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custom mac rig

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artistream

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Feb 6, 2008
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i was thinking about making the switch to mac, but im do it yourselfer and i wanted to do a custom rig with a multiprocessor MB but didnt know the best place to find mac parts or which parts had to be "mac" parts and which ones didnt matter. thanks
 
Building your own Mac can be very difficult and time-consuming, and in the end you probably wouldn't save enough money to justify the effort.
 
It would cost you more to buy all the Mac Pro parts separately.

If you really wanted to, you could buy a Mac Pro, disassemble it, and put it back together again.

But hey, whatever floats your boat.
 
seems that i might have offended some people with wanting to build my own computer. and what do you mean "hackintoshes dont go over here"? all i want to know is if there were any specialty, or "mac only" parts that i would need to get. i like to know how things are put together. and im assuming that some of the parts you can only get through apple or something because they want $500 for 4gb of ram. $200 for a 500gb HD? $250 for a $150 graphics card? a 20" for $600?! are you serious? it seems that i would save a bunch of money if i got the parts myself, but then again, thats one of the reasons behind the post, i want to know if im looking at the wrong parts. just the ram alone and im already saving almost $300. i dont know about you, but that seems worth it to me.
 
You might be able to find a broken MB on eBay or craigslist. Then I guess you can have your fun fixing it. And you'll find out what's inside it.
 
artistream said:
seems that i might have offended some people with wanting to build my own computer. and what do you mean "hackintoshes dont go over here"? all i want to know is if there were any specialty, or "mac only" parts that i would need to get. i like to know how things are put together. and im assuming that some of the parts you can only get through apple or something because they want $500 for 4gb of ram. $200 for a 500gb HD? $250 for a $150 graphics card? a 20" for $600?! are you serious? it seems that i would save a bunch of money if i got the parts myself, but then again, thats one of the reasons behind the post, i want to know if im looking at the wrong parts. just the ram alone and im already saving almost $300. i dont know about you, but that seems worth it to me.
Click to expand...

Pretty much you can buy the lowest end mac pro tower and upgrade things like memory yourself. Mind you it takes fb-dimms(server and workstation memory). Hard drives are just sata and it will work with pretty much any pc monitor. As far as graphics cards you really need an apple supported one.

4 gigs of memory for a mac pro after market will run just above 200 bucks.
 
artistream said:
seems that i might have offended some people with wanting to build my own computer. and what do you mean "hackintoshes dont go over here"? all i want to know is if there were any specialty, or "mac only" parts that i would need to get. i like to know how things are put together. and im assuming that some of the parts you can only get through apple or something because they want $500 for 4gb of ram. $200 for a 500gb HD? $250 for a $150 graphics card? a 20" for $600?! are you serious? it seems that i would save a bunch of money if i got the parts myself, but then again, thats one of the reasons behind the post, i want to know if im looking at the wrong parts. just the ram alone and im already saving almost $300. i dont know about you, but that seems worth it to me.
Click to expand...

Basicly what they are getting at is you can't just buy pc parts and load osx on it. That is what hackintosh referes to and is disallowed here because it violates the eula for osx. So to get a mac you pretty much have to buy a mac. Now if you want to have some hands on experiance with it, the best bet is to get an older macpro or a refurb mac pro and upgrade the cpu/ram/video ect also with that be careful about the video as you need to make sure the video card has osx drivers.

Though as was said doing things more then ram or drives will probably end up costing you more then buying the machine at the specs you need.

As far as ram goes you do need to be careful on the mac pros as the memory has to have sufficent heatsinks so not just any fbdimms can be used but there are cheaper options that will work then whats from apple.

Hard disks are hard disks I beleive any sata drive should work.

You can use any dispaly device you want don't need an apple one.

so basicly to have a macintosh you need to get a computer from apple, some models can be upgraded if you choose.

Hope this clears this up some.
 
CFlux said:
So to get a mac you pretty much have to buy a mac. Now if you want to have some hands on experiance with it, the best bet is to get an older macpro or a refurb mac pro and upgrade the cpu/ram/video ect also with that be careful about the video as you need to make sure the video card has osx drivers.
Click to expand...

Or you can just save some cash and get an iMac. Eight Xeon cores is overkill and wayyyy too expensive for most of the population out there. A Core 2 Duo rig like the iMac is a great way to play around with OS X.
 
supergper said:
Hakintoshes do not go over here. If you want a Mac, buy a Mac...pretty simple :D
Click to expand...

