How much did it really cost… To Build your Hacintosh and was

[moodogg7]

I am very pleased with my Hac-Pro, and I like most of you, we were sucked into the experience due to the cost to performance ratios of building and troubleshooting your own wanna-be, EULA thwarting beast of a hackintosh for much less then what it would cost to actually go to your local apple store (or online) and buy a genuine mac. Ever Since the day when Steve Jobs stood at his podium @ WWDC (2005?) or whatever it was called and said that apple will be switching from the power-pc to the x86 processors I knew it wouldn’t be long before I could build a mac… for far less then what they charge. So I asked myself, since January how much have I spent on parts alone so that I could have my have my apple’ ish hardware fan boy bliss..
So I went to apple store.com and I chose the Mac-Pro parts that are similar to mine
One 3.2GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem”
16GB (4x4GB)
1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive
1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive
ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB (6850 non available)
Apple Magic Mouse + Magic Trackpad
To look at the price of a Mac-Pro with my similar specks it would cost roughly $4093.00 for the current hardware specifications of my HAC-Pro.. (Disclaimer... I am in no way saying that my sandy bridge processor is better that a Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem” nor am saying that my RAM or lack of ECC can compare to the consumer brand from Corsair.) on the other hand my geek bench scores can get very close to the performance bench marks of a benched Mac Pro 2010 with similar specks (around 12,000) and I have seen many more scores that are much higher…
So how much did my hac cost (rough estimate)
GIGABYTE GA-Z68XP-UD $154.00
Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz $300.00
2 CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 1600 $108.00
Radeon HD 6850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express $154.00
Sony Optiarc 24X DVD Burner $18.00
Presto Gigabit Ethernet Pro PCIe Card $43.00
cirago BTA-6210 Micro Bluetooth Dongle (it broke but I still paid for it) $27.00
Rocketfish™ - Micro Bluetooth USB Adapter $20.00
Apple Music System Remote Control for iPhone $20.00
Manta TR1 Bundle for Mac $32.00
Internal USB A/F to Mobo Pinou $3.00
Apple Magic Trackpad $68.00
Broadcom 4322AGN BCM94322MC bcm4322 802. $20.00
Mini PCI-E to PCI-E Wireless Adapter w/ 3 Antenna WiFi $7.20
Elgato HDHomeRun Network Dual Tuner for HDTV for Mac or PC $150.00
ZALMAN CNPS9500A-LED 92mm and clip $50.00
CORSAIR Professional Series Gold AX750 $170.00
My New OCZ 120gig SSD drive $140.00
OS Snow Leopard(Disk) + OS Lion (Apple app-store) ~ $80.00
grand total ~ $1570.00

Stuff I can’t price (or don’t want to) because I’ve owned it two or more years or they are discontinued plus I’m trying hard not to do current market value…
3 X 500gig hdds
1 X 150gig 10000rpm WD raptor
Thermaltake Armor Tower
Microsoft keyboard
View sonic 23" monitor
speakers... bla bla
OK, so we get the point… my original plan was to spend around $800.00 for my HAC but (after I tried ((the crack)) if you Will) I have ended up spending around $1600.00 as of today. Currently a starter mac pro is priced at $2500.00.. As you can see, I still, would have saved $2500 on my system as apposed to buying it from (applestore)… And that doesn’t count the $1000.00 that I’m thinking about dropping on a 27” apple monitor. (YOUR VERY WELCOME APPLE!!)
I guess one can say that I could have gotten a top of the line Imac 27" for this same price I spent on my HAC. .Some can even say your wannabe hacintosh is not as sexy as Apples products. Stability-and power management can be a pain in the @&& at times. Forget about upgrading the OS without making sure your current setup is backed up. (unless you like doing re-installations or your a pro with -V mode) And if you have any problems, well get on-line to this AWESOME forum, or other fine forums and try to find a solution. Because Apple will Laugh at you if you call them!! Or Apple may send their army of Ninja lawyer's your way (throwing killer star shaped citations @ U)... And to the critics I say,, TRUE… So I’m not sure you can factor in time into the price.. But I still think in the long run this adventure has and will be worth it..
So what do you think?

 

[georgeba]

To get the same performance I would have spent substantially more money. AND only get 1 year warranty. My bits and pieces have 3-5 years warranty and if I need repair I don't have to pay Apples exorbitant charges.

