Less than Stellar Member
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I've posted this over at Ars but I thought I'd throw it up here, too. I'm looking to build a hackintosh that can game. Any ideas? I'd like to keep cost below $1000 if possible. Ideally, I'd be able to replace my iMac which gets primary duty for media serving and photo editing in the house. I want to be able to play modern FPS's at as close to max res as possible. TIA.
If it's not red and showing substantial musculature, you're wearing it wrong. |
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Making sawdust
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
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its a little hit&miss on finding a vid card that will work smoothly on a hackintosh, and even then, any drivers you find won't necessarily be optimized for it. that said, look at wiki.osx86project.org, they have some nice up to date lists of compatible hardware.
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is the next Chiquita
Join Date: Feb 2005
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Why not just get a PC? You already have iMac so I would think you get less of a gain and much more hassle in building a Hackintosh than a gaming PC...
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Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472 Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
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Here are a few systems that you can build up:
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Less than Stellar Member
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I'm working on reducing the number of "things" I've got, so having a machine able to do double duty would be ideal. And I just don't have the space for another computer in my office. And part of it is the challenge.
If it's not red and showing substantial musculature, you're wearing it wrong. |
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Less than Stellar Member
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So it seems like the keys to getting a hackintosh working in theory is to have a motherboard, processor and video card compatible? Would that Asus motherboard + the Core 2 Quad + a Radeon 4870 vid card work?
If it's not red and showing substantial musculature, you're wearing it wrong. |
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Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472 Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
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Looking over the specs I've seen you should be fine. iatkos v7 10.5.7 is pretty much set to handle with ease most of the configurations I listed above. Seems the Gigabyte is favored in the hackintosh community though.
Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.” Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it. |
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Making sawdust
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
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Vanilla 10.5 installs ftw! |
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Less than Stellar Member
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Less than Stellar Member
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Freakin' A talk about good timing. MS is doing their cashback thing (via bing.com this time) and zipzoomfly is getting 20% back. With the stuff I was looking at getting, I'm going to be getting $160 in cashback.
How's this list look:
If it's not red and showing substantial musculature, you're wearing it wrong. |
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ಠ_ರೃ
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
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That looks like a great setup except you are buying DDR3 for use with a DDR2 motherboard. Get DDR2 instead. It doesn't have to be DDR2-1333 to match the processor (in fact, DDR2-1333 doesn't even exist). Just get DDR2-800 or maybe 1066 if you really want, but it doesn't matter that much. Slightly higher RAM speed doesn't help much, if at all.
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Less than Stellar Member
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My total price after the 20% bing cashback will be $670 less $55 $70 in rebates so it'll be $615 $600 all told. I've got an HD already, a 1TB SATA Western Digital Black (or Green, I can't remember). That should work, right? I've got Leopard retail and Windows 7. So I'm all set to go. All I need now is a monitor. I'm totally geeking out! edit: missed a rebate. So it's $600 shipped for that set up. I hope I can get it working! I've never built a computer before so it'll be interesting. If it's not red and showing substantial musculature, you're wearing it wrong. Last edited by torifile : 2009-08-10 at 12:56. |
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ಠ_ರೃ
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
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Yes. DDR3 will not work in that motherboard. When I was saying that RAM speed isn't that important, I meant DDR2-800 vs. 1066 or other speeds isn't important, but DDR2 and DDR3 are two different things and are not cross-compatible. Any given motherboard will only be able to use one or the other.
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Less than Stellar Member
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If it's not red and showing substantial musculature, you're wearing it wrong. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Paris, France
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Torifile, you may not always buy the right thing, but I am constantly in awe of your purchasing skills. Have you ever paid list price for something in your life? You're like the American Dream distilled into a skinny bearded cheapskate.
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Less than Stellar Member
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MSRP? NEVER! (Except on Apple gear. ) I'm Egyptian. Bargain hunting is in my blood.
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Stallion
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Milwaukee
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Wait for Core i7. Then, get a cheap one and overclock it. Always get the cheap stuff and overclock it. Do some googling for the mobos that have the best Hackintosh support.
Check slickdeals.net then to buy the components. You can build a very solid system for 600 max. Probably 500. ...and calling/e-mailing/texting ex-girlfriends on the off-chance they'll invite you over for some "old time's sake" no-strings couch gymnastics... |
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ಠ_ರೃ
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
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However, as cool as i7 is, it doesn't really give you that big of an advantage for gaming. Its main strength is hyperthreading on all four cores, giving you the ability to run 8 threads at once. Now, a lot of games are single- or dual-threaded, and it has taken a lot of convincing to get gamers to even move up to quads from duals (just as it took at long time to convince them that dual-core was worth it over a faster single core). i7 is amazing for encoding or just about any other CPU-intensive task, but gaming isn't actually that CPU-intensive. It relies much more heavily on the GPU. Really, if you wanted to squeeze the maximum level of gaming performance per dollar, you could go for the E8400 (3.0 GHz dual core) and get as powerful a graphics card as possible (either a Radeon 4890, GTX 275, or Radeon 4850X2 2GB) with the money you save. But a quad will be a little more balanced and will probably serve you better long-term. Also, Partial, didn't you notice the part where he's getting cashback deals on his gear? I think tori found some pretty good deals once you factor that in. ZipZoomFly is pretty competitive anyway. |
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Stallion
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Milwaukee
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I didn't read the posts, but from what I'm reading the bing cashback stuff on SD isn't as good as advertised. If it were me, I'd follow my advice Though I didn't know the Core i7's were out yet. However, I'd wait for a cheap one. OS X will run like a champion on one.
