Hackintosh 10.5.5 Retail Rig - Starting at $305

[randomlinh]

Originally posted by: Kaido
10.5.0 is great

UD3P is $99 AR, only $20 more than the DS3L. The DS3L is still fantastic, the UD3P just adds a few more features for power users. I'd say splurge if you plan on upgrading later. 8gb is currently in the sweet spot at less than $100, but 16gb should come down soon enough ($450 on Newegg).

yeah, I will take a gamble at get the UD3P. I'm taking your confidence in getting it working, heh.

anyone happen to hear any bad things w/ the Asus EN8600GT silent card? I know it's not the best, but I want quiet, and something decent that hopefully can assist in photoshop and maybe lightroom in the near future. Gaming will be had for the ps3 and wii. or am i better off w/ something from ATI, since apple seemingly used them for a good while

 

[swilso]

Originally posted by: randomlinh

Originally posted by: Kaido
10.5.0 is great

UD3P is $99 AR, only $20 more than the DS3L. The DS3L is still fantastic, the UD3P just adds a few more features for power users. I'd say splurge if you plan on upgrading later. 8gb is currently in the sweet spot at less than $100, but 16gb should come down soon enough ($450 on Newegg).

yeah, I will take a gamble at get the UD3P. I'm taking your confidence in getting it working, heh.

anyone happen to hear any bad things w/ the Asus EN8600GT silent card? I know it's not the best, but I want quiet, and something decent that hopefully can assist in photoshop and maybe lightroom in the near future. Gaming will be had for the ps3 and wii.

8600gt aren't that great. I was going to get one but seen some people had bad experiences. And also the 7900GS is faster, however the 8600GT has DX10 - but if you are not going to use vista with it the 7900 would be better and seem more popular among other osx86 users, haven't seen many with an 8600.

 

[randomlinh]

i didn't want to go too far back, and wanted to stick w/o getting used. the 8600 drew to me because it's silent. Tho, now I'm looking maybe the ATI 4670 would be a decent choice too?

I should add I'll dual boot vista likely. In case I do feel the urge to play something. And to test out vista and windows 7 eye candiness.

 

[SignorPapageorgio]

Originally posted by: Kaido
Ahhh, the beast is finished:

Hardware:
Coolermaster 690 case, Corsair Modular 520w PSU, 2x120mm Nexus "Real Quiet" Case Fans
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L rev2.0 motherboard with F7 BIOS
Q6600 @ 3.0ghz, Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste, 120mm Scythe Infinity CPU Cooler
8GB DDR2-800mhz RAM @ 1002mhz
20x Dual-Layer Lite-on DVD burner with LightScribe
768mb Quadro FX 5600 16x PCIe Video Card (modded from a BFG 8800GTX)
2-port Rosewill SATA RAID PCIe card
3-port Firewire 400 PCI card

Hard Drives:
300gb 10k-rpm Raptor SATA drive
Samsung F1 1TB 7200rpm SATA drive
(2) Seagate 500gb 7200rpm drives (in RAID 0)
WD 250gb 7200rpm

The Raptor is, of course, the boot drive. Very speedy, also on the noisy side but it's a small sacrifice for the speed hehe. I have a dual-drive setup for video editing...the 1TB RAID 0 set (2x500gb) is for Video Capture and Compression and the Samsung 1TB is for Video Editing. It's faster to transfer data from one drive to another drive, than from the same drive to the same drive. Plus it gives me a lot of space for working with my HD files. the 250gb drive is for Virtual Machines, which is also faster than having it on the main drive (instead of Leopard and the VMs reading/writing to the same drive, Leopard is reading/writing to the boot drive and the VMs are reading/writing to the secondary drive). I'll be using my file server as a Time Machine backup, but eventually I'd like to upgrade the dual 500gb drives to a single 1TB drive and then pop another large drive in there for local Time Machine backup.

Added this up on Newegg (plus eBay for the board)...total price was ~$1426 before shipping and taxes. Less than $1500 for a 3ghz Quad, 8GB RAM, and 2.5TB of hard drive space onboard, complete with Firewire, RAID, and a monster video card. Apple sells that Quadro card (albeit with 1.5gb VRAM instead of 768mb) for $2850. I just added up the following at the Apple Store Online:

Mac Pro: $7499
(1) 2.8ghz Quad-Core Xeon CPU
8GB RAM
Drive #1: 320gb 7200rpm
Drive #2: 500gb 7200rpm
Drive #3: 500gb 7200rpm
Drive #4: 1TB 7200rpm
Nvidia Quadro FX 5600
(1) 16x SuperDrive

So let's see...$7500 - $1500 = $6000 savings. Yay, I can afford to finish college now!

This thread is long!

First - Kaido, THANK YOU!

I want to build my first Hacintosh. I started looking at your "Monster Workstation Rig Recipe" on page 1 and found the above on page 6.

