natedogg624 Posted September 23, 2011 Report Share Posted September 23, 2011 (edited) i was considering getting a mac mini when i realized from my young college days I could build a much better computer for the same price the mini is worth. i understand the process of getting the software to work, i've seen the websites of combatible hardware, my problem is finding out what works with what. ie if i choose motherboard a, what processor works with a or what video card do i need... Edited September 23, 2011 by natedogg624 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheBrown57 Posted September 23, 2011 Report Share Posted September 23, 2011 I had a friend that built one I can try and get a hold of his email and see if he's willing to help ya Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Siacono Posted September 23, 2011 Report Share Posted September 23, 2011 Almost any Intel chip set and cpu will work just double check the SSE instruction set for cpu, also Apple comps usually use ATI graphics cards....Last time I built one I used an old P4 w/HT Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh1234 Posted September 23, 2011 Report Share Posted September 23, 2011 I did it with a Dell Mini 9 netbook. It was 100% compatibility, hardware wise, and was the cheapest way for me to get an intel mac at the time. Didn't like the non-standard keyboard, though, and sold it on eBay. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jblosser Posted September 23, 2011 Report Share Posted September 23, 2011 I triple-boot my Dell laptop: Win 7, Crunchbang Linux (#!), and OSX.Only tough part was messing with the kext files to get wireless and sound working.Any Intel-based mobo should work fine.Since you're violating Apple's rulez by installing on non-Apple hardware, at least make it semi-legit by buying a copy of OSX at your local Crapple store. It's only $25 or $30 bucks. As an alternative, you could build a virtual OSX machine and run it in Virtual box. May want to try that first to see if you really need a machine that boots straight into OSX. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mykill Posted December 29, 2011 Report Share Posted December 29, 2011 http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2011/06/building-sandy-bridge-customac.htmlI was thinking about trying one of these to replace my existing desktop. I wish they had something in between the mini and pro. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JStump Posted December 29, 2011 Report Share Posted December 29, 2011 Osxproject86.org has pretty much all the info you need, I almost made one just for fun using this site. Just be warned that by doing this, you will not be getting 2 of the biggest benefits of the os which is stability and performance. The os is designed for specific hardware so when you start throwing stuff at it that it was never meant to run on it slows down a lot and tends to crash on occasion, but being a windows user currently you should be used to that lol.I would also recommend the virtual machine route, except I prefer vmware since I am a windows/vmware admin at work lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jporter12 Posted December 29, 2011 Report Share Posted December 29, 2011 it slows down a lot and tends to crash on occasion, but being a windows user currently you should be used to that lol. I can't remember the last time my Win7 laptop crashed, outside of using a generic battery making poor connection causing it to lose the suspended session when I go to restart when I get where I'm going. Hardly the fault of Win7. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jporter12 Posted December 29, 2011 Report Share Posted December 29, 2011 I have to admit that I've always been a little bit mac-curious, but never enough to actually pay the inflated price for a mac. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mykill Posted December 29, 2011 Report Share Posted December 29, 2011 Is there loss of performance/mac reliability with one of these builds? I would like to go mac on my next desktop but I am not paying for a mac pro and a mac mini doesnt meet my needs which is why I was looking to build one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jblosser Posted December 29, 2011 Report Share Posted December 29, 2011 Is there loss of performance/mac reliability with one of these builds?Shouldn't be. Hardware's hardware, for the most part. Note that Apple uses Radeon (AMD) graphics in their non-laptop devices, so if you're building from scratch that's something to think about.Assuming a clean drive, and assuming you want to dual boot Windows and OS X, install OS X first, then Windows, mark the OS X partition as active (Windows will mark itself as active), then you're good to go. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JStump Posted December 29, 2011 Report Share Posted December 29, 2011 Is there loss of performance/mac reliability with one of these builds?Well let's put it this way, tests have shown that windows runs better on a Mac than on a pc. So the pc already lost the performance battle, so putting osx on a pc will not give you the same performance as if it were on a similarly equipped Mac. Reliability will be ok as long as you do not update the OS without first waiting for the go ahead from the hackintosh community to say it is stable. In the end, it really comes down to the guts of the machine. Apple makes all of their parts or has strict guidelines for how a part is to be made so they know every Mac will run osx without a hitch or if there is a hitch it is fixed quickly due to a small hardware pool they need to test fixes on. PCs on the other hand are built from thousands of different parts and windows has to accommodate this, sometimes not very well. Granted this has gotten much better with windows 7 but it is still not an OS tailored to specific hardware. Overall, it will work but just expect hiccups occasionally. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jblosser Posted December 29, 2011 Report Share Posted December 29, 2011 Well let's put it this way, tests have shown that windows runs better on a Mac than on a pc...Windows runs better in a virtual environment than it does on physical hardware... Much better.Having used Win 7 since it was beta, I can say that I haven't seen it crash (i.e. blue screen) once. I was able to get Server 2008 to blue screen once. <That> was a fun day.(I am not a Windows fanboi, but I administer a couple hundred Windows servers). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JStump Posted December 29, 2011 Report Share Posted December 29, 2011 Windows runs better in a virtual environment than it does on physical hardware... Much better.Having used Win 7 since it was beta, I can say that I haven't seen it crash (i.e. blue screen) once. I was able to get Server 2008 to blue screen once. was a fun day.(I am not a Windows fanboi, but I administer a couple hundred Windows servers).Yes, windows runs amazing as a vm, this is basically the same reason osx runs amazing on a Mac. VMs are run on "Virtual hardware" which is tailored to work best with windows.And I see server 2008 machines bluescreen atleast once a week lol. I do work with about 400 servers though(about 70% are VMs). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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