...and calling/e-mailing/texting ex-girlfriends on the off-chance they'll invite you over for some "old time's sake" no-strings couch gymnastics... |
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Less than Stellar Member
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As I said, I got all that for $600 shipped. ZZF jacked up all their prices after I bought:
If it's not red and showing substantial musculature, you're wearing it wrong. |
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Less than Stellar Member
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Some of it isn't but I already got my email from bing with my cashback amounts and all of them (they do it on a per item basis) are 20% back.
If it's not red and showing substantial musculature, you're wearing it wrong. |
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ಠ_ರೃ
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
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NewEgg still has the Q9550 for $220 w/ free shipping, for the moment: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115041
I've seen NewEgg jack up their prices before. I've even seen them charge more for a slower processor than for a faster one in the same series. Their official explanation has always been that they have an automated price-updating system that occasionally glitches out or gives unexpected results. Whatever. Either way, you already ordered your stuff, and 20% cashback sounds like a great deal. Partial: Regarding the i7, here's the deal. The only i7 CPU that has ever been reasonably priced, the i7 920, is $280. That in itself is high but it's not too bad for the bleeding edge. The real high expense comes in when you buy a motherboard. Whereas a solid Core 2 motherboard will only set you back by $120-$150, a good Core i7 motherboard is $200+. Also, when the i7 first came out late last year, DDR3 was really expensive, and it was triple-channel so you had to buy three modules at a time instead of two. Nowadays it costs basically the same as DDR2, but the motherboards are still expensive. The end result is that an i7 system will cost a good $100-$200 more than a Core 2 Quad, and while that may be worth it for many uses, for gaming it's not. And maybe tori just wanted to save a bit of dough. |
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Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472 Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
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This is where I'm glad I got the i7 then. Most of my work is encoding video and audio. Then next up is photo handling. Sounds like I have the best of all worlds with my coming i7 system!
How to hack it so I can run Mac OS X on it. tori, let us know how yours works out. Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.” Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it. |
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Less than Stellar Member
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Anyone ever hear of the the EFI-X? Macintouch did a pretty lengthy review of it and they seemed to really like it. According to their compatibility chart, it doesn't work with many mobos but it does work with the processor I bought. I'm a little weary of trying it out for a couple of reasons but if it does make things as easy as it claims to, WOW.
If it's not red and showing substantial musculature, you're wearing it wrong. |
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Banging the Bottom End
Join Date: Jun 2004
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ಠ_ರೃ
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
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Unfortunately, it seems really hard to get a sense of how easy or difficult it is to set up and maintain a Hackintosh. Some people here say it's a headache and a half. Others claim it's extremely easy. I think the only way to find out is to do it. The good thing is you won't risk bricking your hardware just from attempting to install OSx86, so you may as well try. If you really can't figure it out, then maybe it's time to RMA the motherboard and get an EFI-X compatible one instead. |
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Less than Stellar Member
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Zipzoomfly sucks. I placed my order on Monday and it took them til today to tell me that they were out of stock on my motherboard. I canceled the order and decided that dealing with them and having to wait for them to ship cross-country just wasn't worth it so I went to back to newegg.
I also made a few alterations to my original order to make it more Hackintosh friendly. I got the Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS4P mobo because it seems to work pretty well for a Hackintosh. I also changed my case from the Antec to a Lian Li which seems less flashy and had a removable mobo tray making it easier to use. I'll let you all know how it goes! If it's not red and showing substantial musculature, you're wearing it wrong. |
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Less than Stellar Member
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I got my stuff today and after a couple of frustrating hours with beeps and video not working, I used my head and realized my PSU has 2 PCIe power connections I could use rather than the clearly defective ones that came with the card. In the process, my nicely organized cables are a mess but I'll fix that later.
Windows 7 64 bit is starting installation now. I'll make sure the computer works properly before trying to hackintosh it. If it's not red and showing substantial musculature, you're wearing it wrong. |
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Less than Stellar Member
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The Windows side of things works perfectly. This computer is screaming fast! I'm working on getting OS X installed. I'm able to boot to the installation disc but I get stuck at the very beginning with an SPOD. Trying a new Boot132 disc to see if that helps.
Edit: success! I'm at the language selection screen. If it's not red and showing substantial musculature, you're wearing it wrong. |
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Less than Stellar Member
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If anyone cares, I've got OS X running! I'm updating to 10.5.8 right now. This computer is fast even with the ATI card not supported yet. I'm working on that. If the computer runs Aperture, I'm going to seriously consider getting rid of my iMac for this computer.
If it's not red and showing substantial musculature, you're wearing it wrong. |
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