I used my time without the hard drive to do a little research to try and find out if there was any explanation for why it would not boot into the hard drive without the USB drive. My research uncovered a couple of possible causes. One possibility was that it could be related to the size of the hard drive. Some people indicated that if the hard drive was partitioned more than 1 TB in size then it could cause some boot issues. Another possible cause of the problem was that it is a green hard drive. Several people indicated that they had issues with a Western Digital green hard drive. Even though my hard drive is a Seagate green hard drive, I still thought that it was reasonably possible that this could be the cause of the problem.

Once I received the new hard drive I got back to work on the project. Another thing I discovered while waiting on the new hard drive to come in from Newegg is that my SATA 3 ports are not Mac compatible. Therefore, I connected the hard drive to the SATA 2 port, but this did not solve my booting issues either. I went into disk utility and formatted the hard drive again.  This time I decided to partition the hard drive in 2 to 750 GB partitions rather than a single 1.5 TB partition. I also chose to install from a time machine backup. However, once I completed this process the results were the same. I was still unable to boot into the hard drive without USB. I spent quite a bit of time on both the OSX86Project.org forum and the TonyMacX86.com forum and tried various workarounds, but I never could get the hard drive to boot without the presence of the USB stick. So I finally came to the determination that the cause of the problem must be related to my green hard drive. I thought about sending the hard drive back and getting a different hard drive, but I got such a great deal on the hard drive I don’t think I could find a better deal on another one. (I got it for $69.99 on a day after Thanksgiving sale).  So I decided to go ahead and see if I can get everything else working properly and to be content with having to first boot into the USB before booting into the hard drive. To me this seems like a reasonable compromise since I can easily replace my USB drive and I have plenty of USB slots on my motherboard. (My USB drive will have to permanently reside plugged in to my Hackintosh so I’ll have to buy another one for day to day use)

The next thing I tried to do was work my way through the various functions of the computer to determine what was working out of the box and what was going to need tweaking. The ethernet was working perfectly. However, the audio and video were not working properly. I decided to tackle the video issues first since they were affecting my screen resolution and, frankly, the poor screen resolution was driving me crazy. It showed that I had two displays that were available and all of my programs or Finder windows that opened would open on the second display which is not a real display and I couldn’t see them. This was extremely frustrating but I finally temporarily resolved the issue by mirroring the displays. This did not fix my screen resolution, but it did allow me to see the Finder windows that were being opened and it allowed me to begin troubleshooting the problem.

The best screen resolution I could get was 1024 x 768. It showed my video card as a Radeon 5000 series which was correct, but it still would not give me the full resolution that my graphics card and monitor are capable of. I did some looking on the forums and found that other people were experiencing the same problem. However, none of the solutions I saw on the forum seemed to fix my problem. This became extremely frustrating and I spent several evenings working on it with no results. I finally decided to move on to a different issue and come back to this issue later.

I decided to move on to the audio. I tried several of the kexts that are included with MultiBeast, but could not get the audio to work. I finally discovered that my problem was that I had actually installed several audio kexts and, therefore, the computer did not know which one of them to use. I uninstalled all of the kexts, then reinstalled only the ALC 889 kext, and my audio worked perfectly!  I then got back to work on my video issues. I wish I knew what I did to finally fix the problem. I know that I tried using some of the older legacy kexts that are included with MultiBeast even though those are intended for the ATI 4800 series and I have the ATI 5000 series. However, just as you might expect, these did not fix my problem. All I know is that at some point I was able to go in to my System Preferences and adjust the display screen resolution to 1920 x 1080 and my display was no longer being mirrored as if there were two displays present. Once I had that working properly I decided to see if I could get my HDMI working. Much to my delight and surprise, it worked the first time I tried. I was then able to go in to my System Preferences and adjust the display screen resolution to1080p and run full HD on my monitor.

