Finally pulled the trigger

[clsanchez77]

@theruck, thanks, could not have done it without you. Perhaps I misread malcontent in your post. So I had my wife look at the post too and she agreed your responses were short and not helpful, even though you did answer the technically questions but with no to little discussion. Reminds me of an old MS Tech Support joke but I don't want to detract this thread any further. But your approach struck me as "This is what I have to say, I am me and this is my rule!". The blu-ray question is the best example, I did not ask if it was "needed". She then laughed and wondered if you had a "Keep off my lawn" sign in front your house. So angry is not the best adjective here, perhaps bemused. Maybe I am the one totally off my rocker here and perhaps your a big guy expert around here, but to a newbie, I have no idea who you are and you put little effort into explaining yourself.

I already visited the multiple computers issue. Not going to happen. Look at the photo above, I have 4U available for everything. I already explained I do not want multiple computers or other devices around the house. There is no desk, there is no office, there is no server room. The only exception is I will have Apple TV serve the front end in the bedroom and living room. I single built multi-use HTPC, perhaps it will never work, except there are threads on here were it already did.

I should have clarified that while the rig will be used for casual gaming, this is not a "gaming rig". My kids are 2, 6, 6 and 9. The most intensive game is City Skylines. Other than that, my oldest likes sports games and my younger ones are into Angry Birds. I would like to get back into Civilization and maybe revive my old Roller Coaster Tycoon. If a games does not work on this rig then we just won't play it. Gaming is not a priority in this house. If i can get a Windows dual boot to work for my oldest, great. If not, oh well. Browsing the forum here some people get it to work, others do not.

@JCMunsonII The feedback on the GPU was good. I ordered a Nvidia (sorry, I did this before your post) 1060 after getting the previous feedback. I went Nvidia because I wanted to stick to the published list under the Buying Guide on this site since this is my first hackintosh build.

I thought I addressed the i7 issue already, but don't see it. I did not want the i3 because I don't know what the future will hold with the demands on the system, so I was looking at i5's. The TDP between the i5 and the i7 is the same and the difference was only $100. With they system fully built, I'm still under 430W and my PSU is 450 (using PC Parts Picker) regardless of the i5 or i7, so I just went with the i5. If I don't use all the CPU cores and it's overkill, so be it. I have 4 kids and I have blown way more money on less trivial things. I prefer that than to find out a few years from now I need the cores and I can no longer get a processor supported by my board.

 

[malexry]

clsanchez77, I don't think anyone was intentional attacking your build but when you say 'gaming' on a computer form people think all settings on ultra and the top of the line AAA games running 100+hz. For that you would not be able to get away with your build but for casual gaming like WOW or maybe even rocket league at medium settings that i7 should do the trick and if not you can get a 5 year old GPU used on ebay for another 50 or 60 bucks that would do the trick for ya. Let me know how the build turns out tho. I'm interested as I used to run an i5 with no gpu so I know it can get the job done, I wonder how the new i7s work, I know they can use more the 2gb of ram a vRam now, I think its up to 16 or 32 even.

 

[clsanchez77]

Thanks and yea I do bear fault for the thread getting out of hand.

Im still reading up on the difference between the i5 vs i7. Ive been burned pretty bad getting older PCU parts on Ebay before when I used to build PC's. Now I just everything new, even it if costs a little more. I will look into the RAM demands, thanks for the heads up.

Ill be building a new thread over in the HTPC forum once I get started. I laid everything out last night and I will need some more SATA power cables, but the hard drives aren't in yet, so I don't recall if they came with the cables or not.

 

[theruck]

if you will have more than one hard drive you will have no problem to setup the dual boot as you can keep the boot partitions for both OSes separated then just choose the proper option in clover.
civilization can be played on a mac if you have a GPU...
i still think you would be better with a synology+a PC especially if money does not mean anything to you and you go for a useless i7 and have a tv in the bedroom (heard that its not good for relationship )) )
at least you did not mention anything which would not be better ran on a synology. anything is better than a hackintosh as a HTPC today in terms of effort. even a raspberry.
strange thing is that you expect that the demands on the CPU can grow in time while you do not expect your own kids to have a higher demand to the machine you are building. at least your logic in picking up parts is inconsistent. usually a dad saves 100$ on the CPU as everybody besides you knows it is not needed and uses that money on a decent GPU to make the kids happy.
but you insist on doing it your way while knowing very little about how things work. you would not see a good advice even if it slaps you to the face as you need your wife to confirm your opinions.
i know i will regret this but why don't you buy just a mac mini?
good luck with your build

 

[clsanchez77]

LOL. We are doing the project together so yea, she gets input too...but thanks for your concern

i know i will regret this but why don't you buy just a mac mini?

Not sure why the regret, an honest question. I did consider it, strongly, and I can get a trim plate on the AV rack for it to match the system. The deal breaker was I wanted the dual RAID hard drives and that would have to again be a separate part. I already have a time capsule that keeps cutting in and out of my network. I figured having the dual hard drives built into the computer would be more reliable. This build is only a few hundred more than a mac mini but was cheaper than a separate mac-mini and NAS...and then I run into an issue of having to place a NAS. The Time Capsule sits on top shelf and we don't like it being out. I have nicer things sitting in boxes we would rather display.

Also, I considered either a small Raspberry Pi build or a small OpenElec build for the tvs, but we liked the AppleTVs now that they allow apps. But again, thats the front end. I wanted something more robust on the back end. Not sure whey that bothers you so much.