And we have another Ask OSNews item! This one has to do with the recent article we ran on how I built my own Macintosh and installed a vanilla, unaltered copy of Mac OS X on it using the boot-132 method. One of our readers asked us: what is the best hardware to build a Mac out of?
The questions goes like this:
My current Desktop PC has become an old man over the years and with my most recent acquisition of an Aluminum MacBook I am ever so impressed by how this Apple-device has turned my digital life upside down (in a good way).With my urgent need for a new Desktop Computer I first started to look towards Apple once again. But the only option for my demands would be the Mac Pro which can only offer me a poor Nvidia graphics card or a rather mainstream Radeon HD card right now. All of this with the shocking conclusion that I can purchase much more powerful hardware (top-of the line in almost every segment) for as much as 500 €uros less.
My decision to not buy a Mac Pro is final. However I would love to get some advice on purchasing hardware on which i can expect this “boot-132” which you described in one of your most recent blog-posts to work with “a flick of the wrist” as you might say.
This is actually a fairly easy question to answer. The boot-132 method, which uses a modified open source Darwin kernel to bootstrap an unaltered Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard disk, works better the closer you stick to Apple’s actual hardware choices. The more you deviate from Apple’s hardware, the more problems you could potentially run into.
The Mac I built in that article is a good example. Due to the hardware in that machine deviating quite a bit from Apple’s line-up, I have to disable HyperThreading to get it to boot, the line-in doesn’t work, and sleep doesn’t work either (this is a BIOS issue, though, but my BIOS appears to be too limited to fix it). Had I chosen hardware closer to Apple’s, I would’ve had far fewer problems.
I’d basically advise you to build a machine which uses the same motherboard/chipset Apple uses for its Mac Pro, and since you’re going to save some money that way, maybe buy a better processor, maybe more RAM, and a better videocard. Of course, you’re missing out on the beautifully designed internals of the Mac Pro, but at the same time, your wallet will want to hug you.
The email goes on:
- ASUS P6T Deluxe/OC Palm, X58 – Motherboard
- INTEL Core i7-920 4x 2.67GHz, boxed – CPU
- CORSAIR 6GB CL9 TR3X6G1600C9 – RAM (3 blocks)
- ASUS ENGTX295 2DI 1792MB DDR3 PCI-Express2.0 896bit – Graphics Card
- WD VelociRaptor 300GB SATA II – System Hard Drive
- WD Caviar Black 750GB SATA II – Personal Files Hard Drive (+ Swap File under Windows)
I am pretty sure that CPU, RAM and Hard Drives won’t be a problem since it won’t be the first time for me to set up a hackintosh but I’m concerned about the Graphics Card and maybe the Motherboard. This specific Graphics Card screams as you may know but I am pretty sure that there will be no drivers available for it in the OSX World. So I’d love to know which one I can buy and expect to work on OSX but which is also going to last me longer over the next years concerning Gaming under Windows. The Motherboard is quite a beast as well and I don’t think it will be a problem but I’ve heard of minor problems like a Sound Card not working 100% so maybe there’s a better one to go for.
I’m a little afraid to give you binding advice on what hardware to buy, mostly because we’re still talking about doing something unsupported here. I don’t want you to spend loads of money and then not have it working properly. I can give you the best advice I can about the hardware in your list, and some links that should help you along in finding replacements for the parts that will certainly not work.
I must admit that I find it very hard to find information about the X58 chipset and the boot-132 method. There is a thread on InsanelyMac with a number of different boot-132 packages for specific motherboard/chipset combinations, and the X58 method isn’t one of them. I suggest checking the OSx86Project HCL for a suitable replacement, but preferably you should find one in the boot-132 thread.
The processor isn’t a problem, in any case, as it’s fully supported – all four cores are recognised, and Mac OS X will see eight cores if you enable HyperThreading.
The video card in this shopping list is indeed going to be a problem. A trip to the HCL should inform you which do work, but I’m not sure if you’re going to find a comparable card in there. You’re really in a pickle here, I’ll admit that: top-notch gaming in Windows, but also top-notch performance in Mac OS X. I’m really at a loss here, but I’m sure the OSNews community has a few things to say on this one.
