My Sawtooth Hackintosh Build thus far

[apurva]

Sweet build! Did you have to do anything special to get Lion working with your motherboard (the dh55tc) ?

 

[roto31]

I have to update my signature, the board listed was for my first build. This build used the MSI H55M-E33 Logic Board. The MSI board is a nice board to use because: it has all solid capacitors that take heat well, will hold up to 16GB of RAM, 2 PCI 1x slots, a legacy PCI slot ,a 16x PCIx slot, and will take an i7 of the last revision. The Easy Overlock switch is nice too, all you have to do is flick two small switches to get up to a 30% boost on the Logic Board. You can get up to a 40% boost if you configure it from the BIOS.I'd have considered it a high end board when it was new but now it's more of a mid-range board. If you are looking for a board that can give good performance at a minimal cost with options to spare this one of the boards to use.

But I did not have to do anything special to get Lion to work with this build or the DH55TC. I used UniBeast method to get the install with a caveat, I had to mount the .dmg that resides inside the contents of the Lion Installer application.

 

[roto31]

An update to my original post. I found a USB sound card at MicroCenter that works great for sound. No more struggling with kexts to get sound working properly on here. I also found a 120mm fan from Antec that is very quiet to replace the loud and annoying fan that was in the case originally. I may have to flip it around so it blows into the case rather than sucking air out. It now shows 38 degrees Cel./100 degrees Far. for temps now according to Temperature Monitor. I was also able to get the original power button on the front working due to a post on the customization thread. It's about as close as I can get to the authentic look and feel of the original Sawtooth.

 

[Heather D]

Hi roto,
Which sound card did you pick up from Micro Center? Thanks!
Heather

 

[roto31]

It was $9.99, and just said 3D USB Sound Card on the package. It was in a blue package. One thing that is nice is it has a microphone input on it as well too. Your volume with the USB cards is controlled through OS X so you do not need to adjust it on the volume buttons that are on the card.

I also have a SIIG branded card that also works well but it is $19.99 but the MicroCenter where I went in MN was out of that one.

 

[Heather D]

Thanks, roto. I think I may have the same $9.99 sound card as you. It's made by Sabrent - USB Stereo 3D Sound Adapter. For some reason mine doesn't want to work with my system- I just installed UniBeast and MultiBeast today (Lion 10.7.4). Did you have to alter anything after your install in order to get this card to work?

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0364947

 

[dddirtman]

nice job....
allmost identical to my build...
i had to do the same cut on shelf to fit the ram chips...
i like these cases for small build...
works great on gigabyte h 55 matx boards..
now u need to do a g5 or pro build


sound blaster x-fi go! pro also a very good usb sound solution..very cheap to boot..
i feel the usb sound solution makes os updates really simple...

 

[roto31]

I need to find a G5 case cheap enough. I hate stripping down perfectly good working machines. Now since the modding craze with G5 cases has basically exploded they're getting more pricey. I think once I do though I'll probably go all out. But I'm waiting to see what Intel has for the new Xeon chips as I am thinking that will be in my next perspective build. But at that cost it may even be less expensive to buy a MacPro.

 

[roto31]

A quick update to this build. Awhile back I installed Mountain Lion and I think I have came to the end of the upgrade for this configuration of hardware. I have tried the new versions of MultiBeast and I get a kernal panic each time I install,thankfully I have an image of the HD from Carbon Copy Cloner. I believe it might be with the graphics card or something on the Logic Board causing this. I was not able to come across anything on the forums after searching them for the error that was shown starting in Verbose mode. Has anyone else had issues with the new versions of Multibeast?

 

[roto31]

I resurrected this build by installing a new GPU. I installed an nVidia GeForce 610 and OS 10.10 installed without a hitch. I had been getting a "backtrace" error which I had found from research had been due to the the nVidia GeForce 210. So now I have two of these cards sitting idle. They do work with Snow Leopard and Lion though so I might try to do a lower spec build to use them.