HEY!
Dawsman, awesome build. I have been watching it a long time. As a spectator of this awesome build I just have to ask you one question.
Was it worth the hassle, the money and the time? I'm not asking if it is a powerful machine i'm rather asking of the feeling. How does it feel?
Does it feel like a real mac? I'm asking because ever since my first time on my mac I have been completely in love with the operative system and the feeling of it. It is like i miss my computer rather then the things i do on it! So my question to you is:
Does it feel like a mac?
Hi Sirretv
My favourite question of the thread so far. Thanks for asking.
Was it worth it?... ABSOLUTELY!
Regarding the "hassle" and the "time", honestly it was no hassle and took no time at all to achieve a fully working build. That's thanks to this wonderful resource that is tonymacx86.com. Follow their recommendations (which I did) and you will have no trouble at all. The alternative for me, which was a Mac Pro, was out of the question due to the cost.
Regarding the "cost", to be honest I probably could have had a shop build me a machine with similar specifications for not too much more money (perhaps even less), and with the advantage of a warranty (including labour), and then Hackintoshed it. However I doubt their standard builds would use the quality components that I chose to purchase, and I think when you start customising their standard builds things get expensive very quickly.
The best part of it has been knowing that I chose the parts and built the machine from the ground up, knowing exactly the quality of workmanship and parts that have gone into it, and the feeling of achievement when everything worked as intended. Money can't buy that if you ask me.
Your final question, does it feel like a real Mac? Mate, it feels like this thing was DESIGNED and BUILT to run OSX (technically it was...
). When I'm booted into OSX it just feels faster and more stable than Windows, but I guess that's more down to the OS rather than the machine itself. Don't get me wrong, I'm also running Windows 7, Windows 8 and Ubuntu and they all run fantastically (especially gaming in Win 8). But it really does feel like a Mac, and is incredibly fast and stable compared to my other Mac's (1st gen unibody MBP 15", Mid-2010 iMac 21.5" and Late 2010 MacBook Air).
It sounds like your heart is set on building one, so go for it! If I was looking into building a Hackintosh right now, I would probably wait and see what the next generation of Intel processor architecture (Haswell) has to offer. It is imminent, i.e. June and may have even already happened. I've not been around long enough to know how long tonymacx86.com takes to adopt/recommend new generation processor architecture, but when the next refresh of Macs is released then at least we will know that OSX itself supports it. Of course, the release of Haswell may present the opportunity to build an Ivy Bridge based machine for much less money than you could pre-Haswell.
Good luck.