Overall though, it’s simply very hard to give advice on this one. Building your own Mac is a completely unsupported activity, so you have to rely on whatever the community throws at you – and while relying on the community can be a good thing (see open source software), it can be problematic and not very trustworthy in cases like this.
You are one of the many “victims” who suffer from the lack of a Mac between the iMac and the Mac Pro. The Mac Pro is way out of your league, and the iMac is a toy for you. This is a huge gaping hole in Apple’s product line that most likely won’t get plugged any time soon, so you’re at the mercy of building a Mac of your own – with all the associated problems.
I could pretend to know what hardware you should buy – but the fact of the matter is that I do not. Even if each individual part you buy is said to be supported, the combination of said parts could still give you unforeseen problems and headaches. It’s a gamble – a gamble which is fine if you already own all the parts anyway, but if you still need to buy everything, it’s a big financial gamble that I personally wouldn’t want to take.
In the end, I think you’re asking for something that doesn’t exist: a top-of-the-line gaming machine running Windows that also runs Mac OS X, all at a reasonable price (compared to a Mac Pro). The problem is that the Mac world generally lags behind when it comes to video cards, making it impossible for you to buy the latest dual-GPU graphics beast, and have it supported in Mac OS X. Either you pick a lower-end video card, or you forgo the idea of Mac OS X on your gaming machine.
Besides Insanelymac one could just look at the Mac clone makers and copy their hardware setup.
That will certainly increase your chances.
So look at those four shops for inspiration.
If you insisted on a top-notch powerful PC, you can try to give Mac OS X a virtual life using VMware or VirtualBox. There’s even some ready-made images on the a big Swedish P2P network. I know it’s not like the real one, but you can put it into any hardware that you don’t have a compatible driver.
I found the performance of OSX under vmware to be absolutely appalling, native is massively faster…
One thing to try, if you get an appropriate motherboard, go for a dual screen setup… A powerful videocard for your windows gaming, and a slower (read: cheap) videocard for OSX use. I have an nvidia 8600gt which works perfectly in a hackintosh. Also, your highend videocard will probably end up being supported before too long anyway.
This assumes you’re not planning to use OSX for gaming or highend video work.
I’d do it the other way around, because VMWare Fusion is just so f–king awesome.
I don’t have any hardware suggestions but I would like to ask Thom: I’m really curious to know if you got/get contacted by Apple regarding this and the previous story. Would be really grateful if you would tell us if something comes from their part!
Edit, P.S.: Oh, and you used the Opera logo for this story (by mistake, I presume). Dank u wel
Edited 2009-06-06 11:32 UTC
Nope, we didn’t get contacted, and we probably never will. We’re way too small and insignificant a site to be on Apple’s radar – for the better, probably.
Wrong icon? (Opera)
Because every story about Apple turns into a soap opera?
OSX 10.5.7 is running absolutely rock stable on my system: Asus P5Q, 8GB OCZ DDR2 Ram, Nivida 8800GT (flashed with Apple Mac Pro Bios). I never turn my machine off and uptime is currently about 4 weeks.
I feel like I should reiterate what he just said here. The Asus P5* series of motherboards have astounding, if not perfect support in OS X, rivaled only by a few Gigabyte boards. Today I received an Asus P5K in the mail and am writing this while waiting for OS X to finish installing.
It’s important to have a compatible motherboard because it means you can install OS X, unmodified, and update straight from Apple without worrying (by using a bootloader and small, hidden partition to cleanly isolate all the hacked kexts – aka “boot132”). It’s such a clean hack that I could image a real mac’s volume and boot from it without any extra work.
Hopefully, if all goes well today, I will have an identical setup to parent’s.
I wonder if this has anything to do with Asus making laptops for Apple.