Sound the sirens, hide your child, someone dared suggest a "Hakintosh". Oh gawd whatever shall we do?
It sounded though like he was looking for Genuine Mac parts(most like the only the motherboard would count) to build his own "Mac" and not quite a Hackintoshe.

The question is, what is considered a Hackintosh? If I use non mac memory on my Genuine apples does it sudden become a Hackintosh :p
 
Grazehell said:
Sound the sirens, hide your child, someone dared suggest a "Hakintosh". Oh gawd whatever shall we do?
It sounded though like he was looking for Genuine Mac parts(most like the only the motherboard would count) to build his own "Mac" and not quite a Hackintoshe.

The question is, what is considered a Hackintosh? If I use non mac memory on my Genuine apples does it sudden become a Hackintosh :p
Click to expand...
did Apple Computers mfg. the computer? If not then it's a Hackintosh. It's not a hackintosh based on the parts, it's a hackintosh based on the fact that it's against OS X EULA. ;) Pretty simple.
 
supergper said:
did Apple Computers mfg. the computer? If not then it's a Hackintosh. It's not a hackintosh based on the parts, it's a hackintosh based on the fact that it's against OS X EULA. ;) Pretty simple.
Click to expand...

it's a hackintosh based on the fact that OSX has to be hacked to run on it. OSX's EULA simply says "Apple branded hardware." Last I checked, and Mac motherboards have always been Apple branded. (and no, putting an Apple sticker on your machine does not make it Apple branded).
 
This rig cost me $250 and run's with the highest of MacBook Pro's and iMacs:

Picture3.png


DSC00465-1.jpg


From start to finish the build and software installation only took me 3 hours.

What I'm saying here is with the right amount of research this is very, very possible.

By the way, I am planning on purchasing Leopard to make this a little less impermissible (though still technically illegal).
 
/\
Now I honestly dont think the forum would like your post and this thread is going to get locked!
 
wow, i guess i really opened up a can of worms. then i might as well do this. why does apple have to be such nazi's about their stuff? oh and thanks for the informative replies. i really appreciate it when people opt not to give smug, fanboy responses. i dont care what you think abotu a mac, i just want my question answered. so again, thanks to those who replied with some intelligence
 
We discuss Hackintoshes here. (We actually had a really good discussion a while back on them)

We just won't provide you with instructions on how to do it.

I also believe Methodical (a member here) built a Mac from Mac parts - Not sure where he got them though, and I could be mistaken.

I've also "built" a Mac G4 from a few busted G4s (frankensteined some powermacs together... not necessarily building but close enough)
 
why does apple have to be such nazi's about their stuff?
Click to expand...
They are doing what every other company in the world does, they are protecting their intellectual property, which likely cost them hundreds of millions of dollars to develop. Make sense?
 
santaliqueur said:
They are doing what every other company in the world does, they are protecting their intellectual property, which likely cost them hundreds of millions of dollars to develop. Make sense?
Click to expand...

Exactly. Beside if they were to allow OSX to run on just any hardware what will make them money? Apple makes all their money selling hardware not software.
Mac OSX is a bit more affordable than windows(OSX is $129 retail for that price I would have to shop around windows Vista oem and have to deal with registration nonsense and so many installs on differing hardware), though you will be buying an update of it every year or so.

Why I am even arguing Apples cause and I dont even have a piece of Apple Hardware is beyond me, well done Steve Jobs!
 
artistream said:
wow, i guess i really opened up a can of worms. then i might as well do this. why does apple have to be such nazi's about their stuff? oh and thanks for the informative replies. i really appreciate it when people opt not to give smug, fanboy responses. i dont care what you think abotu a mac, i just want my question answered. so again, thanks to those who replied with some intelligence
Click to expand...

To be fair, that "nazi" remark isn't that intelligent in the first place.

But anyway, santaliqueur and Grazehell are right on the money. In addition to their responses from a business standpoint, look at this from a technical support standpoint: By limiting where their OSes are installed and what hardware they support, Apple reduces the relatively large number of hardware incompatibility problems that Windows and Linux has. So in other words, less different hardware configurations officially supported, less support work. And by extension, less support work means lower support costs. It all leads back to business anyway.