This was a very exciting day for me. I now had the Hackintosh booting into the USB and then into the hard drive (which I had already decided was going to be a reasonable compromise). Once I was booted into Lion, my networking, audio, and video were all working perfectly. It was now time to start looking at some of the peripherals I had purchased such as my DVD drive, bluetooth adapter, and webcam. Fortunately the DVD drive worked perfectly out-of-the-box and no other tweaks were needed. I then started working on the bluetooth adapter but could not get Lion to recognize it was even there. After doing some research on the forums, I realized that I simply made an error when I purchased this particular USB bluetooth adapter. Yes, there were a few people who were using that particular adapter, but the vast majority of people who had tried that adapter did not have success. Therefore I decided to cut my losses and return the USB adapter to Newegg and purchase a new USB adapter. I found a USB adapter that both InsanelyMac.com and TonyMacX86.com said would work perfectly out-of-the-box. However, this adapter was no longer being produced. I was able to find a refurbished adapter on Amazon and ordered one. I will update this entry as soon as it arrives and I have had time to test it. I will be surprised if it does not work out-of-the-box. UPDATE: The D-Link DBT-122 Bluetooth adapter arrived and works perfectly out-of-the-box with no issues at all!

The webcam I purchased worked out-of-the-box with no problems at all except that it seemed to be dropping a lot of frames and the video was very choppy. After doing some research, I discovered that Newegg head incomplete information on their website. Newegg stated that the camera would get 1280 x 960 pixels at 15 to 30 frames per second. However, Rosewill states on their website that 1280 x 960 will only get 5 to 9 frames per second. This was simply unacceptable to me I need a camera that hsd a better performance. Therefore, I located a new Logitech C510 and ordered it from eBay. I also returned the Rosewill RCM 2655V back to Newegg. The Logitech C510 arrived a few days ago and it is working perfectly. I have a demonstration of it in the video below.

Once I got everything working I decided to run the Macintosh through its paces and through several benchmark tests. I also did this for my iMac and I’ve included the in-depth analysis in a lengthy video attached below. In case the video is too long for you, I’v also included some screenshots below which will show you a side-by-side comparison of the performance of the two computers. I understand that this is not an apples to apples comparison (no pun intended) . However, it is the best comparison that I can do.

I understand that the hardware of the iMac is inferior to the hardware of the Hackintosh and, therefore, it will not perform at the level of the Hackintosh. However, this is not just a comparison of hardware, this is also a comparison of value. The iMac was purchased about six months ago on eBay for $800, used. The Hackintosh was built with brand-new hardware for $1100. So one must simply decide if a used iMac is worth saving $300 over a brand-new Hackintosh, and one must also consider if the headache and hassle of trying to get everything to work on the Hackintosh is worth the time. As I pointed out a previous post, to build a brand-new Apple computer with the same or very similar specifications as this Hacintosh, it would have cost me between $2800 and $4500. Yes, this did take much more time and lost of frustration, but I enjoy that sort of thing and find a lot of satisfaction in troubleshooting and solving these problems. I look at it as if I spent a couple of weeks working on a pet project, and at the end of the project I got to keep a really powerful computer. I also got that computer at a much cheaper price than I would have if I had ordered it directly from Apple.

There is no question if you look at the side-by-side comparisons in the videos or the images, that the Hackintosh video performance is far superior to the video performance of the iMac. I’m able to run my live podcast at full 720p streaming video and not even come close to maxing out the graphics card. The iMac could never even dream of giving me that type of capability with my video. As you can see the demonstration video, if I even attempt it on the iMac, the video is extremely choppy and cuts out frequently. Not to mention that it was putting the computer in danger of shutting down or causing damage because of the demand that was being put on the graphics card.

So now it’s time for you to give me your thoughts. Do you think was this a worthwhile process and did I did get a good value for my time and money?

It’s been a few weeks now since I first started building my Hackintosh and I have to say the experience was much more challenging than I thought it would be.  When I started the project I had about 4 hours each evening for about a week to complete the project.  Since this was not my first Hackintosh build, I thought that would be enough time.  I gave myself two evenings to put the project together and then I figured I would use the evenings through the rest of the week to troubleshoot any problems I had with audio not working or networking issues or any other similar types of problems that might crop up.