Edited 2009-06-06 23:48 UTC
first of all i wanted to thank Thom for featuring my question.
second of all what i think didnt come across in my email is that I really dont want to compromise in any area here.
the dual graphics card idea by bert64 is a quite interesting one. maybe with a KVM Switch to be able to use only one monitor.
but the bottom line is that ill appreciate a high end setup hardware-wise with windows vista business (and windows 7 quite soon i hear from OSNews) running smoothly a lot more than a worse performing system running OSX as well. The reason i often get frustrated with Windows might just be my above mentioned old hardware rather than windows itself ^^
a friend of mine bought a similar setup of hardware not too long ago and its amazing.
this thing makes a windows prefetch folder a waste of hard drive space. everything loads as if it had been running in the background all the time. theres no delay to anything you can do on ur desktop. i could go on 😉
but nevertheless thanks once again. also thanks to all the suggestions in the comment section. im sure ill be happy with what ill end up with.
Martin
Keep in mind that unless you are super picky with hardware you are probably building a Leopard machine. As in not Snow Leopard. 64 bitness is going to mean a lot of the old drivers are not going to work anymore.
You’ll likely have better luck by sticking really close to what Apple uses and ignoring stuff they don’t, even if it works now, though no one really knows what’s going to happen.
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?automodule=blog&blogid=1…
That would work, but in most cases you should be able to do without and save the cost of the extra hardware.
Expect the absolutely cheapest models, most modern monitors comes with at least two video inputs already, selectable with the monitor buttons. One VGA and a DVI are very common, but you can find dual DVI or VGAs also.
You would still have the expense of buying a second keyboard and mouse (not mention the extra clutter). Surely it’s simpler just to get a KVM for £20 (or £50 for a DVI model).
No you don’t, since nothing of that is needed for the setup discussed. A box able to dual booth Win and Os X using two graphics cards, with a top of the line card for windows and gaming needs and lesser one to keep it Os X compatible.
Besides you could easily set up a two box solution using the dual input monitor and use a sw “KVM” like synergy for the mouse/keyboard.
I used my Dell XPS 410 (Core 2 Quad, 8 GB RAM). There were a few things that needed workarounds:
– Had to use a USB CDROM to install the OS
– Initially had to install the OS on a USB hard disk (no drivers for SATA out of the box)
– Had to get a $10 network card
But after installing drivers for video, sound, and the ICH8R, it’s now a 100% functional system running 10.5.7.
There actually IS a company out there that builds computers specifically tailored for Mac OS X. They’re called Apple, maybe you should give them a try?
My Mac Pro is rock solid with 10.5.7 as expected, and if something goes wrong I can get support! How great is that?
Not $3K great.
Matter of opinion…
Is this really leal or is it gray area?
When you choose Mac, you choose a platfom. They tell you up front that its not about freedom, its about their platform.
If you dont like this policy don’t buy their stuff unless they change. Its not like Apple has been convicted of monopoly abuse or anything…
Edited 2009-06-06 17:36 UTC
But the DOJ is investigating Apple’s hiring practices.
http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/stories/2009/06/01/daily41.html
http://money.cnn.com/2009/06/03/technology/tech_antitrust/?postvers…
Oh cry me a river why don’t you. Nothing irritates me more than when the demand for fair compensation moves from being reasonable to simply just extortion. I some times wonder whether some of these people have their priorities right when their whole life is centred around chasing the almighty dollar; in the pursuit of the dollar they ignore the fact that everything around them is fake, it isn’t real, constructs that have on inherent value and trinkets you amount during your lifetime cannot be taken to the grave with you.
Money is like anything else desirable: either you use it productively, or it can take over your life.
The first thing I would do if ever became filthy rich would be to stop flying coach. The second would be to ensure the financial security of my descendents.
You can’t judge from afar whether the employees in question are making themselves miserable chasing dollars or have something productive in mind. But you can bet that Apple, Inc. is about making money, and that monopoly practices hurt the consumer.
Instead of telling that to the developers, tell it to the upper brass with their stock options, mega-buck pay and golden parachutes. All of which they keep even when the company is tanking.
Although, in light of the ongoing economic fiasco, this might ( possibly, maybe, hopefully) change.
I guess greed flows downhill.
Greed is everywhere; from the top to the bottom; it was a generalised statement regards to all those (management/programmers/tea lady) who demand more pay than what one would deem as fair compensation.
It is a grey area.
You are not violating copyright law, that’s for sure. So you are doing nothing criminal.
