I was just curious if any of you out there have built a mac the way you wanted it to be built? If so what was the ease or complication compared to a pc and also what kind of a price difference was it from going out and just buying a comparably equipped Mac?
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Building a Mac
- Thread starter horsekack
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simsaladimbamba
Guest
Do you mean a Hackintosh?
Have you tried the following Hackintosh specific fora and websites yet?
Have you tried the following Hackintosh specific fora and websites yet?
Spend a couple of hours taking a look over Tonymacx86 - the wiki and the forums.
It has everything you need.
It has everything you need.
Thanks allot guys I'll be spending the next few days looking over all of the stuff on that site. Now in your opinions is it worth building one? I enjoy doing stuff and being hands on and figured I could be able to build me one that's as good or better then what I could get from the apple store for a cheaper price.
AcesHigh87
macrumors 6502a
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Making it is the easy part. The problem with them is that its not very stable by comparison. It's non-Apple hardware so if they get rid of compatibility you have your hands on a $2000 paperweight. It's usually best to just buy an actual Apple.
Making it is the easy part. The problem with them is that its not very stable by comparison. It's non-Apple hardware so if they get rid of compatibility you have your hands on a $2000 paperweight. It's usually best to just buy an actual Apple.
throAU
macrumors G4
I tried hackintoshing my PC (had a mini before trying it, wanted to get myself a high spec mac 😀).
I don't think its worth it.
I spent quite some time getting an EFI loader that would work with my hardware, my sound card didn't work, and I was constantly worried about whether software updates would break the machine.
Which, imho kinda defeats the purpose of having a Mac. Sure, the hardware spec may be better than what apple have on offer in your price bracket, but you lose out on so much else.
With real mac hardware I don't need to worry about mucking about trying to make the hardware work. It just does out of the box.
I mean its an interesting project to try out, but i wouldn't rely on a mackintosh as my primary machine.
I don't think its worth it.
I spent quite some time getting an EFI loader that would work with my hardware, my sound card didn't work, and I was constantly worried about whether software updates would break the machine.
Which, imho kinda defeats the purpose of having a Mac. Sure, the hardware spec may be better than what apple have on offer in your price bracket, but you lose out on so much else.
With real mac hardware I don't need to worry about mucking about trying to make the hardware work. It just does out of the box.
I mean its an interesting project to try out, but i wouldn't rely on a mackintosh as my primary machine.
ChristianVirtual
macrumors 601
What do you want to make different to Apple ? They doing quite some good job; don't they ?
Buy a Mac Mini to enjoy Apple in the easy way
AND
Build a Linux box.
Buy a Mac Mini to enjoy Apple in the easy way
AND
Build a Linux box.
throAU
macrumors G4
There is a MASSIVE gap in apple's lineup at the moment between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro.
Some people want the ability to upgrade video cards (and have PCI slots for other peripherals) without having to purchase a full-on 6 or 12 core Xeon for several thousand dollars. They also want more freedom of choice in terms of display, without needing to go to a Mac Pro.
At the moment, if I want an apple desktop with reasonably high end video, i have a choice between a 27" iMac, and a Mac Pro. The iMac video is not great, and the Mac Pro is MASSIVE overkill (and very expensive) if i only want the 3d card for gaming....
I don't play many recent PC games any more so its a bit of a moot point for me now, but it was what kept me off the Mac for a long time. I'd wanted a Mac since the intel switch, but the high end 3d video support just wasn't there.
Also, if you're a mac person and want a PC that will talk to it not running Windows, check out PC-BSD....
While I'd agree there's definitely a market for a headless iMac/Mac Mini Pro type system with a couple of expansion slots but not the overkill of a Mac Pro, you're getting closer to the point where you could actually DIY such a beast: If the MSI Gus II ships and does what it claims, you'll be able to put a midrange PCIe graphics card into an external Thunderbolt box and run it off any Mac with a TBolt port. Paired with a quad-core Mac Mini Server (with a pair of RAID0 drives internal, if you were so inclined), it's not a bad setup, in theory. Expensive, and you might be stuck using it for Windows due to lack of GPU drivers for the Mac, but not bad.
I'm skeptical that there's enough of a market for Apple to ever actually produce a MaxiMini, but you never know. Heck, if they do end up axing the Mac Pro, they might meet folks halfway by replacing it with such a beast.