I am trying to put this together in a spreadsheet so I can figure out what I need to do and order. I am not even sure if I am understanding your components correctly so if there is an error please advise!

COOLER MASTER RC-690-KKN1-GP Black SECC/ ABS ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16811119137
1 @ $74.99

CORSAIR CMPSU-520HX 520W ATX12V v2.2 and EPS12V 2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...20Modular%20520w%20PSU
1 @ $114.99 - $15 rebate = $99.99

APEVIA CF12SL-UBL 120mm Blue LED Case Fan - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16811998121
2 @ $7.49 = $14.98

GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L INTEL P35 SOCKET 775
eBay seller "macpalace7"
1 @ $99.99

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16819115017
1 @ $189.99

Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound - OEM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16835100007
1 @ $5.99

Scythe SCNJ-2000 120mm Sleeve CPU Cooler - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16835185074
1 @ $49.99

Kingston HyperX 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Desktop Memory - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820104061
4 @ $27.99 = $111.96

LITE-ON Black 20X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 20X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA 20X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe - OEM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16827106266
1 @ $25.99

XFX GEFORCE 8800GTX 768MB PCI-E SLI DDR3 GRAPHICS NEW
eBay seller "mikemike.317"
1 @$194.99

(not sure if I got that card right - couldn't seem to find it at newegg)

Rosewill RC-211 Silicon Image 2 port SATA II PCI Express Host Controller Card(RAID 0/1/JBOD) - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16816132008
1 @ $24.99

VANTEC 3-Port FireWire 800/400 PCI Host Card Model UGT-FW100 - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16815287001
1 @ $59.99

Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000GLFS 300GB 10000 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16822136260
1 @ $229.99 - $30 rebate = $199.99

SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16822152102
1 @ $94.99

Seagate SV35.3 ST3500320SV 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16822148301
2 @ $79.99 = $159.98

Western Digital Caviar RE WD2500YS 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16822136055
1 @ $69.99


TOTAL: $1,478.79

I don't think I'll need that many internal HDs so I'll need to adjust that some.
If I remove the 2 Seagate 500GB HDs ($159.98) and the WD 250 GB HD ($69.99) that puts me down to $1,248.82.

I added:

SABRENT CRW-UINB 65-in-1 USB 2.0 Internal Card Reader w/ USB 2.0 Port supports SDHC/VISTA - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820300608
1 @ $13.99

APPLE Mac OS X v10.5.4 Leopard (New version) - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16832110040
1 @ $109.95


TOTAL (with the card reader and OS but without your extra HDs): $1,372.76


Again, I just want to make sure I am reading your component list correctly before I proceed.

Thanks!

 

[adrianc1982]

Originally posted by: mosslack

Originally posted by: adrianc1982
Okay guys im up and running with kalyway 10.5.2 installing was really easy just burned the cd and followed instructions, everything works lan, audio and my geforce 8400gs out of the box with kalyway, now I dont want to update really, so I will wait and see if kaido can help me with that boot123 installation for my mobo. Thanks anyway for all the help just bought this computer yesterday and today Im running leopard...

Now, if i want to install windows and kalyway 10.5.2 what should I do? should I install first winxp and then leopard? will I lose my bootloader if I install winxp, i left a partition for winxp when I installed leopard. thanks.

Did you use GPT or MBR partitioning? If MBR you can use any number of boot loaders. I used Boot It Now, which worked great for XP and OS X

I actually just installed winxp erased the whole disk, made two partitions a 30gb for xp and the rest for os x, both ntfs. Installed windows and drivers and then proceeded to install kalyway and used utility disk to erase only the second partition which was ntfs and erased it with a mac partition and proceeded to intall without touching anything else not even the customize button for kalyway and everything worked out of the box I used then nvkush for my nvidia 8400gs and thats it, everything works, reboot and everything else.

So far for anyone else using my board the only problem is with the nvidia cards that if you change resolution when using VGA port it will give you a blue screen and you have to reboot or sleep and wake up to regain video but other than that everything works, if you use the dvi port resolutions dont give any problem, so this board WORKS everything with kalyway even IDE and SATA and everything.

Looking forward to install leopard unmodified.

Edit: Im using the bootloader kalyway installed and everything works fine.

 

[MBony]

I have followed Kaido's instructions and installed the update from the link in this thread, but now it hangs on bootup. It did automatically restart (which was noted in the instructions), but I cannot get it to boot up and it has been over 10 minutes with no changes. Is this normal and I just need to continue to wait it out or have I done something wrong?

