My Hackintosh Pro

[imitationbonsai]

Well, after doing A LOT of reading, I've decided to get started. I got a G5 case online from ebay for 20 bucks. The majority of it was stripped already, which basically just saved me a bunch of time. Once it arrived I thought it was funny to find that they had missed one sticker, apparently my G5 used to be a RISD owned computer. Will grab a picture if I get a chance.

I haven't decided exactly what my plan is as far as how I want to style the case, but I've got emails in with several powder coating companies around the state. I'm thinking a Navy and White Color Scheme could be pretty cool. Obviously, I'll plan on doing some cable management with the final build.


Here's my parts list so far:

GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UP5 TH LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard with Dual Thunderbolt

I knew I wanted the Thunderbolt and it was pretty reasonably priced. Moreover, it was even recommended as one of the more compatible OS X boards here on Tonymac.

Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge 3.5GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4000 BX80637I73770K

Pretty straightforward. Currently ranked 30th overall I believe.

EVGA 02G-P4-3660-KR GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

I decided to only do one for now, but it's SLI ready and has the best bang for the buck in my opinion.

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-1600C9Q-32GXM

Straight forward. Unfortunately, my mobo only supported ram up to 1600, which is substantially below the current max, but w/e.

LG Black 12X Blu-ray Combo Drive SATA Model UH12NS29 - OEM

Straightforward.

Two * Seagate Barracuda ST31000524AS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

One for Windows and one for OS X. I prefer not to partition. I will likely upgrade to SSD's eventually, but at this point they're too expensive to give me the space and bang for buck value I was looking for.

COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 Plus RR-B10-212P-G1 "Heatpipe Direct Contact" Long Life Sleeve 120mm CPU Cooler Compatible with Intel ...

Heatsink had great reviews and I don't really plan on doing much OC'ing if any.

Two AeroCool Shark Fan 12cm White Edition 120mm White LED Case Fan

I got two of these so that I could replace the stock fan on the heatsink and could add the second one to do a push pull setup. I'm not a huge fan of the LED's but it looked like the best bang for the buck and I wanted to keep all of the fans white because I'm OCD about random things.

Two GELID Solutions FN-TX08-20 80mm Case cooler

For the rear of the case to go with the Mountain Mods Mobo-Tray and Rear Panel.

Mountain Mods Modular Removable Motherboard Tray

This one looked ideal to me as I wanted to have full functionality from my ATX Mobo.

Front I/O Panel Cable so that I didn't have to pin one out myself.

From Alohacab over at InsanelyMac.

TP-LINK TL-WDN4800 Dual Band Wireless N900 PCI Express Adapter, 2.4GHz 450Mbps/5GHz 450Mbps, IEEE 802.1a/b/g/n, WEP/WPA/WPA2

Should be natively recognized as an Airport Wifi Card.

Bluetooth

I also bought an Apple Bluetooth card off of ebay in case the onboard bluetooth that the mobo offers can't get working correctly. I found a walk through of how to install it here:

View attachment How_To_Add_an_Apple_Bluetooth_module_to_your_PC.pdf

Pre-Teardown Pictures...










Here's the pic following removal of all of the guts except the standoffs. I figure I'll get to them once I have the mobo tray in which should arrive sometime this week.




I will do my best to continue to document the build as it goes. Thanks for looking.

 

[imitationbonsai]

Considering adding this to hold the Hard Drives. I've seen some people use the Mac Caddies, but they feel very cheap to me. If you have any other solutions that you can recommend, I'd love to hear them.

http://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-iCage-A2309-Module-12cm/dp/B000B898N6/ref=lh_ni_t?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[Dschijn]

I really like the Lian Li HDD Tray (LIAN LI EX-H34S), because u can strip it apart and turn the fan 90° around the tray. By that you are able to easily access the HDDs (hotswap) and they are cooled

 

[imitationbonsai]

I really like the Lian Li HDD Tray (LIAN LI EX-H34S), because u can strip it apart and turn the fan 90° around the tray. By that you are able to easily access the HDDs (hotswap) and they are cooled

I'm with you man. In fact, I actually looked specifically for that HDD cage at first because I've seen so many people use it successfully. However, when I looked, I was unable to find it available for sale. I did eventually find one for sale, but for 80 bucks. I was hoping for a more cost effective solution than that.The hot swap ability would be nice, but probably won't be necessary for me.

 

[ersterhernd]

Just a quick note on the bluetooth. That link you posted is a good way to do it, I used it for my first machine. If you want to do it without the use of the converter, use this method here ---> http://legacy.tonymacx86.com/viewtopic.php?f=76&t=31027

You can tape off all pins except the 3.3v to supply your BT module from the PCI-E slot directly. Sticky-Tape the BT to the top of the card and you're good to go.

Did this on my 2nd build. Worked great.


Ersterhernd

 

[imitationbonsai]

Just a quick note on the bluetooth. That link you posted is a good way to do it, I used it for my first machine. If you want to do it without the use of the converter, use this method here ---> http://legacy.tonymacx86.com/viewtopic.php?f=76&t=31027

You can tape off all pins except the 3.3v to supply your BT module from the PCI-E slot directly. Sticky-Tape the BT to the top of the card and you're good to go.

Did this on my 2nd build. Worked great.


Ersterhernd

Apparently I don't have the legacy picture viewing permission and my login for this site doesn't appear to work over there. I'm definitely open to mounting it directly into a PCI-E slot, that sounds like a killer idea.

Also, any suggestions on walthroughs of how to best mount the Mountain Mods tray? A lot of people look like they just JB Welded the standoffs from their case back in and installed it that way. I'm fine with that if it's the best, but if it makes sense to drill some new holes in the tray, I'm alright with that too. The more I think about it, the more I'm starting to get nervous about mounting it in the right spot to line it up with the rear of the computer. Maybe I'm overthinking it, but it seems like it could be problematic if they cuts and mounting aren't done very carefully and in a coordinated way.

 

[Dschijn]

I used 4 of the "long" stand offs kept in place to mount the tray (with the black G5 original screws). The rest of the setting is beeing hold by the back.
Keeps a heavy CPU cooler and GPU in place:

 

[imitationbonsai]

That seems like it would make sense. How do you know where the rear will mount based on the standoffs though? Does that make sense?

Like the rear panel and the tray need to come together at the right point in order to allow you to mount your mobo and have the PCI/ IO slots line up correctly with the rear panel. I thought maybe just cut the rear panel first and then assemble, but that wouldn't necessarily work if they don't line up correctly. Although, like I said, I haven't seen it in person, so I could just be waaaay overthinking it.

 

[Dschijn]

- cut the back
- place the back tray on the back and the MB tray inside the case
- connect them
- do some test positioning of the tray
- when you are happy with a position mark the top of the standoffs with a lose color pen
- position the tray
- press it on the lose colored stand offs
- remove everything and drill holes at the colored points now on the back side of the MB tray

after that you can screw the tray to the G5 and drill for holes on the back.

 

[imitationbonsai]

So you're saying that the order of operations is to mount the rear panel first and work backwards from that huh? Okay. Good to know. That will make mounting it much easier I would think. Thanks!