Oh and to answer your main question: Yes it is possible to install Mac OSX on non-Apple branded hardware as UncleDavid218 has shown. However whether or not that's legal is an entirely different matter. Just beware of the gray area of Hackintoshes.
 
just for good measure and to make sure were on the same page, why is the nazi remark not intelligent? but i can see where it would make sense to limit officially supported periphs and whatnot. i do have to say that although there are a lot of apple products and ways of doing business that i would raise an eyebrow at, they do know how to market their stuff. well, at least i can say i learned something today
 
KaosDG said:
We discuss Hackintoshes here. (We actually had a really good discussion a while back on them)

We just won't provide you with instructions on how to do it.

I also believe Methodical (a member here) built a Mac from Mac parts - Not sure where he got them though, and I could be mistaken.

I've also "built" a Mac G4 from a few busted G4s (frankensteined some powermacs together... not necessarily building but close enough)
Click to expand...

I did that a few years ago. Ordered a g4 motherboard from apple(I had my apple cert and worked for a place that could order them) and a power supply as they had the 28v line vs the old apples where you could mod an atx one. Everything elce I bought generic and threw it all in an atx case with some work. Had to flash a pc video card to get it to work right. Yea it was doable but a pain in the ass. Friend did it by buying a g4 board on ebay that was the older type where he could use a pc power supply with a few mods.
 
Think of a mac not as a "home brewable" pc but more like a game console. Apple decides what hardware is supported inside their machines.
 
Wow it ONLY took 3 hours? Sorry I like to load something up and have it done in less than 30 minutes.
 
And some people like to trade a little bit of time to save an immense load of money (and also in this case, have the freedom of choice).

I'm not sure if you have the capacity to even understand this, but there's nothing wrong with either preference.
 
supergper said:
did Apple Computers mfg. the computer? If not then it's a Hackintosh. It's not a hackintosh based on the parts, it's a hackintosh based on the fact that it's against OS X EULA. ;) Pretty simple.
Click to expand...
Unless your machine is one of Ye Olde Clones, like UMAX or DayStar. :p

Also, Godwin's Law seems to be true.



Now, when it comes to the matter of hackintoshes... People call them a gray area, or sometimes outright illegal. This is simply NOT true. EULAs do not hold up in a court of law. Clicking "I accept" during a software installation process does not qualify as a legal signature.

I've got one myself, and it mostly works, I guess... It does not run as seamless as an Apple Mac. It's quite stable nowadays, but I think I had more kernel panics within the first week of that machine than I have had in nine years* of running Mac OS X on Apple hardware.
 
Another option is to research the EFI-X device. Google it, the first link is their site. It has its own specific HCL (mostly Gigabyte boards and specific video cards) but in a nutshell, it's a USB hardware device that mounts to an internal USB header and allows installation of a Retal OS X DVD on a non-Apple PC, and update worries are supposedly a thing of the past. It still technically violates the EULA, but at least it's a retail install, and not a downloaded ISO from the internet. It's also technically not a Hackintosh, since none of the original Apple kexts are modified/removed/etc. so the hard drive contains a completely vanilla install.
 
Black Morty Rackham said:
I've got one myself, and it mostly works, I guess... It does not run as seamless as an Apple Mac. It's quite stable nowadays, but I think I had more kernel panics within the first week of that machine than I have had in nine years* of running Mac OS X on Apple hardware.
Click to expand...

Mine both work 100% (lacking sleep, but I don't use that in Windows, either); running a 1-line script in terminal while doing an update isn't much hassle at all. Unlike you, I never did experience any kernel panics, so the whole OSX86 thing is definitely a YMMV proposition.
 
Grazehell said:
/\
Now I honestly dont think the forum would like your post and this thread is going to get locked!
Click to expand...

the biggest problem with that screenshot is it shows an "About This Mac" from an obviously illegally downloaded installer DVD. The black Apple logo is a mod on the Kalyway DVD. Retail Leopard has a silver Apple logo.
 
Like others have said in here, a Hackintosh is not illegal and should not be treated as such.
 
coolie_d said:
the biggest problem with that screenshot is it shows an "About This Mac" from an obviously illegally downloaded installer DVD. The black Apple logo is a mod on the Kalyway DVD. Retail Leopard has a silver Apple logo.
Click to expand...

That's a mod that anyone could do.
 
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