iDerf2006 Posted July 14, 2007 Share Posted July 14, 2007 Hey all. I have two desktop PCs in my home, and one laptop. The desktop PCs are nothing special Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz Northwood, SSE2. Box #1 has 1GB of RAM (DDR 233, I believe? Something like that.) and an X1600 Pro AGP, and the other has 768GB of DDR 332 (me thinks) and a 9800 Pro video card, AGP. Now, I've been thinking lately - I need not need two desktops and a laptop, but one laptop and one desktop seems fine to me. So I'm planning on building a new PC over the months, and this is the specs I have so far: (I'm looking for just as perfect OS X compatibility as I can, enough speed to do all of my tasks without really worrying, and playing some games casually on Windows Vista) GIGABYTE GA-P35C-DS3R LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail - $159.99 Intel Core 2 Duo E6420 Conroe 2.13GHz 4M shared L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor - Retail - $186.00 WINTEC AMPX 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 - $89.99 Seagate Barracuda ST3250620AS 250GB SATA 7200RPM (For Windows) - $69.99 Broadway Com Corp OKIA-BLACK-550 ATX 550W Power Supply 115/230 V {censored}, UL, CSA - $23.99 XFX PVT73GUGF3 GeForce 7600GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail - $119.99 COOLER MASTER Centurion 534 RC-534-KKN2-GP Black Aluminum & Mesh bezel / SECC Chassis ATX - $49.99 Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JD 80GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive (For OS X) - OEM - $41.99 Which brings my total to just about $745. I was looking on building this with a rather low budget, and so the price is a bit high - so I have two questions. Firstly, are there any OS X compatible parts you know of that would suit my needs better than these, and are both cheaper and reliable? And secondly, if not, would these work with OS X fine? Thanks very much! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/57148-perfect-casual-gamer-core-2-duo-pc/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
Canadian DSM Posted July 15, 2007 Share Posted July 15, 2007 Personally I like the ASUS P5L-MX. They can be had for cheap ($50 on ebay, $99 or so in the stores), and come with an integrated GMA950 for that spot before you actually get another video card. From what I've seen so far, everything seems to work and who could say no to ASUS? I used to like Gigabyte, until I owned a few... now I coin them "Gigabrick". Just my 2 cents. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/57148-perfect-casual-gamer-core-2-duo-pc/#findComment-408235 Share on other sites More sharing options...
iDerf2006 Posted July 15, 2007 Author Share Posted July 15, 2007 Personally I like the ASUS P5L-MX. They can be had for cheap ($50 on ebay, $99 or so in the stores), and come with an integrated GMA950 for that spot before you actually get another video card. From what I've seen so far, everything seems to work and who could say no to ASUS? I used to like Gigabyte, until I owned a few... now I coin them "Gigabrick". Just my 2 cents. Actually, I really like that motherboard, it looks pretty nice... the only thing is, the RAM will be scaled back to 667 instead of the native 800. If that's the case, I'd just buy a 667 stick to begin with and save a couple of extra bucks - will there be any noticeable difference between 667 and 800? Thanks ever so much! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/57148-perfect-casual-gamer-core-2-duo-pc/#findComment-408242 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Canadian DSM Posted July 17, 2007 Share Posted July 17, 2007 Not sure really. Mine is scaled back and I don't see a problem with it. Really I bought this motherboard after looking around on the Wiki. I wanted a board that was compatible, yet had the GMA950 onboard as I'm not planning on picking up a video card for the next few months. Making my car go faster comes first! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/57148-perfect-casual-gamer-core-2-duo-pc/#findComment-409650 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paranoid Marvin Posted July 17, 2007 Share Posted July 17, 2007 Maybe you could put in a Geforce 8600GT - that way, it's a bit more future proof Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/57148-perfect-casual-gamer-core-2-duo-pc/#findComment-409783 Share on other sites More sharing options...
3phemeral Posted July 20, 2007 Share Posted July 20, 2007 Maybe you could put in a Geforce 8600GT - that way, it's a bit more future proof ... but not quite yet. 8-series cards aren't supported yet in Hackintoshes. Seems like a decent system, but wait till sunday [the 22nd] for the new intel price cuts... For the price you mentioned for your CPU you should be able to pick up the nice E6750 [2.66GHz, 4MB L2 Cache] processor, or at least an E6550, which performs similar to the E6600... I would stick with that motherboard due to it's DDR2 and DDR3 compatibility, and it's 45nm socket 775 CPU compatibility, which in my eyes makes it quite future-proof. The only q: is it fully OSX compatible? I read about someone using the GA-P35-DS3R not having audio support and i'm assuming they have the same ALC889A for sound. EDIT: apparently, DDR3 and DDR2 RAM cannot be used at the same time, so the P5K would do just fine, most likely... Only issue with P5K/P5KC is a non-working network adaptor... Can easily be solved with any quite recent realtek-based card tho... Sound, on the other hand, as is the problem with the Gigabyte [note: ALC889A is currently unsuported, this may change] could prove more difficult to solve... Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/57148-perfect-casual-gamer-core-2-duo-pc/#findComment-412210 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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