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.