As I mentioned before, the Silencio 550 computer case that I chose has a reputation for having restricted airflow so as I put all the components together, it was really important for me to take my time and route all the cables so that they did not restrict airflow and open up the case is much as possible.  As you can see by the pictures I’ve attached, I think I did a pretty good job of keeping everything clean and neat inside the case and allow plenty of space for clean air flow. I also removed one of the hard drive racks to open up space inside the case even more and allow for complete unrestricted air flow. You may also remember that I chose to replace the stock fans of the computer case with some higher RPM fans and that I think was a good decision.  The fans I purchased are a little bit noisier, but the computer is operating at very cool temperatures and it is still within the noise specifications that I needed for my studio. The motherboard came equipped with all of the documentation that I needed to know where to attach the components, and the zip ties that came included with the computer case allowed me to manage all of the cables and keep them out of the way of air flow. It did take me a little bit longer to assemble the entire computer than I originally thought that it would.  This was in part due to the CPU cooler assembly. It is made to work with either Intel or AMD processors so I had to go through the instruction manual carefully to make sure that I used only the pieces that I needed for my processor and that it was assembled correctly.The end result is a very clean computer interior that has great airflow and delivers excellent performance.

After the assembly was complete, it was time to start installing my legal copy of Lion that I purchased from the Mac App store. I followed the guide found here from TonymacX86.com and used a legal copy of lion that I purchased from the Mac App Store. Before I started the actual installation of Lion, I went to Disk Utility and formatted the hard drive as a single 1.5 TB partition.  The first time I installed Lion I clicked on the Utilities menu and then chose “Restore System From Backup.” My Time Machine backup is over 400 GB in size, so this took a couple of hours to complete. After it was finished, all my programs and information were transferred accurately.  However, the hard drive was not booting into Lion without first booting via the USB, so I used the EasyBeast Install found in MultiBeast to try and fix this. Unfortunately, this still did not allow the hard drive to boot without first using the USB. I spent quite a bit of time on this and never could get it to boot properly. I finally decided that the problem might be related to my Time Machine backup, since it contains information from a non-Hackintosh machine. I decided to do a clean installation of Lion and I re-formatted the hard drive once again.

Lion was successfully installed in about 15 minutes. At the completion of the installation, it asked me if I wanted to “Transfer Information To This Mac.” I chose the “get info from Time Machine” option and the installation of the Time Machine backup took a couple of hours just asked before. I then went into MultiBeast and installed EasyBeast, but, once again, I could not get the hard drive to boot without the USB. I double checked and triple checked all of my settings on my BIOS and I tried several of the other options in MultiBeast including Chimera and UserDSDT Install. I also tried Repairing Permissions afterward.  After having no success, I decided that perhaps the Time Machine backup was still the problem, and I decided to once again format the hard drive, do a clean installation of Lion, and try to get the Hackintosh working without my Time Machine backup in the picture.

However, this time when I tried to install Lion, Disk Utility said that there was no hard drive available. I then rebooted the computer and this time it DID see the hard drive. I started installing Lion but after about 10 minutes the installation quit and it said that there was no hard drive. I then tried reformatting the hard drive again and was successful. However, this cycle of not seeing the hard drive, rebooting, seeing the hard drive, and the installation failing, continued to happen over and over again. Since the hard drive was still under warranty. I returned it to Newegg and they shipped me a replacement. However, this meant that I was not able to work on the project for a full week. To Be Continued…

After I discovered the sub-culture of silent PC entusiasts I mentioned in Part 1, it really got me excited about the possibility of building another Hackintosh. If I could have the power of top end components, house them in a near silent environment, keep them cooled properly AND do it all on my budget, then I would have the best possible scenario.

My search started by finding out what others were doing to build silent PCs. I found a couple of GREAT resources for this: Silent PC Review and and TonyMacx86. Fortunately, not only is TonyMacX86 a great silent PC site, it is also a great Hackintosh site. As I mentioned in Part 1, InsanelyMac is also a great Hackintosh site. I came to the conclusion that there are two main ways to keep your computer quiet; use as few fans as possible, and use a sound dampening computer case. There are also other strategies employed such as using a liquid cooling system and using a power supply that is designed to be used in a silent system.

My original budget was set at $800. I came up with this number based on what I thought I could get for my iMac. I knew I wanted a Core i7 processor, and I new I needed a reasonably powerful graphics card. I don’t to a lot of gaming, but I do edit a fair amount of video and I stream a lot of video. During the course of my research, I had a check come in for a website I recently built. I decided to use this extra income to beef up my budget if necessary or to get a nicer component if I felt it was worth it. My new goal was to keep the build under $1100, including a new LED backlit LCD monitor.

Here are the components I chose. I’ll explain my choices afterward.