You are violating Apple’s Eula, and the clause forbidding you to install on non-Apple hardware may be enforceable. Or it may not. There don’t seem to have been any cases ruling clearly either way. If it is enforceable, Apple would be able to take civil proceedings against you. But they would have to show actual damage.
This is the part that is grey. This is why the Psystar decision will be so interesting. And why it will be interesting to see do they proceed against Freedompc in the UK, or PearC in Germany, or EFI-X.
As to the morality, what moral obligations do you have to a company that tells you you may not install an app because it lets you read the Kama Sutra? Or that you may not install another because it gives access to some EFF materials they don’t care for? Moral obligation to do what Apple wants, or not what they don’t want? Your only moral obligation to them is to comply with the letter of the law.
A lot of work to shoehorn a crap operating system on hardware it’s not meant for (the only OS worse than OS X is Windows).
1. Buy a PC
2. Shove on PC-BSD or Kubuntu
Bad troll is bad.
2. Shove on PC-BSD or Kubuntu
Wouldn’t touch *ubuntu even with a long stick. Can’t say anything about BSDs though since I’ve never tried those.
Something I ran into myself that seems to be a big problem for a lot of people: Use a PATA (IDE) hard drive and DVD hooked up with the hard drive as Master and the DVD as Slave. Trying to boot from SATA drives is problematic, and OSX seems to assume that a DVD will never be a Master drive. A few years ago, all systems were set up that way, but these days your primary hard drive may be SATA and the DVD would be the Master device on the PATA bus.
I just bought a used retail copy of Leopard off of ebay and I’m interested in trying it with the boot-132 method for installation
proposed config for my “hackintosh”
ECS ELITEGROUP 915P-A2
onboard sound
onboard network
Intel Celeron-D 3.06 GHz CPU
2.5 GB DDR2 Ram
PNY Nvidia Quadro NVS 280 Dual head pci-e video
IDE LITEON DVD-ROM setup as master
IDE Maxtor 160 GB Hard drive setup as slave.
(system only has one ide port, rest of ports are sata)
the video card I have probably won’t work, but I can work on getting a better one later. Right now my main concern is if I can get the system up and running first
tried going over to the insanelymac forum to ask this but it’s down at the moment with too many database connections error.
Edited 2009-06-06 22:34 UTC
Dude, don’t ask in the forum. Look your hardware up in the Hardware Compatibility List:
http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/HCL_10.5.5
You might have to try other HCL versions, too.
hey thanks for the reply
the wiki was down at the same time for some weird reason when I posted to osnews. looks like my board will work ok so long as I don’t use the sata ports. now I just have to wait until My legal copy of Leopard shows up and resist the temptation to go download it off of one of the torrent sites. I own an older Imac G4 700 so even if I’m not successful with getting leopard to run on my hackintosh, I can always use one of the open firmware hacks to fool the leopard installer into letting me install it on my imac
Hey… any PC laptop suggestions for this?
-m
The hackintosh scene has come a long way. I remember fiddling around with various OSx86 “distributions” in mid-2008, which all gave a rather painful experience (hardware not working, power mgmt issues, break on update, etc.). That was a year ago.
A few months ago, I set up a retail Leopard installation on my pc, utilising the mentioned boot-132 method. I even set up an independent partition for all custom extensions to be update safe. Even was able to set up and boot from an raid-0 Apple Software Raid.
But ultimately, you won’t get everything working flawless, no matter how ‘supported’ your h/w is. For my specific hardware, the deal breaker was my PC constantly overheating, despite SpeedStep working and clocking down the CPU (also tried several other power mgmt drivers specially coded for OSx86 use), thus providing me with at least one kernel panic per day.
This, and shutdown/restart randomly not working.
So far for my experience with the OSx86 world… I’ll come back next year for 10.6 and am pretty optimistic that the community will have the last issues sorted out by then 🙂
I built a hackintosh:
Gigabyte EP45-UD3P motherboard
E7400 processor
GeForce 8400 GS/ 512 (fanless).
(tried a GeForce 8800 GT / 256 too)
4 gig memory
Samsung IDE-DVD burner
I’m still trying to get the video work correctly. It won’t play DVD’s yet, nor iDVD. The I couldn’t get the onboard audio to work, so I installed a SBLive and the kX driver and the audio works.