 

[moodogg7]

That's a good point... and the way I look at it is when its time to upgrade.... I dont have to replace the whole computer just bits and pieces like I've always done with windows... I'm thinking around this time next year when all the kinks in the ivy core's mobos gets worked out ,,,hackintoshing gets even easier..

 

[Sasquatch00]

Spent about $1900 on a pretty beastly machine. One that would price out around $5000-6000 on Apple.

Since I've spent more on adding an extra hard drive here and there, a GPU cooler, and cables. Those are things I added as I continued, but the original purchase for a working computer was the above. Posts 12000+ on geekbench without overclock. Really happy.



EDIT: just checked again. Definitely saved a ton!

Screen shot 2012-05-02 at 4.54.40 PM.jpg

 

[Mieze]

I wanted to build a home server as a replacement for my NAS (WD MyBook Live 2TB) and spent less than 170€ for a mainboard with B75 chipset, a Celeron G530, 4GB Ram and a case with power supply. I got a 2.5" drive lying around that I used to install the system. As I already bought Lion and Lion Server in the AppStore last year there were no extra costs for the software. Finally I pulled the 2 TB drive from the NAS and put it into the server for data storage. Now the machine is running the following services flawlessly:

• File Sharing[/*:m:37iovfvu]
• Timemachine[/*:m:37iovfvu]
• Open Directory[/*:m:37iovfvu]
• Profile Manager[/*:m:37iovfvu]
• VPN[/*:m:37iovfvu]
• Software Update[/*:m:37iovfvu]

Imagine how much I would have paid for a comparable Mac Pro or even a Mac mini Server not to think of the fact that this stylish devices are far too pretty to be placed right beside the refrigerator in my kitchen. If you want to have a full featured OS X home server for the price of a NAS there is no way get around building a hackintosh.

Mieze
IMG_1819.jpg

 

[cnrtechhead]

I'll play along with this one.

My build thread is here: viewtopic.php?f=76&t=32326
Go to page 2 to see the changes I made this past weekend.

My Hack is built in a modded G5 case. Why? I love Apple's design. I have a MacBook Air and a Pro, and would never consider buying an X86 laptop. My initial desire to build a Hack came when I wanted to run two monitors on the 2006 Mac Mini I bought in 7th grade. My options were either buy a $70 USB display adapter, which would be even more of a performance hit on an already slow Mac Mini, or build a cheap Hackintosh.

My first Hack cost me under $150 in new parts, built in a case that was given to me with drives from an older system. It was a Pentium D 805, and I drove my monitors with a 7300GT. It was even faster than my Mac Mini.
Between then and now I have had several different configurations. Used a Pentium Dual Core for a while, then a Core 2 Quad, and now I have an i5.

On to the current build costs:
G5 Casemod
Dead G5 - $50
Motherboard Tray - $35
Fans - $45
Tools and Hardware - $50 (Including $24 in Dremel cutting wheels. -_-
Front panel harness stuff - $15
Total for the case: $195

Internal Components
Motherboard - GA-P67X-UD3-B3 - $125
CPU - Intel Core i5 2500 - $210
RAM - PNY Optima DDR3 16GB - $70
GFX - 2x nVidia 9600GT - $100
SSD - 128GB Crucial M4 - $125
User Data HD - 2TB Seagate Green - $50 (Deal from a friend)
Media HD - 1.5TB WD Green - $70 (eBay)
OD - Sony Optiarc - $20
PSU - Antec TruePower 2.0 - $40
USB BT - $10
Total for components: $810

External Peripherals
Bluetooth Apple keyboard and mouse - $60
2x 1.5TB Fantom G-Force USB3 HD - $200

I am not factoring my monitors in as they were bought over the course of 4 years. First 22" was $300, second was $125, third was $85. I also have an old 250GB WD HD that I got for free.

Combining the case and components together, I'm at almost exactly $1000. Today, that would get me a 21.5" iMac, with about 2/3 the processor speed, 1/4 the RAM, and a single pokey hard drive. Oh, and a single display. I like my triplets, thank you.

 

[dddirtman]

i have an older build spent maybe 900 total in parts
asus sabertooth x58
i7-950
geforce 460oc 1024
16gb ddr3
850w psu
128gb ssd(boot)
1 tb caviar green(data)
500gb(time machine)
samsung sa350(24")hd led
g5 case

 

[goober296]

The beauty of building a hack is that you can spend as little or as much as you want and really end up with pretty much the same end product. Yes ones a little faster than the other, but you can build a sandy bridge hack with 100 to 150 bucks worth of new parts and old junk a person has laying around. If you decide to upgrade drop in a 250 dollar cpu and a new 150 dollar video card and your up and running with the big boys. If you decide to sell the old parts it's cheaper yet or you already have half of another hack. Its a bit of an addiction To the 4 people who said no or maybe, you must have spent way too much on your hack.