Case: Cooler Master Silencio 550 ($99.99)
Case Fan: Scythe SY1225SL12M (3 @ $13.99 each = $41.97)
Motherboard: Gibabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3 ($109.99)
CPU: Intel Core i7 2600k 3.4 GHz ($314.95)
RAM: Corsair XMS3 4 GB x 4 (16 GB Total) ($67.98)
Video Card: AMD Raedeon HD 5670 with 1 GB DDR3 SDRAM ($42.99)
Hard Drive: Seagate Green SATA 3 1.5 TB ($69.99)
Power Supply: Antec Neo Eco 620c 620 Watt ($34.99)
CPU Cooler: Xigmatek Gaia SD1283 ($4.99)
Web Cam: Rosewill RCM-2655V ($14.99)
DVD Drive: LG GH22NS70 ($20.99)
Network Card: Rosewill RC-401-EX ($19.99)
Bluetooth Adapter: Asus USB-BT211 ($7.99)
Keyboard: Used Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad ($39.95)
Mouse: Used Apple Magic Trackpad ($48.00)
Monitor: Asus VS247H-P 24″ ($159.99)

Legal copy of OSX Lion from Mac App Store- $29.99

Total Build Cost: $1129.73

Compare this cost to a comparable iMac at $2,799 or a comparable Mac Pro at $4,474. It isn’t quite possible to get these exact specs on an iMac or Mac Pro, but the prices I’ve listed are as close as I could get without over stating the price of the genuine Apple machine. For example, it is not possible to get a 1.5 TB hard drive from Apple. So in both the case of the iMac and the Mac Pro, I quoted the lesser expensive 1 TB hard drive rather than the more expensive 2 TB hard drive.

Also in the case of the Mac Pro, I quoted the 3.33 GHz Xeon “Westmere” processor. Keep in mind that the Xeon and the i7 are brethren. They share nearly identical architecture and perform nearly identically when only one Core i7 is compared to a machine housing 1 Xeon processor. (Xeon processors are designed to run with multiple Xeon processors in the same system where Core i7 processors are not) I realize that although the Xeon and the Core i7 share similar architecture, they do not share similar price tags. Thus the iMac is a closer representation of the value of this build.

I definitely wanted a case with noise dampening. This generally means that the front air fans and the sides of the case have noise dampening foam, and the power supply mount, as well as the hard drive mounts have rubber pads to counteract vibration noise. I narrowed my choices down to the Antec P183, NZXT H2 and the Cooler Master Silencio 550. The Silencio 550 does not seem to have quite the air flow as the other two cases, but it has an SD card slot at the top of the case. I use the SD card slot a LOT so this was an important feature for me. I think that my choice to upgrade the fans and add a CPU cooler will offset the less than optimal air flow. I hope this strategy pays off.

I chose the AMD Radeon HD 5670 because Apple added these drivers in 10.6.7 which means it will work natively within OS X. Ideally I would have purchased a video card that did not have an on board fan so that the machine operates as quietly as possible. However, since the Silencio 550 has less than stellar air flow, I thought I’d go ahead and get a GPU with a fan. Several reviews on this card stated that the fan was very quiet.

Gigabyte motherboards have an excellent reputation for being Hackintosh compatible. It’s hard to go wrong with a Gigabyte board, but I still made sure I purchased one that had been used successfully by several people on InsanelyMac.com and TonyMacx86.com. I also learned from TonyMacx86.com that LG and Sony optical drives have a good reputation for working natively on Hackintosh builds. Therefore, I picked one that others had used with success.

I wanted my Hackintosh to have all the features of my iMac. This meant that I needed to add a webcam and bluetooth to my build. Both of the ones I selected have been used with success from other Hacintosh builders. I had a really difficult time finding a hard drive at a price I was comfortable with. I finally found a deal at Newegg that brought me a SATA 3 drive that has a quiet design. The trade off is in the drive RPM speed. It’s a 5400 RPM drive instead of a 7200 RPM drive. But the slower speed gives me quieter performance. I hope that the SATA 3 speed will help make up for the RPM speed loss.

I REALLY like the quality of the screen in my iMac. I did NOT want to sacrifice this quality. I currently have the late 2009 21.5″ iMac. Apple states that this display has a rating of 320 cd/m2 and a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels. The monitor I purchased has a rating of 300 cd/m2 and a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels. I really hope I’m as impressed with it as I am the iMac. Since it is the same amount of pixels spread across a somewhat larger screen (21.5″ vs 24″) I suspect it won’t be quite as crisp. However, the screen will be bigger, so I think I’ll like the slight trade off.

