After countless hours of testing, building, selling, re-testing, researching, and installing, I have been able to find the exact set of PC components that allow me to run a full-fledged Mac with the latest operating system and all features. But more specifically, I have found the parts that do it all really well. It’s actually pretty easy to get OSX to run on your PC. Any number of cheap computer parts will get you a decent fake Mac. However, as with all PC’s they often do so at the cost of ugliness and noise.

When I finally made the switch to Mac a good 6 years ago, the first thing that struck me was how quiet the computer was… or more accurately, how loud standard PCs were. To this day, 95% of the PCs being built are still insanely loud (and in many cases, even louder than before thanks to the rising dependence on advanced cooling). So when I set out to build my Hackintosh, eliminating noise pollution was a the top of my list. As I would find out, quiet comes at a price.

Before we get started, you should know the limitations of running your own Frankenstein Mac. There are things that work and things that don’t. If you follow this guide, there is very little that won’t work, and a whole lot that will. In my current setup, all my software runs perfectly… that includes Final Cut Studio, all the iLife apps, my Adobe CS2 suite, Time Machine backups… literally every software I have works. All my ports work (Firewire, USB, etc), video is fully working and fully 3D accelerated with dual-monitor support for up to two 30″ monitors. I have sound, I can burn DVDs normally, I can use all my external devices (like my tablet, Shuttle Express, external drives, USB memory sticks, etc). Not only that, but I have an e-Sata port (which the Macs don’t have) and way more USB ports than a Mac Pro has.

But what you really want to know is what doesn’t work. The list is short, but pretty important.
1- RAID does not work for a bootable drive. You can setup RAID as an additional media drive, but not as your boot drive.
2- Audio is only partially working (for now… someone may release drivers at some point to correct the issue). You get normal stereo sound, but no optical digital audio or microphone in. This is not much of an issue since external USB mics and other external devices will work fine if you need more than just stereo sound.
3- DVD drives “may” be a little picky about stuff. *I’m not sure if this is an issue with my DVD drive, or with my software.* When installing Final Cut Studio, I kept getting errors on install. This did not happen on my previous iMac, which leads me to believe that it may be an issue with the DVD drive. Note however, that everything else with the DVD drive works… I am able to burn DVDs fine, copy DVDs, make images, install smaller software, copy files… only installing my Apple software has been a problem.
4- Finally, and most importantly, software updates need to be moderated! Most software updates using the automatic Apple Software Updater will work just fine, BUT it could potentially update something it shouldn’t and break your setup. Most major software updates should be avoided until you can confirm that it does in fact work properly.

So now that you know what you’re getting yourself into, (if you haven’t run off screaming already) let’s take a look at the bare minimum you need to properly build your own Mac. There are a number of parts that are interchangeable, but those I list specifically by name are must-haves if you want this to be easy (i.e. you don’t want to search for drivers, have to use external DVD drives for setup, etc…).

Minimum parts list:

• Any mid tower ATX case
• Any ATX power supply with a minimum of 400W
• Any Intel Core2Duo or Core2Quad CPU
• Either a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L* (cheap) or an Asus P5E (high-end)
• Any SATA DVD drive (reader or burner)
• Any SATA hard drive
• Any USB keyboard and mouse
• Any 2GB dual-channel kit of DDR2 800 ram (2 1GB sticks)
• Either a GeForce 7600GT (cheap) or ATI X1900XT (better but hard to find)

Any combination of the parts above will get you a decent running Mac. After a quick calculation of cheap parts from Canada Computers, you can have a Mac for as little as $570+tax. No, that’s not a typo… I really did mean to write five hundred and seventy. Pretty insane huh?

* note: if you get the Gigabyte DS3L motherboard, you are limited to only one hard drive and 2GB of ram. Due to a conflict with the hard drive controller, you cannot add more ram or more hard drives in the future. If you want something a little better, see my suggested parts list on the next page.

So, now that we have gone through what you can get away with if you’re on a budget (or if you’re just plain cheap) click the next page to see my recommended parts list.

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Tags: apple, asus p5e, build, hackintosh, how-to, kalyway, leopard, mac, osx, quiet, x1900xt

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 at 12:07 am and is filed under Geek. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.