 

[potemkin]

My hacks have cost from $65 to about $200 for latest.
Cheapest was Inspiron 530 without hd (65 + video card used $30 )
Optiplex gx280 $100 used onboard 915 GMA.
From scratch dual core 775 about $175.
Foxconn H67s $60 + celeron g530 $50 +video care about $60.
I am not counting hard drives and dvd or OS.
They were used multiple times or dongles for network and sound.

These are low end machines but they were equal to man current macs or ones that were
only a year or two old. All these machines were great. Lion became a rocky path with sound. also added features meant tweaking. I like small. To equal size of mini and
be quiet is tricky also cooling becomes an issue.

Switching to Ivy Bridge and Mountain Lion may not be cost effective.
$200 cpu mb $100-150 case $40-$100 = $500 approx.
Used mini from Apple $500 with slightly less performance but less hassle.

I am still up in air. Upgrading processor is $135-$200 if Intel doesn't drop some models shortly. A better case from Lian Liu or smaller like Wesena is $100.

In conclusion to this point Hack has been very very good to me.
Future is 50/50

 

[chorner]

The honest truth of the matter here is while you think your $1,000 to $2,000 system is "just as good" you're only diluting the reality. That $1,000 machine is a self-made machine with marked up consumer parts. Which, while on paper will get you the same or more performance than an equivalent Mac, any intelligent (and experienced) system builder knows there's far more to a good system than mid-range motherboards and all the major required system components.

Take for instance, that you're neglecting the fact that the fans and thermal performance of your machine won't be nearly as well-thought, and well-implemented as the equivalent Mac. Try matching the performance, build quality, style, design and acoustic-envelope of a Mac pro/iMac with your "amazing" $1,000 toy PC. Good luck! You'll need it.

When you spec out a system that can truly match a MacPro in overall build quality, ease of use, warranty, and performance (again, we are NOT just talking a synthetic benchmark number which doesn't tell you anywhere close to the full truth) you're going to find a custom PC will cost you just as much if not more than the MacPro -- with a lot more hassle, and a lot less support.

Guess how much this system cost me, and it isn't using a Xeon CPU with ECC ram (which counts for a lot if you're in need of a serious workstation anyhow) *hint, it's more than an equivalent Mac Pro

I7 980x
Gigabyte X58A-OC
12GB 8-8-8-24 1.5 non-ECC DDR3
Enermax Modu 87+ PSU (700w)
Radeon 6870 1GB
BluRay/DVD Burner
Intel 520SSD
Mushkin Callisto Deluxe 120GB SSD (Windows)
2TB WD green (recommended low noise HDD on SPCR)
NoiseBlocker Multiframe Fans (6x $26/each)
CaseLabs M8 Case
Aquacomputer Aquaero 5 (Fan Controller/System Monitor)
BlueTooth Adapter

And... here's the kicker. To get this thing on levels that are as quiet as a MacPro, I've installed watercooling for the CPU and the GPU as the heatsink mounted fans on your 'average PC components you can purchase off-the-shelf aren't so hot for noise. Noise means fan motor noise, bearing noise, and vibration levels. Yeah, guess what? Apple considered all of this in the design and they did an awesome job.

So, add a whole bunch of watercooling parts (of course, top of the line here. Swiftech does not exist anywhere near this machine), plus the fact that I have to build a hackintosh out of it.

Where does this leave me? With way more time invested, a HUGE amount more in fuel costs, shipping, and the time spent gathering all the individual components to make a truly high-end machine. Cost... well over $6,500 and I don't have ECC support, and a 'hacked in' 6870 video card isn't as smooth overall as a native Mac 5870. Try resizing Windows, or hitting the 'Maximise' button and enjoy your non-native bit of jerky window resizing, while you look at Cinebench and go "wow, 59fps... way better than a MacPro" or Geekbench, and obtain 19,000points in 32bit mode. 2D rendering performance on these new ATI cards are crap especially on top of this (and yes, 2D is still very important).


On the upside... I have a blast building these systems and it keeps me occupied, but even some days lately I double check myself and ask "why don't I just buy a Mac Pro and appreciate the inherent quality... and enjoy a machine that just works how it's intended".