How to convince my parents to let me get a Hackintosh/Gaming PC

I've done pretty much everything

• good grades
• homework
• offer to pay for it
• offer to pay for some of it
• not nag my parents 24/7
• offer to do chores
• and pretty much everything else

So yeah please help me

My build roughly is £1500 (without monitor). My aim is to make a hackintosh of equal or more power for cheaper than a £3000 iMac. What's not to like.

I will use the computer for homework, 3d stuff and of course video games (the windows partition).

Basically I'm stuck and both my parents are psychologists, psychoanalysts, and psychotherapists. My dad hates anything video games and thinks no matter what they are stupid.

MangoIce said:

I've done pretty much everything

• good grades
• homework
• offer to pay for it
• offer to pay for some of it
• not nag my parents 24/7
• offer to do chores
• and pretty much everything else

So yeah please help me

My build roughly is £1500 (without monitor). My aim is to make a hackintosh of equal or more power for cheaper than a £3000 iMac. What's not to like.

I will use the computer for homework, 3d stuff and of course video games (the windows partition).

Basically I'm stuck and both my parents are psychologists, psychoanalysts, and psychotherapists. My dad hates anything video games and thinks no matter what they are stupid.

Click to expand...

How old are you? In all honesty, start with the college/career prospects that require a Mac. Tell your dad you want to be a software engineer and you want to build iPad and iPhone apps. Tell him it's your passion and show him all the relevant information related to that career (how much they make per year, the schools you would want to go to for it) don't even talk about the Mac. In fact, let the Mac be like, some obscure detail related to it.

Tell him a few app ideas that you have and bring up some success stories.

Tell him that you're also interested in building your own graphics for the applications because they have to look good.

Again. Do not, under any circumstances, bring up the need for a Mac. Focus on the career, the goal, the schools, the dreams. Show him that Android development is less than 1% as profitable as iOS development.

Don't bring up the Mac.

When he starts researching it, he will see that a Mac is the only way to go. The only way for his son to achieve his dream career, to succeed in the school he chooses, is to have a Mac. He might price around, might talk to your mom. Show him how disappointed you are that a Mac Pro is recommended and how much it costs. Tell him, "I don't want to burden you and mom with an expensive computer because all I'm going to use it for is programming." Then if you can get him to the buying phase, tell him that you found a site that encourages people to build their own Macs.

Tell him about the benefits: you'll build useful skills for yourself by assembling yourself. He'll save thousands because the parts are much cheaper than official Apple machines. You'll have 3-5 year warranties on all of the hardware. It'll last you until college. Tell him, "The cool thing about Mac OSX is that it's not full of viruses or stupid games like Windows is." Use the lack of popular games on Mac as evidence that you won't be distracted on a home-built Mac.

Make the Hackintosh look like some kind of cost saving alternative that will help HIM as a parent to fund your future. Don't ever use the word gaming and don't buy a GPU that has the word gaming on it. Stick to boards like the D3H or some other UD3P board.

Tell your parents you want to start a app design company or something along those lines , don't mention video games... that you can do when there not home.

I've done the "software engineer" stuff and that a Mac is the only way to go, we all are apple fans in my family.
I have mentioned that a Hackintosh is cheaper.
I have excluded the word gaming.
I'm 14.
I have done all the research about Hackintoshes thanks to tonymac. He's just not onboard of me building my computer, because apple stores have apple geniuses who are "helpful" and theres guarantee if something messes up but still. In the long run a Hackintosh is cheaper and I have said these things to him. Yes t seems a bit out of my league for my age to build a computer, but my best friend has built one himself and knows quite a lot. There is also the internet.

You might also tell your Dad that once you've got some build experience he'll also save a
lot of money on repairs / upgrades further down the road. Once Apple Care runs out on
a Mac (1 year) things can get really expensive to repair or replace.

that is true

£1500? Dude! Total overkill surely... try slashing the price a bit (unless your parents are minted).

Yeah hackintoshing and PC building could be quite challenging for a 14 year old - you could try going some way to assuaging your parents' doubts about you being able to do it. But given that you've never built a PC before...

Perhaps see if you can get your hands on some OS X compatible hardware (something in the house?), an extra hard drive (or even just a large pen drive) and demonstrate a working hackintosh. Seeing is believing. If you don't know how to go about this then I would suggest they have every justification in doubting your ability to set one up.

Seriously though.. £1500 for a first build. What specs are you looking?

Tuscarora makes a valid point. If your build would cost that much I can see why your Father is
not trusting you to attempt a build on hardware that will be paid for out of his pocket.
You have a couple of options that may help convince Dad to let you do this. Pick out compatible
parts from the Buyer's Guide, give the list to a local pc building shop that will do the complete
build for you, without installing an OS of course. Then you really can't do any harm installing
OS X on the hard drive. Your Dad can then see just how well a Customac can perform and will
probably want to use it himself.

Other option would be to try a budget build yourself so there is a smaller investment and less risk
involved. Take a look at the how low can you go build by Tony. You can always put a medium cost
I5 in it and an SSD boot drive to make it very fast. Let your Dad see how good it works and then
later on add in a good gaming graphics card so you can have some fun too.

Good luck in whatever you choose to do. Let us know how it all works out.

http://www.tonymacx86.com/buying-advice/118150-building-budget-haswell-build-how-low-can-you-go.html

I've been looking at cutting down costs which I've been able to find here and there, haven't recalculated.

Yes it is overly determined

I don't live in America.

My friend has got a computer which he is currently completely upgrading so i can mess with those parts.

I don't have anything lying around the house just really old terrible laptops which run xp or vista.

I've had an idea which I hadn't thought of before which is writing full instructions of how I'm going to build the computer, which I'm going to do.

I know some reliable people to check about parts: one is a computer technician in the army, another who works for some company, also some person who is in sales at Square Enix.

My aims for this computer is the following:

• do homework ( word processing, and light CAD) in the Hackintosh partition.
• In the windows partition play games and programs that won't run in OS X.
• The reason for the GTX 980 is because I'm aiming at getting Battlefield 4 to run on ultra everything at a decent frame rate.

Not sure what I'm forgetting.

OK, you might want to try some reverse psychology on them and act like you may leave the family tradition of the cult of mac.
Since you have some old windows laptops, check into installing windows 10 technical preview on them. I have done several old laptops and they run well on w10. Even Cortana voice assistant works on them. But... the idea is not to go there in the end but to get their attention and have them see you are going in the "dreaded" windows direction. Point out that w10 is free till October and that it has an xbox app that will let you see all your xbox achievements and friends information. My nephews really liked that feature since they are xbox nuts. When your parents see that you are really interested and interested in going a different direction than mac... it may just swing them over.