It’s no secret that I am a Mac user and enthusiast. My 24″ Intel iMac finally processed its last bit on Monday after serving me well since late 2006. This gave me “motivation” for getting a new Mac, and instead of buying a new iMac, I decided to build a Hackintosh. A number of months ago I built a Hackintosh for the first time and found it to be a great project as well as a cost saver.
What is a Hackintosh? It’s a desktop computer built from Mac-compatible PC parts (“hacked”) that will allow the Mac OS X operating system to be installed on it and operate as a normal Mac would.
Today I purchased the parts for the new Hackintosh rig. For this Part 1 of this series I am simply sharing the list of the items I purchased. Part 2 will be putting the physical parts together and will include photos. Part 3 will be installing the required software (the bootloader) and the Mac OS, of course.
By the way…building a computer from scratch isn’t for the faint-hearted, but with some Christian patience and planning it can be an enjoyable experience and save you considerable cost as well. Note: Building your own Mac is not supported by Apple and is in violation of their End User License Agreement (unless it is for personal, experimental purposes — in other words, it is illegal to build Hackintoshs for the purpose of selling to make a profit). Don’t expect to get technical support from Apple for a Hackintosh.
The List
The links go to the item on Amazon.com.
- NZXT ATX Full Tower Steel Chassis — Phantom White
- ASUS P8Z68-V LX LGA 1155 Z68 Motherboard
- D-Link WiFi PCIe Wireless Network Card
- Lite-On DVD Burner
- G.Skill Ripjaws 8 GB RAM (2 x 4 GB)
- Seagate 2TB SATA Hard Drive
- Belkin Mini Bluetooth Adapter
- Corsair 650-Watt Power Supply
- Intel Core i7-2600 Processor 3.4 GHz with 8 MB Cache (“Growr!”)
- ASUS 24″ LED Monitor
That’s it. I’m using my existing Apple Magic Mouse and Apple Keyboard. If you want a more “Mac-like” experience, getting those will help — not to mention they are great products — but you can use your existing USB or Bluetooth mouse and keyboard if you desire.
Here are optional items, but items I will be adding to my rig in a few months:
- Syba PCIe Firewire 800 & 400 Card
- OCZ Technology 120 GB Solid State Drive (SSD)
- EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Superclocked 2 Gb PCIc Graphics Card (“Vroom!”)
The “Syba” PCIe Card will add the ability to use external “Firewire” devices such as hard drives and cameras that need such an interface. The “OCZ” solid state drive is a RAM-based drive. Because it is a memory-based drive and not a physical hard drive it tremendously speeds-up read/write time. Keep the Seagate hard drive mentioned in the previous list to for back-ups just in case the RAM drive ever fails (those things happen). The “EVGA GeForce” graphics card will greatly speed-up your on-screen rendering. Since the motherboard I chose in the first list has an on-board graphics system you might not need it, unless you do intense graphics work (as I do) or want to add more than 2 monitors for a multiple display system.
If the computer chassis (case) I chose above is not your style then I recommend the following:
Purchasing the “Antec” case will eliminate the need to purchase the “Corsair” power supply in the first list because the “Antec” case already comes with a good power supply.
Other Optional Items You Might Enjoy
Note: You’ll need the Bluetooth adapter mentioned in the top list to make use of the wireless products listed above.
See you in Part 2!