For all the time and hassle, I’m not sure if I would do it again. I doubt that it would be wise to upgrade the OS. When Snow Leopard comes out, forget about it until someone hacks something. Part of the experience of MacOS is that things typically ‘just work’. IN the end, I’d probably go get a Mac mini. All this searching forums, looking for different kext’s, and EFI strings for the video card, trial and error, not knowing if some update will hose the system, etc. My dual G4 with Leopard still works more smoothly at this point.
Did you try adding your EFI graphics card string into your com.apple.Boot.plist? http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,64.msg1961.html#msg1961
Or did you install a driver like NVdarwin? http://www.filestube.com/n/nvdarwin
Yes, I tried adding it – both cards, but I still have NVinject installed, so maybe there is a conflict. I am going to remove NVinject and see if it is identified correctly with the proper EFI string written.
If I still have trouble, I’ll flash the 8800GT with a Apple bios and be done with it.
Two very interesting points have been made over on Ars about the legal issue.
The first point is that there is case law in the US which suggests that a EULA cannot preempt or lessen your rights granted under 117 of the copyright act. The case is Vault v Quaid.
The second is that you do not have to install OSX using the Apple installer. You can do it manually using standard decompression tools and moving the files yourself, in which case you will not have assented to the EULA.
The interesting thing here is that 117 gives you the right to do this, and more, with a copy of the software that you have bought. So you are doing an installation in a way that Federal law permits, without having assented to any EULA which lessens your rights, and with what the courts have ruled is your own property – a legally bought copy of the OS.
If this is correct, its case over. You can, if this is correct, lawfully install on whatever you want. It is an open and shut case.
People like me have always maintained that the ‘protection’ but Apple of Mac OS X was stupid to begin with. If individuals wish to install it on their machines then quite honestly all Apple have to say is, “Mac OS X is designed for Apple computers only; by installing this on a non-Apple computer you forfeit your right to support from Apple”. It would retain what Apple wants, that is, Mac OS X is solely designed for Apple computers alone whilst at the same time those who want to install it on their computer can do so.
For those who think that the end of the world would occur; I doubt it would given that I can’t see a vendor coming out any time soon to create Mac clones (if they removed protection and the portion of the EULA is invalidated directly by the court) not do can I see one of the big names jumping on board either.
Yes, basically agreed.
I have to admit, if I could install it on a non-Apple computer without too much fuss and bother – I wouldn’t bother about buying an Apple computer again; I’d probably go for a Lenovo Thinkpad and ThinkCentre given that they are low cost, attractive and reasonably priced.
Hackintosh scene has came a long way. A year ago, I was skeptical about the performance and stability. I finally built one last month. The system is rock solid, stable and its performance easily rival mac pro costs two or three times the money!
core 2 quad/ 3x2GB ram/ 640gb hdd/ blu ray burner/ nvidia 9800gtx+
the mobo is gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R using iPC distro. later upgraded to 10.5.7.
SilverStone Strider ST75F 750W and a lian li case both done with professional cable sleeving! plus sound proof work for case too (sleeve and sound work alone costs 290 USD)
bunch of active/passive cooling components about $250+
the setup costs about 1720. minus all the extra stuff for 1200 i can match performance of mac pro. the final result is a beautiful unique machine inspired by this site:
http://www.million-dollar-pc.com/systems-2008/antec/p180/losmile-an…
http://www.million-dollar-pc.com/systems-2008/lian-li/mcp/lian-li-a…
http://www.million-dollar-pc.com/systems-2008/lian-li/losmile/losmi…
http://www.million-dollar-pc.com/systems-2008/lian-li/mcp/lian-li-p…
Frankly, mac mini, imac, macbook pro are all overpriced. mac pro on the other hand stapled with the workstation/server grade quality hence the price. Maybe one day Apple will produce a low price mac pro…
mac os x the Software platform is definitely worth the while to build a hackintosh. a serious contender is about to emerge (windows 7!) later this year. If I find win7 better than osx I might switch back to windows after all :p