Hackintosh makers..... can you help me from making a mistake on my build?

[dad@home]

I've been following the threads below particularly from M A V I C, panoticon and blu, and have been salivating about building my first hackintosh.

I am replacing a Dual G5 2.5GHz tower so I know almost any build will be a big improvement. This machine will be used primarily for playing World of Warcraft and some photo management/manipulation. I would like fast but not bleeding edge performance. I will be installing Snow Leopard.

Please comment on price/performance ratios, unbalanced or incompatible components or even feel free to comment on my mental health!

Prices are from newegg.

GA-P55M-UD2 $105
i5-750 Lynnfield 2.66GHz $199
EVGA 512-P3-N871-AR GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB $135
WD Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB 32MB Cache SATA $85
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) $89
Rosewill Green Series RG630-2 630W Power supply $65
COOLER MASTER RC-690-KKN1-GP Black SECC/ ABS ATX Mid Tower Computer Case $70

total: $748

Newegg also offers a "combo deal" with a larger (?slower--5200rpm) drive, different case/power supply and without a video card for $571

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundl...mbo.306543

Adding the above video card makes the total $706

comments?.... Go for the combo deal?..... go for an i7?.....get more ram?.......buy someplace else........

Thanks!

Dad

[DRR]

I'll let MAVIC pan and blu comment onthe CPU/mobo/video... but if you are doing a fair amount of photo management (iphoto/aperture/lightroom libraries) I would get a faster drive than the WD Caviar Green.

These days of multi-core CPUs and DDR3 RAM and 64 bit operating systems, I find that the speed bottleneck on many systems is the disk performance. Of course you need to tune the system to what you plan on doing with it, but for the most part, I think the biggest most immediate speed gains can be realized from improved disk performance.

[jdc]

i wouldnt take anything less than 8 gig of ram anymore

[M A V I C]

Motherboard
I'm not a big fan of the UD2. And the P55A's are out. They have USB3 and SATA 6Gb/s. That said, I think that's the board tonymacx86 used and he's one of the main people providing support on this. It's good to find someone who's got everything working and copy their setup. http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/

Make sure whatever board you get is linked in blue here http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2009/12/d...oards.html

Apparently with the non "A" boards you have to be extra careful inserting the CPU. Those pins get damaged really easily.

Video card
Seems a bit expensive for a 9800GTX.

Hard drive
With 7200 RPM drives being just a little more expensive, I'd go that route. I have a SSD for a boot drive and 1.5GB 5900 RPM Seagate for data. It's a fast drive but if it were my boot drive I'd go a little faster.

PSU
I really don't know how Rosewill stacks up. This is one area you don't want to skimp. 500W would probably be enough. Mine is 420W.

Case
It looks like the case fans have three wires which means you can connect them to the mobo and they will be temp sensitive. It's going to be a heavy case but if you're not moving it much it doesn't matter. You may end up replacing fans if they're loud. Mine is nearly silent. I see that one has an LED fan in the front...

You know, you're getting a micro ATX board so you could go smaller. Of course, they're harder to work in and you have to make sure things like your video card will fit.

All in all it looks pretty good. I'd make sure you're following that tonymacx86 site and don't try anything not listed there. PSU doesn't matter so much as long as it's good quality. ATi cards are offering more bang for the buck, but you're not going high end and nvidia does have better hackintosh support.

If you live near a Microcenter, the i5 and i7 are much cheaper there. I only have 4GB right now and it's fine. I'm waiting for the price of 4GB chips to come down.

[M A V I C]

jdc wrote:
i wouldnt take anything less than 8 gig of ram anymore

I never see my system using more than 4GB of RAM. Photoshop, InDesign, Flash, Illustrator, Word, Excel, Safari, Firefox, Chrome... each with a dozen or two windows open...

[mikebw]

DRR wrote:
These days of multi-core CPUs and DDR3 RAM and 64 bit operating systems, I find that the speed bottleneck on many systems is the disk performance.

Truly, and especially with multicore aware apps RAM is more of an issue too. I run into RAM issues in After Effects a lot because you must allocate a certain amount (1GB or more) per core so unless you have at least as many gigs as you do cores you won't be able to fairly utilize the processors you have.

[dad@home]

Thank you all.

I have more studying to do!

Dad

[Dick Moore]

Dad, whoever said i7 has my support. And I think 4GB RAM is enough for now. The link to tonymac is good, study that. And check out
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.p...pic=180954

[anonymouse1]

For about $80 more you can get an EX58 Gigabyte board. And microcenter is selling i7 920's for about $190. That's what I'd go for, myself.

[M A V I C]

anonymouse1 wrote:
For about $80 more you can get an EX58 Gigabyte board. And microcenter is selling i7 920's for about $190. That's what I'd go for, myself.

price v performance, p55 is a better deal. Down the road, if someone wants to go 6-8 core without having to upgrade their mobo, or if they're going to go SLI with a monitor larger than 24", then that may be the way to go.