 

[ZiKi]

Can someone critique my build, I'm not sure if all the parts are compatible/ideal so please help me out:

COOLER MASTER RC-690-KKA1-GP Black SECC/ ABS ATX Mid Tower Computer Case Real Power Pro 550W Power Supply - Retail

GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3R LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail

XFX PVT88PYHF4 GeForce 8800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor Model HH80562PH0568M - OEM

OCZ Fatal1ty Edition 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model OCZ2F10664GK - Retail

Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

I already have the mouse/keyboard/monitor

It comes out to $658 -a couple mail in rebates

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: randomlinh

Originally posted by: Kaido
10.5.0 is great

UD3P is $99 AR, only $20 more than the DS3L. The DS3L is still fantastic, the UD3P just adds a few more features for power users. I'd say splurge if you plan on upgrading later. 8gb is currently in the sweet spot at less than $100, but 16gb should come down soon enough ($450 on Newegg).

yeah, I will take a gamble at get the UD3P. I'm taking your confidence in getting it working, heh.

anyone happen to hear any bad things w/ the Asus EN8600GT silent card? I know it's not the best, but I want quiet, and something decent that hopefully can assist in photoshop and maybe lightroom in the near future. Gaming will be had for the ps3 and wii. or am i better off w/ something from ATI, since apple seemingly used them for a good while

It's hot, so get a good airflow going from case fans to keep it cool.

UD3P + 3870 would be a good combo. I'll probably end up with a 3870 in the future.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: randomlinh
i didn't want to go too far back, and wanted to stick w/o getting used. the 8600 drew to me because it's silent. Tho, now I'm looking maybe the ATI 4670 would be a decent choice too?

I should add I'll dual boot vista likely. In case I do feel the urge to play something. And to test out vista and windows 7 eye candiness.

The key is simply finding a 10.5.5-compatible driver for it. If you can't find a driver, don't buy the card. Make sure the driver works on 10.5.5. It's that simple.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: SignorPapageorgio
This thread is long!

First - Kaido, THANK YOU!

I want to build my first Hacintosh. I started looking at your "Monster Workstation Rig Recipe" on page 1 and found the above on page 6.

I am trying to put this together in a spreadsheet so I can figure out what I need to do and order. I am not even sure if I am understanding your components correctly so if there is an error please advise!

The new guide will be out this week and has 6 recipes for building different classes of DS3L-based Hackintosh systems. Please wait for me to release it before you order. It has an in-depth discussion of each piece of hardware.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: ZiKi
Can someone critique my build, I'm not sure if all the parts are compatible/ideal so please help me out:

COOLER MASTER RC-690-KKA1-GP Black SECC/ ABS ATX Mid Tower Computer Case Real Power Pro 550W Power Supply - Retail

GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3R LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail

XFX PVT88PYHF4 GeForce 8800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor Model HH80562PH0568M - OEM

OCZ Fatal1ty Edition 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model OCZ2F10664GK - Retail

Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

I already have the mouse/keyboard/monitor

It comes out to $658 -a couple mail in rebates

Looks good! You'll need to make a DSDT file and find working kexts for the UD3R board. Everything else looks good. You may want the UD3P instead - it's a better board and about the same price. I have one and I'm working on support for it. It's usable now but has a few bugs I'll work out once I get this guide done

 

[SignorPapageorgio]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: SignorPapageorgio
This thread is long!

First - Kaido, THANK YOU!

I want to build my first Hacintosh. I started looking at your "Monster Workstation Rig Recipe" on page 1 and found the above on page 6.

I am trying to put this together in a spreadsheet so I can figure out what I need to do and order. I am not even sure if I am understanding your components correctly so if there is an error please advise!

The new guide will be out this week and has 6 recipes for building different classes of DS3L-based Hackintosh systems. Please wait for me to release it before you order. It has an in-depth discussion of each piece of hardware.

Will that be posted in this thread?

 

[randomlinh]

btw, if anyone noticed, zipzoomfly is on ebay... I was trying to find a reliable vendor to get my q6600, and found them.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: SignorPapageorgio
Will that be posted in this thread?

Yes.

 

[jreezee]

Kaido,

Thanks for your guide. I had built a hackintosh using the USB guide. I tried to convert it to the new chameleon method. I copied the DSDT to the root. I then installed chameleon. I restarted it and when it gets to the the gray apple screen it just sits there. I can get back to my hackintosh if I reorder the USB stick and hard drives. What's the best way to convert the USB setup to the hard drive setup?

 

[nafaught]

Can someone recommend a good shuttle xpc (that's compatible with this hackintosh guide) to use with the following hardware I've purchased so far:

Q6600 cpu G0 SLACR Stepping
1tb Hitachi 1TB HD103UJ SATAII 7200 RPM 32MB
4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
POWERCOLOR HD2600PRO 512MV PCI-E video card

This will be my first Hackintosh build so I just want to make sure before purchasing everything.

Thanks! Love the guides and site so far!

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: nafaught
Can someone recommend a good shuttle xpc (that's compatible with this hackintosh guide) to use with the following hardware I've purchased so far:

This guide is specifically for the DS3L series of motherboards, which are full ATX boards.

