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nobodynose's Non-Profit Build: Intel Core i5-4460 - GA-H81M-HD2 - 8GB RAM - Intel HD 4600 Graphics (

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nobodynose

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Motherboard
ASRock Z370M Pro4
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i7-8700
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RX 560
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nobodynose's Non-Profit Build: Intel Core i5-4460 - GA-H81M-HD2 - Intel HD 4600 Graphics

rosewill-fbm01.jpg


Components

Gigabyte GA-H81M-HD2 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00I6DLK3O

Intel Core i5-4460 Haswell Socket 1150 CPU w/Intel HD 4600 Graphics
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JIJUBAS

Crucial Ballistix Sport Very Low Profile 8GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A14ZTWE

Rosewill FBM-01 MicroATX Mini Tower Computer Case
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00G6TAAWC

Corsair CX430M 430 Watt ATX/EPS Modular 80 Plus Bronze Power Supply
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ALYORA4

Kingston Digital 240GB SSDNow V300 SATA3 SSD
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A1ZTZNM

TP-Link TL-WDN4800 Dual Band Wireless N900 PCIe WiFi Adapter
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007GMPZ0A

Acer G6 Series G206HQLbd 19.5" Widescreen 1600x900 LED Backlight LCD monitor
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DZT96C6

Mac OSX Mavericks 10.9.4 (downloaded from Mac App Store)
Mac OSX Mavericks 10.9.4


Comments

I built these three identical systems for a non-profit for which a very good friend of mine is executive director.

This non-profit has a very small paid staff (4 employees). The staff uses Mac OS X for all office administration, coordination of volunteers, grant application writing, etc. The machines that were replaced by these Hackintoshes were vintage iMac G5's, stuck on some version of OS X Leopard 10.5.

The main idea behind this build was to keep the machines as inexpensive and as reliable as possible - the non-profit's offices are in Taos, NM, an hour's drive from my home in Santa Fe, NM. I don't want to be making a lot of support trips up to Taos.

When shopping for components for these machines, I was able to get some good deals, which kept the cost down to $586.11 per machine (monitor included, keyboard and mouse not included, as they'll use existing ones).

The builds went very smoothly - I couldn't have asked for an easier build! The only problem I ran into was that the audio driver from MultiBeast 6.4.2 simply would not work. I had to use MultiBeast 6.2.2 (with only audio specified) to get the onboard ALC887 audio working (after using MultiBeast 6.4.2 for everything else).


MultiBeast Configurations

MB642Config.png
(MultiBeast 6.4.2)

MB622Config.png
(MultiBeast 6.2.2)​
 
Very nice budget build. :clap: I'm certain that the speed of these new CustoMacs must
be mighty impressive to the users at the non-profit agency. For anyone doing a similar
build on a budget, you can substitute an I3-4340 or 4360 to save a little more money
on the CPU if you don't need a quad core. A quad core 2012 Mac Mini with SSD and
8GB of ram would cost at least 3-400 dollars more than this build did and not even
include the monitor.

I checked out what the 2.3 GHz quad core I7 Mac mini with 8GB of ram and a 256 GB
ssd upgrade would cost. Comes to $1,099 USD. I'm sure that is a very fast Mac Mini
but at over $500 more in price I would go with the CustoMac Mini any day. :thumbup:
 
Last edited:
Very nice budget build. :clap: I'm certain that the speed of these new CustoMacs must
be mighty impressive to the users at the non-profit agency. For anyone doing a similar
build on a budget, you can substitute an I3-4340 or 4360 to save a little more money
on the CPU if you don't need a quad core. A quad core 2012 Mac Mini with SSD and
8GB of ram would cost at least 3-400 dollars more than this build did and not even
include the monitor.

Thank you very much :D I haven't gotten feedback yet from the users (as I've been traveling a lot since they were delivered), but I'll ask the director what he thinks and what he's heard from them.

I gave the non-profit's director the choice of using an i3 instead of an i5 to save a little more money; he decided that since these machines are likely to be in use for several years (like their existing iMacs), he wanted the faster CPU so they'll "be faster, longer".
 
The non-profit organization wants 3-4 more hacks to be used for a new after-school program they're starting. So I'll be doing another set. Since it's very doubtful I'll want to use the same hardware I used 6 months ago, I'll do a new post once I've completed the specs and/or the builds.

UPDATE: The additional builds are done - here's the link to the build description: http://www.tonymacx86.com/user-buil...h97m-itx-ac-8gb-ram-intel-hd-4600-clover.html
 
Anything to report as a follow up on this 1.5 years later ?
Have you had many support calls from this organization ?
Have they updated the OS and had any problems ?

Just curious how this has worked out.
 
Anything to report as a follow up on this 1.5 years later ?
Have you had many support calls from this organization ?
Have they updated the OS and had any problems ?

Just curious how this has worked out.

The director of the organization is technically savvy enough to have handled all the minor support himself, so no, I've had no support calls (he happens to be a friend as well, so he wouldn't hesitate to ask for help if he had needed it).

I did have a conversation with him last week about doing some maintenance/updates on the systems, including updating the OS to something more current, so that's probably coming up in the next couple of weeks. I'll post how that goes.
 
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