Getting firewire ports AND WiFi on mini Itx build

[toothpix]

Hello,

I am determined to build a mini hackintosh, but almost all of the motherboards i've found only have one PCI slot and no firwire . . . thus leaving me with a choice between using the PCI slot for a wifi card or firewire.

I want to get the GIGABYTE GA-Z77N, which is recommended for both mini builds in the 2013 builds, but this has the problem above. I saw one post about there actually being two PCI slots and that the included wifi uses one, but this doesn't seem to be true to me. Can someone tell me definitively?

Also, I found this older motherboard by Intel (Intel BOXDH77DF LGA 1155 Intel H77) that is mini itx AND has a firewire port. Can someone tell me 1) if this would be compatible and 2) if it's a decent motherboard?

I don't do any gaming or video editing. I do DAW audio work and photoshop/illustrator and want a fast machine, but nothing too crazy.

Thanks in advance.

 

[DBP]

The GA-Z77N-WIFI (or GA-H77N-WIFI) has what you want.

Firstly these don't have PCI. PCI is a quite old interface now, although some bigger boards have one or two PCI slots for backwards-compatibility. They have PCI Express (usually abbreviated PCIe) which only shares the name because the same group developed them: they're not compatible.

Anyway, the GA-Z/H77N-WIFI boards have one full-size PCIe slot, which would be fine for your Firewire card. What Gigabyte doesn't tell you is that the WIFI/Bluetooth module on the board is actually a half-length mini-PCIe card, which is a standard variant of PCIe. In fact the Airport Extreme cards inside Macs these days are this size and can be obtained via eBay.

Remove the included mini-PCIe card, and replace it with an Airport Extreme card (or one of several other OS-X compatible WiFi cards: search on these forums and you'll find a few options including a Dell DW1515 I think). If you want Bluetooth just connect up one of the USB BT dongles, and you're done.

 

[JakeLess]

The GA-Z77N-WIFI (or GA-H77N-WIFI) has what you want.

Firstly these don't have PCI. PCI is a quite old interface now, although some bigger boards have one or two PCI slots for backwards-compatibility. They have PCI Express (usually abbreviated PCIe) which only shares the name because the same group developed them: they're not compatible.

Anyway, the GA-Z/H77N-WIFI boards have one full-size PCIe slot, which would be fine for your Firewire card. What Gigabyte doesn't tell you is that the WIFI/Bluetooth module on the board is actually a half-length mini-PCIe card, which is a standard variant of PCIe. In fact the Airport Extreme cards inside Macs these days are this size and can be obtained via eBay.

Remove the included mini-PCIe card, and replace it with an Airport Extreme card (or one of several other OS-X compatible WiFi cards: search on these forums and you'll find a few options including a Dell DW1515 I think). If you want Bluetooth just connect up one of the USB BT dongles, and you're done.

I built the similiar without foreseeing faults other then using big and bulkier logic boards to build my bit pheonix with the same board h77n with wifi, but now have a dual hex core macpro to record pro music. So i'm looking at selling the bit fenix and ran into the firewire card issue. The person I'm configuring it to is using windows XP pro so half the battle is almost won since I know that old relic to install an fire wire card with both 400 and 800 but turns out the pin set won't fit on the ga-h77n but would work in my mac pro so I'm not in a total loss. Still awaiting additional parts to include a sony 3.5" ROM drive and more RAM for my Mac pro to free up 2 sticks of 2 gigs to put into the build and I get a total of 52 gigs and maybe a 400 FW port and hub to free up what apple gave me.
So basically the FW card I got a syba156 low profile 1394 2b 1a FireWire card will not fit in the H77N wifi. but the guy is okay on not having all that too so maybe a ribbon adapter and remove the wifi card and lead to the card or another card in the simaliar fashion that has the ribbon to get to where the wifi card was..
any help would be good