I worked really hard to find compatible parts at a good or great price. I really doubt I could have built this computer at these specs for this price had I not done my research and been prepared to purchase when Black Friday came. I was able to spot good deals when I saw them and act quickly before the item sold out. I was able to score Black Friday deals on the RAM, GPU, Power Supply, Hard Drive, Monitor and CPU Cooler. Because I had done such a good job (at least in my mind) of finding great deals, I went ahead and splurged on the genuine Apple keyboard and Magic Trackpad-but I did save a few bucks by getting them used.

One final note. I went ahead and purchased a separate network card even though the motherboard comes equipped with Gigabit LAN. I did this because I had network connections with my last Hackintosh build. If the ethernet port on the motherboard works like it should, then I will return the extra network card to Newegg.

All of the parts should arrive over the next 4 days. Once they all arrive I’ll do some unboxing videos and document the build experience. I will also run benchmark tests to compare my current iMac to the new Hackintosh build.

In January of 2009 I purchased my first Mac computer. It was a used Macbook that I found on eBay and it didn’t take long for me to become a Mac enthusiast. While I originally purchased the Macbook because I believed GarageBand would help me take my podcast to the next level, it turned out that I ended up liking the Mac for many reasons other than GarageBand. I also discovered that I’m not a big fan of GarageBand for podcast editing. But editing audio on my small 13″ Macbook screen was not as efficient as I wanted and I soon found myself longing for a bigger screen and easier to use mouse. I wanted a Mac Pro or an iMac, but those were too expensive for my limited budget. My solution? I decided to build a Hackintosh.

A Hackintosh is a custom built PC that is able to run Apple’s OS X. Since Apple started issuing computers with Intel processors in 2006, building a Hackintosh has become relatively simple. It is a process that must be approached with care, but if you are willing to put in the time studying forums and researching PC parts, then you can be rewarded with a great performing OS X computer for a fraction of the price that you would pay Apple. Of course, you will be giving up some of the sleek, sexy styling that Apple packs all their computers into.

My first Hackintosh was based on a Shuttle SP35V2 barebones system. I added a Core 2 Quad Core Q8400 2.66 GHz processor, 1.5 GB of RAM, an ATI Radeon HD 4550 graphics processor with 512MB of DDR3 SDRAM and a 320 GB hard drive. Some of the parts I used were ones that I had on hand already, so I’m not sure how much it actually cost me to build it. I think it was about $350. It went pretty smoothly except for some frustration trying to get the ethernet and sound working properly. But a few helpful folks over at the InsanelyMac forum helped solve those issues.

I continued to use the Hackintosh through June of 2011 and update it with Apple’s software updates with NO issues. My only problem with the Hackintosh was the noise. The Shuttle system I based my build on was known for great air flow. But this came at the cost of having very noisy fans. The fans might not have been so bad, but my Hackintosh sits in my recording studio. Unwanted noise is not welcome in my studio. I don’t know if anyone else could hear it in the background of my podcasts, but I could, and that was enough. So in June of 2011 I decided to shop around on eBay and see if I could find an iMac at a price that fit my budget. After a few weeks of looking, I finally found one and purchased it. I LOVE the iMac. In fact, I’m writing this blog post from that iMac. It’s sleek, quiet and does almost all that I need it to. That’s right, ALMOST.

It’s a Core 2 Duo 3.06 GHz with 8 GB of RAM and a NVIDIA 9400M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory. The processor is a step down from my former Hackintosh, but I got a big boost in the system RAM so it actually out performs the Hackintosh in audio editing speeds. But my Hackintosh had a 512 MB graphics card and the iMac just hasn’t performed up to my needs in this area. Unfortunately, this is not something I can upgrade on the iMac, so I had decided to be content with the less than desired performance.

That is, until I ran across an article on how to build a silent Hackintosh! Believe it or not, there is a whole sub-culture of silent PC enthusiasts out there that I never knew existed. After doing some research, I decided I would try and come up with a silent Hackintosh build that would have LOTS of power and still be quiet enough to reside in my studio. Well, I wouldn’t be writing this if I hadn’t decided to build a silent Hackintosh, so I must have found what I needed, right? I’ll cover my research and the components I chose in Part 2.