Things I should know before building a MacPro.

Not worth it

Hi,

By the time you purchase all the parts you will have exceeded the price of a new Mac Pro from Apple. Remember, Apple parts are NOT cheap.. You are best served by buying either a refurbished Mac Pro or a new one, refurb is the way to go if you want somewhat less expensive.

The only Mac Pro which will cost you under 1000 is the 1,1 or possibly 2,1 Mac Pro, but those are over 6 years old and the newer ones 3,1 4,1 and 5,1 all run the latest OS Mountain Lion.

You don't built a MacPro, you buy them, or do you mean a Hackintosh, if so the wrong thread.

I found this link some time back, here on MR I believe. It should address your questions.

http://lifehacker.com/5841604/the-always-up+to+date-guide-to-building-a-hackintosh

Rustin said:

How about a link to the Hackintosh area? For some reason I can't find it.

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Should have said wrong site, There's not much here on MR about Hackintosh.
It's easy to find with google, can't say here.

Surely there'd be 2nd-hand parts on eBay etc for putting together a Mac Pro? Surely? A chassis from a 2009+ model, power supply (or a bigger one?)? Just need a working logic board and CPU daughter card.

Rustin said:

How about a link to the Hackintosh area? For some reason I can't find it.

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Have you tried the following Hackintosh specific fora and websites yet?

• tonymacx86 Blog - very good guides and quite good message board
• InsanelyMac Forum
• InsanelyMac Hardware Database
• Hackintosh.com
• OSx86 Project

Do a search for Tonymacosx86 - There you will find out how to build your franken mac

Snow Leopard runs really great on my Gateway P-7805U FX, and so does Lion with the exception of a few things which I already have alternatives for.. but for some reason ML won't run.

But for my purposes, Snow runs great.

Rustin said:

How about a link to the Hackintosh area? For some reason I can't find it.

Click to expand...

scottrichardson said:

Surely there'd be 2nd-hand parts on eBay etc for putting together a Mac Pro? Surely? A chassis from a 2009+ model, power supply (or a bigger one?)? Just need a working logic board and CPU daughter card.

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What would be the point? It wouldn't necessarily be cheaper than buying one outright. I don't think you would find a chassis only. You might find one that is not working and sold for parts. A logic board would set you back quite a lot. It's probably a better idea just purchasing a working unit and making upgrades if they are required.

If you are looking for a Mac Pro at a budget, a good option is to buy a used Mac Pro 4,1. They are virtually identical to the latest 5,1 models, and can be upgraded to 5,1 firmware (see netkas forum), after which you can also upgrade its CPU(s) to W36* or X56* models.

By buying a 4,1 model and possibly upgrading its CPU, you could get a single sixe core Xeon W3680 machine for about 1500$, a dual quad for 1500-2000$ depending on the speed.

You will have a hard time building a better or faster hackintosh for less money (a very high-end case alone can cost a lot of money), but of course the above machine is a second hand one, without warranty.

Note that you can not currently build a Xeon-based hackintosh that is fully compatible with Mac OS X. The highest-end hackintoshs that are fully compatible, including power management, are based on a Core i7 3770k, a quad core desktop CPU. It is overclockable, which means that you can get a lot of power for your money, but it won't match the 12 cores Mac Pro or the 16 cores workstations that would theretically be possible with the latest Xeon CPUs.

As PowerPCMacMan pointed out it is actually more expensive to buy parts and assemble a MacPro then it is to buy used (and even new where applicable) units. I price this out myself every 18 months or so when I'm bored.

Then of course you may end up like the guy here about a year or so ago who bought all the parts to spec, assembled everything, and it didn't work. I think he spent a whole month racking his brain and asking questions here before he gave up and put the parts back up on e-bay one by one. LOL

fiatlux said:

Note that you can not currently build a Xeon-based hackintosh that is fully compatible with Mac OS X. The highest-end hackintoshs that are fully compatible, including power management, are based on a Core i7 3770k, a quad core desktop CPU.

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Just one note, you can get extreme edition of Core processor that has six cores. See this video series on YT:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwaW6HR9dw4

comatory said:

Just one note, you can get extreme edition of Core processor that has six cores. See this video series on YT:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwaW6HR9dw4

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Afaik, 6 cores i7 processors use the same socket as entry-level xeons, and need the type of motherboards that are not fully supported.

I once wanted to build my own Mac Pro, with original parts sourced from various places. What a loony idea that was, looking back...

fiatlux said:

Afaik, 6 cores i7 processors use the same socket as entry-level xeons, and need the type of motherboards that are not fully supported.

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Oh yeah, that's true. Didnt realize it at the moment.