El's Deskintosh

ElAwesome · Feb 19, 2013

Hey guys,

This forum made my little hackintosh project reality, thank you very much for that!
Meanwhile playing with the software, I was planning this build. Enjoy!
My biggest inspiration was l3p's d3sk, I absolutely love it.
So I decided to build something similar

The name is made up from desk and Macintosh (Macintosh because I'm gonna dual-boot Win7 and OS X from it), just in case you wonder.
Further down in this post you'll see an image of the desk where I'm going to place all the stuff.

What do I want?

-It has to be silent. Really silent. That's why I'm spending all this money on a water cooling setup.
-It has to be really good looking. Another reason why I spent all this money on a water cooling setup.
-It has to be really fast. I'm a semi-professional graphic designer, so I'm doing a lot of video editing, which takes up every bit of power you can throw at it. Another reason why I spent all this money on a water cooling setup, to overclock the last little bit out of it

LGA2011 wasn't worth the money for me, Ivy Bridge will do fine. I rather got an excellent GPU for some nice gaming evenings

-It's gotta run OS X on it - For working, I really prefer it over Windows. And even running on a PC's hardware, it's more stable than Windows...

This is the first time that I build a PC by myself, I've only been using Macs before. So please be kind

rick26 · Feb 20, 2013

Great! very interesting project!

Hope to see more soon! :-D

Rick,

ElAwesome · Feb 20, 2013

El's Deskintosh (Status: HDD cage & SSD mounting done)

rick26 said:
Great! very interesting project!

Hope to see more soon! :-D

Rick,

Thanks rick!

Got a very small update:

Mounted the SSDs on the HDD rack. I wanted to mount them on top, but there weren't any screwholes, so I just took a strip of extra strong mounting tape on both sides, and it worked perfectly.

http://www.abload.de/img/img_7361poqfu.jpg[

I need to re-sleeve those cables :/
Fits nice :)

[URL="http://www.abload.de/image.php?img=img_7363eipa4.jpg"][IMG]http://www.abload.de/img/img_7363eipa4.jpg[

Overall I wasn't quite happy with the result, so I took everything apart and rebuild the cage, but differently. I put the fan on the bottom on four nice little feet, then turned the cage vertical and mounted the SSDs in front:

[URL="http://www.abload.de/image.php?img=img_7364ngq20.jpg"][IMG]http://www.abload.de/img/img_7364ngq20.jpg[

Looks much nicer now, doesen't it?
Also placed a little Apple sticker on one of the SSDs, not just for the optics, but when I remove them I know which OS is installed on which SSD.

HDD rack in place, also test-fitted the res:

[URL="http://www.abload.de/image.php?img=img_7389jfqb3.jpg"][IMG]http://www.abload.de/img/img_7389jfqb3.jpg[

Hopefully I get to the plumbing tomorrow. I wanted to do that today, but other things took too much of my time...
See you & thanks for watching!

Jeffinslaw · Feb 20, 2013

What kind of tubing will you be using?

Jeffinslaw

ElAwesome · Feb 20, 2013

12mm nickelated copper pipe

You'll see soon!

Jeffinslaw · Feb 20, 2013

ElAwesome said:
12mm nickelated copper pipe
You'll see soon!

Nice! Great to see someone who actually knows what REAL watercooling is instead of those all-in-one coolers they think is true watercooling haha.

Jeffinslaw

ElAwesome · Feb 21, 2013

Jeffinslaw said:
Nice! Great to see someone who actually knows what REAL watercooling is instead of those all-in-one coolers they think is true watercooling haha.

Jeffinslaw

They are much cheaper and easier to use, but still can't perform anywhere near a real wc loop. And they don't look as good

ElAwesome said:
12mm nickelated copper pipe
You'll see soon!

Big mistake....
I bended the copper tubes today. It was way harder than I imagined, and my father had to help me a little

But anyway, I like the result. I haven't leak-tested it yet, I hope it's fine...
Next time I'm just gonna use regular PVC tubing...

But at least it looks great

neilhart · Feb 22, 2013

Your build is very interesting. Keep the details coming our way.

What is your overclock objective for this system?

neil

Jeffinslaw · Feb 22, 2013

Are you located in Europe? I'm trying to find 12MM chrome plated copper pipe in the US but it is imposible

Jeffinslaw

ElAwesome · Feb 23, 2013

Thanks Neil! Nice to hear that!
I plan to reach 5Ghz, but I don't if I don't reach that. Coming from a LGA1366 i7 920, I was already impressed with the stock performance (doesen't mean that I'll leave it at that

)

Jeffinslaw said:
Are you located in Europe? I'm trying to find 12MM chrome plated copper pipe in the US but it is imposible

Jeffinslaw

I live in Switzerland. My neighbour runs a plumbing company, so I was lucky. He sent me to a shop where I found, but I was lucky again, the two metres I got there were the last ones they had.
Just visit plumbing shops, you should find some there. And oh, get a high quality pipe bender. I bought a cheap one from eBay, and I had to improvise several times. It's worth it!

I wanted to continiue working today, but Friday night striked me and today I wasn't able to do anything...
Tomorrow I'll have some time...

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