We've all been there.. today, it's my turn

[AJfromCO]

Where we've been new at something. Today, I need help. Your help. After using a PC for years, and hours of reformatting, reinstalling, I finally took my brothers advice: my computers work for me, I don't work for them. I bought a Mac mini. But for what I am doing, writing and voice recording, the storage wasn't big enough. Hence my friend convincing me, and then building me this system. It is nice, but there are a few flaws that my ignorance of the Mac OS and this specialty build is leaving me clueless.
1. The fans are loud. I need to quiet them down a lot or it will be heard on all my recordings. I have a Lian Li case B25F.
2. My USB mic, even when the system is totally shut down, still has a light on showing that it is getting power from somewhere.
3. When I first started this Hackintosh, and all my USB's were plugged in, and I shut it down, it would restart on it's own. Since then, I have unplugged all items from 3.0 USB ports, and now only using 2.0 USB. It don't restart as it used to, but something is still not correct.
I am correct in this assumption... yes? Isn't all 3.0 USB backwards compatible with 2.0?
4. I see in Tonymac that there is new downloads for multi beast. Is this something I should download and install or is it only for specific systems? I have 5.2.1
5. I realize these are many questions and not posted in correct areas. But I assure I will get better at this site as well as my new Hack, and will post and operate... at least better. And hopefully soon!

 

[nobodynose]

Where we've been new at something. Today, I need help. Your help. After using a PC for years, and hours of reformatting, reinstalling, I finally took my brothers advice: my computers work for me, I don't work for them. I bought a Mac mini. But for what I am doing, writing and voice recording, the storage wasn't big enough. Hence my friend convincing me, and then building me this system. It is nice, but there are a few flaws that my ignorance of the Mac OS and this specialty build is leaving me clueless.
1. The fans are loud. I need to quiet them down a lot or it will be heard on all my recordings. I have a Lian Li case B25F.

Get larger, slower RPM fans. They'll move the same (or more) amount of air, but won't be as noisy. What you can get of course depends on what your case will accommodate.

2. My USB mic, even when the system is totally shut down, still has a light on showing that it is getting power from somewhere.

You didn't mention what kind of motherboard you have, but most Gigabyte boards (for example) have a feature they advertise where some of their USB ports are powered even when the system is shut down so you can charge phones, tablets, etc. You probably have your microphone plugged into one of those ports.

3. When I first started this Hackintosh, and all my USB's were plugged in, and I shut it down, it would restart on it's own. Since then, I have unplugged all items from 3.0 USB ports, and now only using 2.0 USB. It don't restart as it used to, but something is still not correct. I am correct in this assumption... yes? Isn't all 3.0 USB backwards compatible with 2.0?

Again, without knowing what kind of hardware is in your system I'm only guessing at the cause, but there were a lot of problems with the USB ports (displaying exactly the kind of restart behavior you described) especially with Gigabyte Z68-based motherboards. Do a search and you'll find threads discussing this. I don't know what the solution or the outcome was, but I think Gigabyte fixed something in a later BIOS revision for most of the affected boards so you may want to look into that.

Yes, USB 3.0 is *supposed* to be backwards-compatible with USB 2.0. However, since Apple didn't support USB 3.0 until fairly recently, and then only USB 3.0 ports that are controlled by the main Intel chipset (as opposed to a 3rd party chip), there wasn't good driver support for USB 3.0 for Mac OS X. That is getting better now.

4. I see in Tonymac that there is new downloads for multi beast. Is this something I should download and install or is it only for specific systems? I have 5.2.1

You should read the release notes for the new version and see if there's anything that will affect your system. But in general, I say if it ain't broke, don't fix it.