 

[Kaido]

The USB stick is 100% gone now. BootCD can boot either a Leopard DVD disc or a Leopard DVD on a partition with the DVD drive and Boot Drive plugged into SATA Ports 0 and 1 :thumbsup:

 

[TheStu]

Well, all my hardware arrived and I got the USB stick all set up (I know that we are using BootCD now, but I had no blank CDs laying around and wasn't going to waste a DVD on that little data). It booted up fine, but I have Leopard extracted to an unused iPod 30GB which this mobo apparently does not like at all. The system will not POST if the iPod is connected, and I apparently lack the speed to connect the ipod after POST, but before the USB stick starts doing its thing.

Tyranicus tried helping me set up a kalyway vanilla, but that didn't work out so well either. So now I am hunting around for my Leopard disk and I will just do that. I will still have to use the USB stick since I don't have a SATA optical drive, but then I will do the Chameleon thing (and if someone could link me to the instructions, because I must be blind because I cannot find them) once I successfully have Leopard installed (which actually does happen with Kalyway, but the only Kalyway disk that Tyranicus had handy was 10.5.1 and I wanted to get updated).

So, I now have a kicking little Vista box that OC'ed to 3.5GHz with no problems, but no Leopard and that makes TheStu a sad panda.

 

[mosslack]

Originally posted by: sjwaste
Actually, that guide didn't entirely work for me b/c I have the ICH9, not ICH9R.

I followed this guide:

http://www.msfn.org/board/enab...l-ICH9-XP-t109450.html

And it worked. Although in the newer version of Intel Matrix Storage Manager, the line in the INF file that you modify will be the ICH8R line, not what it says in the guide. I currently don't have any SATA drives, but ran through this to enable it just so there werent surprises when my SATA drives come tomorrow. My XP install will remain on the IDE disk, so I'm not sure if I had to do it.

This one doesn't work either, the link for the most importand file says file not found!

 

[Zaap]

Originally posted by: mosslack
This one doesn't work either, the link for the most importand file says file not found!

That's thanks to Intel's website being a wretched POS to find anything on.

The 32-bit Floppy Config file needed for that guide is here.

Keep in mind what sjwaste said about changing lines- this is a newer version of the file than used for the guide, so the line to be changed reads ICH8R, not what's listed in the guide.


By the way, one does need to have this even if XP is installed on an IDE drive and you need it to read SATA drives. It will throw up an error trying to read SATA HDs if AHCI is turned on in the BIOS and this patch isn't in place.


Also, if all else fails, there is *shudder* the way this is actually supposed to be done!

 

[albert1028]

Not to beat a dead horse or push...but i'm excited...and was wondering when the complete tutorial/guide would be done. Is there anything different firmware/software wise besides the one touch application compard to your boot132 cd version?

 

[randomlinh]

Well, I did it. Bought everything. Ended up going with the P35-DS3L. My overall goal was to make this as cheap as possible while maintaining some decency. I found myself adding a little here and there. So.. I got

P35-DS3L
Q6600
640GB WD (I have a 400GB and 320GB already)
2x Corsair 4GB XMS2 DDR2 800 (the Trancsend is on sale now, save $2... but newegg shipping for 4 of them was outrageous! Out of principle, I went looking for something else. found this for ~$55 w/ $30 rebates that seems to be vendor linked... worst case, i get one rebate, I'll take that risk here)
OCZ 600W stealth (should have saved and went w/ the 500, but i bought this in a rush to get in on the rebate deadline sunday)
eVGA 8800GT (used off the FS/T forum)
the lite-on listed here
dell 24" 2408 =)
old antec/chieftec monster case I have kept for years.

This will no where be as quiet as my iMac, but that will be one of the tradeoffs I have to take. Assuming all my rebates come in, and microsoft doesn't go out of business in 3 months (I maxed out my ebay cashback, haha), all this will be an $850 upgrade

 

[swilso]

Originally posted by: randomlinh
....My overall goal was to make this as cheap as possible while maintaining some decency.

Mate that's more than some decency. It sounds like a great system.

The AUD vs USD went to shit, so I settled for an e7300 rather than a q6600 (the price on a Q6600 here has gone up $100 in the last month or two, they were $195 in Oct now they are $295~$330) on my system. Have heard good things about the Q6600, it should be a little monster.

 

[sjwaste]

After I install, I run OSX86Utils to set the GFX String and such. However, I'm booting into 800x600 and can't change from that, presumably because the GFX string isn't there yet. It makes it so I can't see parts of the OSX86Utils screen, and the text and text boxes are all misaligned. I also can't get to the Apply Changes to com.apple.Boot.plist button, as I can't see it on the screen.

This is with a DS3L, F7 Bios, and 7900GT vid card. Any ideas?

EDIT: Meant OSX86Tools