Hackintosh
- Corsair Obsidian 650D ~$170
- Intel Core i5-3570K Quad-Core Processor 3.4 GHz ~$225
- Gigabyte ATX Motherboard GA-Z77X-UP5-TH ~$250
- 16GB RAM ~$100
- Corsair 750 Watt Modular ~$150
- SATA 6Gb/s 120GB SSD ~$110
- WD Caviar Black 2TB ~$180
Got a Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920, which doesn't officially support Macs, but works great. For manual controls, you can purchase an app called Webcam Settings from the App Store.
Log
April 3, 2013
Moved nVidia card and DVD drive from Dell to Hackintosh. Didn't require any special configurations. Both are working out-of-the-box, which is awesome, but there are some issues. With the card, my second monitor flashes repeatedly. No discernible pattern, and the connection seems fine. I've been having trouble with that monitor, so I wonder if that's the problem.
WIth the drive, it took forever for it to acknowledge a DVD, and I've had issues with eject. Basically works, though, just not perfectly.
April 2, 2013
Powered up the machine. No problems! Relatively quiet! Booted it off the UniBeast Mountain Lion USB drive I had created. Again, no issues.
Installed Mountain Lion. When rebooted, got the endless startup wheel. Rebooted in safe mode using "-x" boot parameter. Started up Mountain Lion just fine.
Went through Apple post-installation steps, then installed MultiBeast. Selected:
- Drivers > Audio > RealTek ALC8xx > RealTek ALC898
- Drivers > Network > hnak's' AppleIntelE1000e Ethernet
- Drivers > Disk > TRIM Enabler > 10.8.1+ TRIM Patch
Installed 2 TB hard drive. Formatted.
Other SSD hacks from this post:
- Set noatime flag for root partition
- Moved User directory to HDD and created symlink
- Moved /private/tmp to HDD and created symlink
CPU
The CPU instructions said to apply thermal grease to the CPU before installing the cooler, but it looks like there was already thermal grease there. In any case, here's a guide.
Cases
I chose the Corsair Obsidian 650D. It's largely self-explanatory, but there are things that took me a while to figure out:
- This is the best guide I found to all of the internal wiring.
- Mounting an SSD. Remove the back side bolt (just give it a pull), and screw it in from the bottom.
- Making it quieter. Haven't done anything about this yet. Just researching in preparation.
Other
Top candidates:
Other possibilities:
- Cooler Master RC-692-KKN2
- Lian Li PC-V1020
- Antec 900
- Corsair CC600TWM-WHT Special Edition Graphite Series 600T Mid Tower Gaming Computer Case
- Corsair Carbide Series 500R Black Steel structure with molded ABS plastic accent pieces ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Video Card
I have a Nvidia GEFORCE 9400GT in my Dell Inspiron 531 that I'll need to swap out anyway (in order to turn that old computer into a media center PC), so I'm hoping it will work in a Hackintosh. More information at:
- http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/158685-the-easiest-way-to-install-nvidia-9400-gt/
- http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/280837-mountain-lion-boot-on-in-safemode/
Other
- DVD-RW drive (may be able to use the one in my Dell Inspiron 531) ~$30
