Posts Tagged ‘Hackintosh’

Building My Hackintosh

January 17, 2011

Not to be confused with last week’s “My Hackintosh Build” post which can be found here. That post details the exact hardware, the cost, and compares it against an iMac with similar hardware. This one is about the actual work of building it and getting it running.

Well, it wasn’t quite as easy as I would have hoped, but I’ve made it. I am typing this post on a brand new Core i5 computer running OS X. Most rewarding of all, I built it myself. Everything major works. Life is good. Some of you may be wondering: How’d you do it? What problems did you encounter? Was it worth it? This post will answer these questions. It will also serve as a bit of a jumping off point if someone is thinking about building one themselves. Hit the break for a detailed description, pictures and more.

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My Hackintosh Build

January 13, 2011

So, I’m in the process of building a hackintosh (almost done, fingers crossed). I’ll be posting more about the actual building process, but for now I thought I’d share the parts I used to build it and how much they cost me.

For reference, here are the specs for a stock 27″ iMac:

  • 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5
  • 4GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM – 2x2GB
  • 1TB Serial ATA Drive
  • 8x double-layer SuperDrive
  • ATI Radeon HD 5750 1GB GDDR5 SDRAM

    • I wanted to match or beat that setup as cheaply as possible, so I bought the components from NewEgg over the period of less than a month, only buying things that were discounted.
    Here’s what I ended up with:
    (key: ‘+‘ indicates an improvement over the reference iMac, ‘=‘ indicates it is an equal part. ‘?‘ indicates an item for which Apple does not provide enough detail to make a comparison.)

  • 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5-760 – $179.99 (regularly $204.99)=
  • 6GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM – 3x2GB (CORSAIR XMS3) – $64.99 (regularly: $79.99)+
  • 1TB Serial ATA Drive (WD Caviar Black) – $77.99 (regularly: $87.99)=
  • Sony Optiarc Black $19.99 (regularly: $26.99) ?
  • ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB DDR5 SDRAM (HIS Juniper XT) – $99.99 (regularly $129.99) +

    • Items that Apple doesn’t list specs for, but you need for a computer:

  • GIGABYTE GA-H55-USB3 Motherboard – $99.99 (regularly $109.99)
  • Cooler Master RS750-ACAAE3-US Power Supply – $59.99 (regularly $99.99)

    • Baller unnecessary upgrade:

  • Corsair CSSD-V32GB2-BRKT $59.99 (regularly $78.99)

    • Items I already had and paid nothing for

  • Monitor
  • Mouse
  • Keyboard
  • Computer Case

    • What it cost:
    All in all, these purchases cost me $662.92. Shipping was free on all of them. If nothing was discounted, I would have spent $818.92, meaning I saved $156.00 by doing my shopping over the course of 2.5 weeks (first order was placed 12/21/2010, last order was placed 1/7/11). Compared to the cost of the iMac I was referencing, I saved $1,336.08. That is a lot of money.

    What I got that is better than an iMac is a slightly faster graphics card, 2GB more RAM (not to mention faster ram), a 32gb Solid State Drive that will allow for quicker booting and application launching, and USB 3 support.

    What I didn’t get is a 27″ monitor, a sleek enclosure, or official Apple support. To me, this tradeoff is worth $1,336.08. I could buy a decent monitor and a MacBook Air with that amount of money.

    So, how’d it all come together? I’m still working on it. More posts to come!

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