I've been keeping somewhat quiet on this subject because I know I'll get shit from some of the Mac loyalists around here because of this. But whatever, let them hate me...
JBroll helped me out a ton and the machine wouldn't have come out nearly as cool without his help. My goal was to build a "hackintosh" - a PC that can run Mac OS X - because Apple's Mac Pro line is too expensive and I refuse to settle for an iMac. I was able to build a machine that would have cost me easily $8000 from Apple for less than $1300.
It was a success on first boot, although I had a couple of minor driver issues with the video card, USB and Firewire ports I had to fix initially. Here's the config:
http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/wishlist/PublicWishDetail.asp?WishListNumber=9324008
Summary of specs:
- Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4 GHz
- 4 GB RAM
- 2 500 GB SATA drives (for data)
- 2 80 GB SATA drives (for boot drives to run 2 operating systems if I want to, without having to partition)
- 2 DVD burners with lightscribe (because I can)
- Belkin wireless card that Mac OS X recognizes without a driver install
- Slightly older Sapphire/ATI video card that's awesome for games
With the exception of the video card (which I bought used from JBroll) this machine was all NewEgg. So if you build a PC based on this config, be sure to get a video card to go with it.
As for hackintoshing in general, I highly suggest you guys go to
insanelymac.com if you are interested, and keep in mind that hackintoshing is against Apple's terms of service, and may even be illegal. I don't feel too bad about it myself given that I have purchased 8 Macs in the last 10 years, I've bought every Mac OS X release since the Public Beta, I've converted tons of Windows users to Mac, etc.
So far my machine is very stable in Mac OS X 10.5.2, and it thinks it's a Mac Pro. As well it should, because the Intel Core 2 chips and the Intel Xeons are in fact the same exact chips, targeted at different markets with different price points (pay more for a Xeon because it's a "server class" chip.) Intel
might put the Xeons through some extra testing, but considering that Apple themselves uses the Core 2 chips in everything except their Mac Pros and Xserves, I'm sure the Core 2s are reliable, especially with Intel's awesome warranty.
I suspect that the onboard firewire ports on the Asus motherboard are
not the highly-regarded TI chip set, resulting in some funky audio dropouts with my M-Audio interface - even just running iTunes - but that problem also happens for some legit Mac Pro users running 10.5.2 with M-Audio's beta Leopard driver, and for some reason 10.4 won't install on my hackintosh (again, a problem you'd have on a
real Mac Pro!) So I am getting a PCI Firewire card with a TI chipset, and an RME FireFace, both of which will solve a lot of problems and make the next BACKMASK album possible!
