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The EZ 8000 - Core 2 Duo E8400 - Affordable CustoMac Media Center

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@osirhc
You would want to keep it in the case it comes in, will not fit in the one you've linked to. It's a BTX form factor motherboard, they don't make those anymore so it's nearly impossible to find new cases that they will fit into. Also not that the Elite 8000 case needs to pull air in from the front to cool the CPU so you won't be able to put it in an enclosed cabinet with a glass front. Has to be open.

The BluRay drive should work but only if you find OS X software for playing BluRays. As you know Apple Macs have never been able to play BluRays, they never wanted to pay the licensing fees. So search the forums and the web for possible solutions. I've never heard of a CustoMac being able to burn a BluRay so you'll have to research that too. You could get the LG BD-ROM drive and save a little there.

If you don't already have a Mac or CustoMac you'll have to install Snow leopard first on the EZ 8000
and then purchase Mountain Lion from Apple. The link is in my user build. There is also a link to my post about how to install Snow Leopard on the EZ 8000. To use this primarily as a media center El Capitan really isn't necessary. Mountain Lion or Mavericks will work. If you have any more questions just let me know.


Thank you so much! I never even thought about Macs and BluRay before, wow lol. So I went ahead and bought an HP 8000 - someone on Craigslist was selling one and I got it for $50, not bad! Also I checked my purchase history in the Mac App Store and lucky me I was able to download Mavericks. The installation process was incredibly smooth until the very end. I deleted the two kexts you specified, emptied the trash and entered disk utility to repair permissions. Permissions were repaired and I rebooted just fine to the OSX login screen but none of my USB ports are functioning, so I can't log in or navigate with my USB keyboard and mouse. I may start over and try the process again, maybe repair permissions twice? I'm not sure. Do you know if there is another kext I should delete to get USB ports functional in Mavericks?
 
Thank you so much! I never even thought about Macs and BluRay before, wow lol. So I went ahead and bought an HP 8000 - someone on Craigslist was selling one and I got it for $50, not bad! Also I checked my purchase history in the Mac App Store and lucky me I was able to download Mavericks. The installation process was incredibly smooth until the very end. I deleted the two kexts you specified, emptied the trash and entered disk utility to repair permissions. Permissions were repaired and I rebooted just fine to the OSX login screen but none of my USB ports are functioning, so I can't log in or navigate with my USB keyboard and mouse. I may start over and try the process again, maybe repair permissions twice? I'm not sure. Do you know if there is another kext I should delete to get USB ports functional in Mavericks?

Try booting with -f and see what happens. You may not have deleted the right kext AppleHPET.

When you get back to the desktop go to /S/L/E and see if AppleHPET.kext is there.

Some updates will also reinstall it after you've deleted it the first time.
 
Try booting with -f and see what happens. You may not have deleted the right kext AppleHPET.

When you get back to the desktop go to /S/L/E and see if AppleHPET.kext is there.

Some updates will also reinstall it after you've deleted it the first time.


That totally worked! Booted up with -f and deleted the AppleHPET.kext again, upon reboot USB ports are all working! Thank you! Resolution is wonky on my 23.5" display but that's to be expected since I'm using VGA. I'm going to buy the 610 card so I can use HDMI or DVI. Just one more thing, this struck me as odd in the system profile - it's probably nothing but I figured I'd ask anyway. The memory comes up as 0MHz in About This Mac. Is this purely cometic? As long as it works I don't really care, but I am curious about it. It tells me it has five slots for RAM which it of course does not.
 

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The memory comes up as 0MHz in About This Mac. Is this purely cometic? As long as it works I don't really care, but I am curious about it. It tells me it has five slots for RAM which it of course does not.
Just ignore those things, they don't matter at all. Once you install a gfx card it should say 1GB of video ram or 512MB if that is what the card has. If it doesn't then something is wrong.
 
Awesome. I am amazed at how easy this install was. Thank you for all your help!

Yes, that's why I've called this the EZ 8000 CustoMac. It's a combination of highly compatible hardware and BIOS from HP and the amazing software tools from tonymacx86.com. So huge thanks to Tony, MacMan and all the contributors to the development of this community.
 
