combo SATA Model UH10LS20

 

Case: COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 CAC-T05-UW

 

Power Supply: CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W

 

Monitor x2: Dell UltraSharp U2211H 21.5" IPS

 

Thanks again for your help!

[MacUser2525]

Thanks for the advice! To be honest, I didn't think I'd notice the difference in timings, but I wanted to get the best I could afford. You've convinced me though, and I'm gonna follow your advice. Dropped the RAM a step to upgrade the power supply. Also, the link to the 22" IPS is still good, so I'm in for 2!

 

Good your eyes will thank you if they appreciate good looking colours.

 

I'm a bit bummed that the HD won't boot off of SATA3. How can I tell what HD will boot properly?

 

It is not the hard drive it is the controller the Marvel 88SE9128 you have there that is the same chipset that I have on my internal PCI-e SATA card and OS X will not boot off of it so I can't see somehow it wanting to boot off it just because it is on a motherboard now.

 

Thanks again for your help!

 

Your welcome.

[Leang]

Good your eyes will thank you if they appreciate good looking colours.

 

It is not the hard drive it is the controller the Marvel 88SE9128 you have there that is the same chipset that I have on my internal PCI-e SATA card and OS X will not boot off of it so I can't see somehow it wanting to boot off it just because it is on a motherboard now.

 

Your welcome.

 

Okay, I'll look around for hard drives with a more compatible controller then. I've given it some more thought, and I think 2 separate hard drives rather than 1 larger hard drive might be the way to go. Going to keep the operating systems on one physical hard drive, and use the second hard drive as shared storage.

[MacUser2525]

Okay, I'll look around for hard drives with a more compatible controller then. I've given it some more thought, and I think 2 separate hard drives rather than 1 larger hard drive might be the way to go. Going to keep the operating systems on one physical hard drive, and use the second hard drive as shared storage.

 

The controller I speak of is on your motherboard not the hard drive itself so the different brand of hard drive would not matter for this not booting off of problem. The SATA 6gb/s controller on the MB should just work at the highest speed it supports I think can't confirm this though as I do not have any of the SATA3 drives in my machine but I can confirm it works perfectly at the SATA2 speed it falls back to when one of them drives are connected to it. Your idea of smaller drive for OS the larger for storage is what I do in my main machine and it is a good idea. Now I am sure of the level of the NTFS support in OS X at the moment so if you are going to share this between it and Windows then you may need to be formatting it FAT32 so both can write to it. This shared storage problem would only occur if OS X and Windows are physically on the same machine if you are going to use file sharing over a network it does not matter you can format the extra drive HFS+ on what would be the Mac only machine.

 

Edit: Almost forgot to mention you should take a look at this thread below and do at least the two modifications to a DSDT.aml file for your machine the one for the CMOS reset bug and the one for the AppleLPC to load so your speed stepping will work thus lowering the temperatures and I would imagine you would want the sound one as well so that will work although you can use an old SB Live/Audigy card and the kX driver to easily get sound if you one of them laying around.

 

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=196771

[Leang]

The controller I speak of is on your motherboard not the hard drive itself so the different brand of hard drive would not matter for this not booting off of problem. The SATA 6gb/s controller on the MB should just work at the highest speed it supports I think can't confirm this though as I do not have any of the SATA3 drives in my machine but I can confirm it works perfectly at the SATA2 speed it falls back to when one of them drives are connected to it. Your idea of smaller drive for OS the larger for storage is what I do in my main machine and it is a good idea. Now I am sure of the level of the NTFS support in OS X at the moment so if you are going to share this between it and Windows then you may need to be formatting it FAT32 so both can write to it. This shared storage problem would only occur if OS X and Windows are physically on the same machine if you are going to use file sharing over a network it does not matter you can format the extra drive HFS+ on what would be the Mac only machine.

 

Edit: Almost forgot to mention you should take a look at this thread below and do at least the two modifications to a DSDT.aml file for your machine the one for the CMOS reset bug and the one for the AppleLPC to load so your speed stepping will work thus lowering the temperatures and I would imagine you would want the sound one as well so that will work although you can use an old SB Live/Audigy card and the kX driver to easily get sound if you one of them laying around.

 

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=196771

 

Great! Thanks. I was sure I'd have to hunt these down later on, but you've saved me a lot of time. I will definitely refer to those links when the time comes. Currently, I'm planning on running an SSD for the primary hard drive (with both OSX and Windows 7) and FAT32-formatted hard drive for secondary. Is there a way around the 4gb filesize limit of FAT32?

 

Hopefully, Black Friday will have some good deals on components. Thanks again for your guidance, MacUser2525.

[MacUser2525]

Great! Thanks. I was sure I'd have to hunt these down later on, but you've saved me a lot of time. I will definitely refer to those links when the time comes. Currently, I'm planning on running an SSD for the primary hard drive (with both OSX and Windows 7) and FAT32-formatted hard drive for secondary. Is there a way around the 4gb filesize limit of FAT32?

 

No that is a hard limit of the file system but now that I think further on it you can use ntfs-3g/macfuse to access NTFS partitions from OS X and macdrive to do the same from windows ie. access the HFS+ file system. Now the dual booting on the same drive never done it before but a quick search comes up with the fourth link below the procedure described seems easy enough. But I really prefer the dual drive option and if you can squeeze in a second SSD in the 40-60gb range then that should be enough for an OS X install mine only uses 12gb my SSD I don't have iLife or any of those other space hogs installed though. You would not need newest generation drive supporting trim as OS X does not support that anyways so could get away with a real cheap one on sale. For that matter you could partition the secondary drive and put OS X on that with the extra space for your storage then all you would need to do is a normal hit F12 key during posting to choose drive to boot from no messing with separate/extra boot loaders on the same drive to deal with.

 

Hopefully, Black Friday will have some good deals on components. Thanks again for your guidance, MacUser2525.

 

Your welcome again.

 

http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com/

http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/

http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive

http://www.sevenforums.com/installation-se...-dual-boot.html