G5 Hackintosh: Best motherboard for fitting inside case?

[ADK_XJ]

MB: Make sure, if you have to flash the MSI board too
CPU: Looks good
Ram: Try to find sth cheaper
PSU: Corsair = Seasonic PSUs, maybe you can take a look at them
GPU: Better go for one graphics card, if you consider SLI be aware of micro lagging!

Can you explain a little bit about this micro lagging issue? I wanted to have the option to bulk up the card down the line if I needed to with an SLI but also was concerned there might be inherent issues there. Perhaps I will spring for a 660 if that's the case...

On the RAM, any suggestions? Any concerns over brand for a hackintosh or are they all interchangeable with those specs?

 

[Dschijn]

Ram: any 1600 DDR 3 Ram should work I got 16GB GeIL Black Dragon Series for 78$

Micro lagging… That is a typical issue of two GPUs. The two chips are calculating the "frames" and you will get promising FPS, but the two GPUs will never be 100% synchronic. Because of that the not synchronized frames and the time-gap between them can be quite long and you will see that "lag".
This is a bigger problem for ATI/Amd GPUs than for Nvidia, but it still exists! By adding a third card you can almost eliminate the effect.

I would strongly recommend to buy one powerful GPU, also because I don't know how good SLI works with OSX.

 

[milwil]

xfx power supplies are mad by seasonic too they are awsome i just got one. all flat modular cables all black and cheap rebadged seasonic 80plus gold

 

[minihack]

Also keeping RAM down to 8GB may be worthwhile to save some pennies.

Read some tests recently that indicated that under almost no circumstances will any systems be using more than 8GB of RAM at any time unless you are running virtualisation of different OS's.

In other words, unless you are running VMware/parallels a fair bit, at the same time as doing other intensive work, for most people buying more RAM than 8GB is pretty much a waste of cash.

Note though I am one of those dummies with 16GB.....

 

[kiwisincebirth]

Note though I am one of those dummies with 16GB.....

Snap. RAM used to be the upgrade that you did to gain performance, but ram capacities have continues to grow. These days I would spend my money on a fast SSD, rather than more RAM.

BTW It is very easy to tell if you need more ram.
http://macintoshhowto.com/hardware/does-my-mac-need-more-memory.html

 

[ADK_XJ]

xfx power supplies are mad by seasonic too they are awsome i just got one. all flat modular cables all black and cheap rebadged seasonic 80plus gold

Interesting - I found the XFX to be more expensive than the Corsair units...

 

[Dschijn]

I just finished testing an old Seasonic X-560 (from eBay) and am very pleased with that PSU.
My peak load is around 320 Watt with my current system. But the PSU worked fanless during regular OSX/Windows idle/surfing (90-130Watt). Only with higher load (more than 190 Watts) the fan started to work inaudible.

If you consider a Seasonic, Corsair or XFX PSU make sure you one with gold / platinum efficiency and semi passiv cooling.

 

[montanamike]

You should take a look at this thread by kduvernay:

http://www.tonymacx86.com/buying-advice/73558-z77-matx-motherboards-os-x.html

for more info on MATX boards that work with OS X. Like Ersterhernd said the MSI Z77MA-G45 board is very good for a MATX board, of the last 6 machines I put together the 2 with this board have been the absolute easiest and stable boards I've encountered. It would be a great board if it meets your needs.

 

[DrTom]

I was planning on getting this motherboard and an EVGA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost but any reason either wouldn't fit?

[TR="bgcolor: #F2F2F2"]

GIGABYTE GA-B75M-D3P LGA 1155 Intel B75 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel MotherboardModel #:GA-B75M-D3PItem

The GA-B75M-D3P will work just fine, but why not use the cheaper GA-B75M-D3H since you don't need Displayport? You'll save at least $20 and D3H installs have been highly successful. It's a great board.

Tom

 

[ersterhernd]

You should take a look at this thread by kduvernay:

http://www.tonymacx86.com/buying-advice/73558-z77-matx-motherboards-os-x.html

for more info on MATX boards that work with OS X. Like Ersterhernd said the MSI Z77MA-G45 board is very good for a MATX board, of the last 6 machines I put together the 2 with this board have been the absolute easiest and stable boards I've encountered. It would be a great board if it meets your needs.

Yep thats where I first discovered the MSI in that well documented post. One of the best-kept secrets I've found since my first 10.6.0 Hack three plus years ago. Nearly 17K in Geekbench 64. Not too shabby.


Ersterhernd