This is a great post. I've been wanting to have a Hackintosh for years, but I've never even put together my own computer before. Aside from adding some RAM to a slot in a PC about 10 years ago, I've never done anything related to building a computer.

I figure this is a good place to start and learn. It looks fairly cheap and seems like a good machine to have in the end.

I do have a question. At the end of it all, what will this machine be capable of? I'd like to do some design work in Adobe Illustrator and would like it to have some punch. I'm guessing the i5 processor should give it kick, but are there some other modifications I could make to have a really powerful machine for graphic design?

Thanks for sharing this. I'm looking forward to working on this.

HackintoshCanuck
 
This is a great post. I've been wanting to have a Hackintosh for years, but I've never even put together my own computer before. Aside from adding some RAM to a slot in a PC about 10 years ago, I've never done anything related to building a computer.

I figure this is a good place to start and learn. It looks fairly cheap and seems like a good machine to have in the end.

I do have a question. At the end of it all, what will this machine be capable of? I'd like to do some design work in Adobe Illustrator and would like it to have some punch. I'm guessing the i5 processor should give it kick, but are there some other modifications I could make to have a really powerful machine for graphic design?

Thanks for sharing this. I'm looking forward to working on this.

HackintoshCanuck

My thought is to get the quad core processor (plus an 80mm exhaust fan), a solid state drive, 8GBs of RAM (4 x 2GBs) and the GT 610 graphics card or better. I'm pretty sure 8GBs of RAM is the max the HP 8000 can take, although I'm not sure - I wasn't really able to find a definitive answer online. I was looking around online earlier today for low profile graphics cards - I found a GT 730 with 2GBs GDDR5 and 128 bus width. I feel that would certainly give you enough juice for what you want to do. I just ordered a GT 610 (2GB DDR3 64bit) that should come tomorrow or Tuesday. I'll post back with an update after I install it and try to give an idea of what its capabilities are with just the Core 2 Duo 3.0 GHz, 4GBs of RAM and the GT 610.
 
My thought is to get the quad core processor (plus an 80mm exhaust fan), a solid state drive, 8GBs of RAM (4 x 2GBs) and the GT 610 graphics card or better. I'm pretty sure 8GBs of RAM is the max the HP 8000 can take, although I'm not sure - I wasn't really able to find a definitive answer online. I was looking around online earlier today for low profile graphics cards - I found a GT 730 with 2GBs GDDR5 and 128 bus width. I feel that would certainly give you enough juice for what you want to do. I just ordered a GT 610 (2GB DDR3 64bit) that should come tomorrow or Tuesday. I'll post back with an update after I install it and try to give an idea of what its capabilities are with just the Core 2 Duo 3.0 GHz, 4GBs of RAM and the GT 610.

Im waiting for mine to come also. Except I'll be using a ATI Radeon 5450 with mine and with a Satellite Receiver. Going to build it into my Home Cinema Setup. :thumbup:
 
My thought is to get the quad core processor (plus an 80mm exhaust fan), a solid state drive, 8GBs of RAM (4 x 2GBs) and the GT 610 graphics card or better. I'm pretty sure 8GBs of RAM is the max the HP 8000 can take, although I'm not sure - I wasn't really able to find a definitive answer online. I was looking around online earlier today for low profile graphics cards - I found a GT 730 with 2GBs GDDR5 and 128 bus width. I feel that would certainly give you enough juice for what you want to do. I just ordered a GT 610 (2GB DDR3 64bit) that should come tomorrow or Tuesday. I'll post back with an update after I install it and try to give an idea of what its capabilities are with just the Core 2 Duo 3.0 GHz, 4GBs of RAM and the GT 610.


Thanks for all of your help; really appreciate it.

I found an Intel Q8400 Core2 Quad Core 2.66Ghz 4GB/500GB HD/DVD-RW.

So I would need to:
1. get an 80mm exhaust fan
2. solid state drive (I'm glad for that-I wasn't sure if the SSF would support one; the base is tiny from what I've read)
3. 4GB DDR to boost it
4. suggested graphics card (if your test of it goes well)
5. Follow the other steps that you've outlined in the post​

That should do the trick?

Thanks again. Looking forward to the results with your graphics card.

HC
 
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