First Build! GA-H61N-USB3 i3-2105 Mini Budget Build

[SUCCESS] First Build! GA-H61N-USB3 i3-2105 Mini Budget Build

[SUCCESS!] hackintuner's Build: GA-H61N-USB3 - i3-2105 - HD3000​

Components

APEX MI-800 Black Mini Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811154091

Gigabyte GA-H61N-USB3
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128526

Intel i3-2105 3.10ghz HD3000 dual core (i chose this as i am hoping to get good with this "budget build")
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115090

Corsair 8gig (2x4gig) 1333Mhz DDR3 XMS3
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145315

Kingston SSDNow 200V+ 120gig Hard Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239374

Kingston 16gig USB stick
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139247


Comments

I already own a 1TB Seagate external USB 2.0 backup drive, i plan on getting another for the PC, as well as fitting a Blu-Ray burner, i was reading on the forum and it seems we can install the LG or Sony units.

Also, i have a very noob question, its just that i haven't put together a board and processor in a while, but are these new intels coming with thermal past on the heatsink so i dont need to get it? I noticed some gray looking material on the part of the heatsink that looks like that, do i need to add more when i install it?

Also, i plan to get either the Targus bluetooth usb adapter or the Jabra as ive seen a few guys also review it with positive results.

Finally, some more advanced questions, i would really like to do at the very least 2 monitors, one on the DVI the other on the HDMI, but, preferably i would love to have 2 monitors for main computer use, and a 3rd for a big led tv for movies and video, this board has the 3 connectors, can use them at all? Or its not possible?

I still have to borrow a MAC laptop from a friend of mine so i can create my USB stick and put all the files on it, but hopefully i will have it ready by this weekend. Will even try to upload videos and pics as soon as i have it. Here's one of the hardware i have on hand right now.

All in all the total for the parts i will use will probably make this a nice sub 600 dollar PC with pretty decent results and capacity for the average user. Later i will build something with a big video card and either i5 or i7 and more memory. Let's see how it goes.

Thanks for reading!

Well, the machine is assembled, but the problem is now i still have not had the chance to find a Mac computer in order to purchase Mountain Lion and create my USB drive. So ive spent the better part of tonight just putting it together and putting Win7 in it just to get it all working and see how it behaves. Its a fast little machine, but for obvious reasons i cant push it to the max.

Anyway, i am concerned about a couple of things. Mainly the contact between the power supply resting on the factory supplied CPU fan that came with the processor. Its the same problem this guy mentioned in his thread. I am wondering if the space limitations on this case would hinder further exploitation, ie., making it a more powerful machine with more memory, a faster processor or even a big video card.

This is the other thread with identical hardware to mine.
http://www.tonymacx86.com/user-builds/59492-first-hackmini-ga-h61n-usb3-i3-2105-mini-itx.html

I will try tomorrow to create my USB drive some how and will report back after i've gotten it up and running.

UPDATE Oct-11-2012, 00:41
I was browsing the different videos on installations, and i noticed that when BIOS tweaks are mentioned there is a need to select, among other things, AHCI mode, my particular board does not have this option among the bios settings. Is that going to be a problem for me at all?

Let me know. Thanks.

PostUPDATE
Nevermind, i found it, it actually is set to AHCI, it was in the Integrated peripherals section of the Bios setup.

Well after long hours of messing with this, waiting for downloads, installs and reinstalls, etc., etc., i have Mountain Lion running. A few things i need help with.

1. My screen resolution options are limited to only 1024 x 768, and i have a 1200 x 900 capable monitor, i am connected to the VGA port on the motherboard, i have to buy a DVI cable for it which this monitor also has, is that the case? Or do i need to reinstall some kext?

2. Audio, i have no audio working yet, the volume sliders appear gray'd out and the system is telling me that there are "No output devices found" in either the input or output device options.

So far, i've spent quite a while troubleshooting before i posted this, and i have not been able to solve it. I get Kernel Panics for ACPI and it usually happens when i try to make the audio or graphics work better by using Multibeast.

I've also gotten a message saying that "NTLDR is missing" and to press Cntrl_Alt_Del to restart.

Any help would be appreciated.

Oh, i also did manage to install 10.8.1 and 10.8.2 which did not help with the audio and graphics problems.

Can anybody confirm if the HD3000 is only capable of running at that resolution, 1024x768?

Oh, and also, my system info says i only have 64megs of shared video, in the bios i selected the max allowed which is close to 500, but it will not show up once ML is running. Is there any way to bump that up? In the bios or in ML?

hackintuner said:

1. My screen resolution options are limited to only 1024 x 768, and i have a 1200 x 900 capable monitor, i am connected to the VGA port on the motherboard, i have to buy a DVI cable for it which this monitor also has, is that the case? Or do i need to reinstall some kext?

2. Audio, i have no audio working yet, the volume sliders appear gray'd out and the system is telling me that there are "No output devices found" in either the input or output device options.

Click to expand...

I'm no expert on this motherboard, but I do know that OS X sometimes (most times?) does not work well through the 15-pin VGA port. I would suggest trying a DVI cable. I have the Intel HD3000 graphics on my HP ProBook and it's currently doing the native 1366x768 resolution of the LCD display.

As for the audio, if you haven't already checked, go into System Preferences/Sound and select 'Internal Speakers'. This worked for me on my Z77X-UP5 desktop system.

Good Luck!
-bth

hackintuner said:

2. Audio, i have no audio working yet, the volume sliders appear gray'd out and the system is telling me that there are "No output devices found" in either the input or output device options.

Click to expand...

One other thing to check is to make sure you are installing the correct audio codec for this board with MultiBeast: Realtek ALC889.

-bth

bthall said:

One other thing to check is to make sure you are installing the correct audio codec for this board with MultiBeast: Realtek ALC889.

-bth

Click to expand...

Thanks bth!

I will give that a shot, and also, i have another concern with my MoBo, its on F8 firmware, and i dont know if i have to use the DSDT file for it or not, also, i remember seeing in older versions of Multibeast the HDA and rollback stuff, i dont see that now, is that necessary still wilth ML?

I will get the DVI cable tomorrow. Thanks again!

Oh, one other thing. I do have the 120gig SSD drive, but, booting takes somewhat of a "long time" because of all the steps the bios goes through when initializing, is there anyway to speed this up at all, or maybe reconfigure the boot sequence so it's faster?

hackintuner said:

Thanks bth!

I will give that a shot, and also, i have another concern with my MoBo, its on F8 firmware, and i dont know if i have to use the DSDT file for it or not, also, i remember seeing in older versions of Multibeast the HDA and rollback stuff, i dont see that now, is that necessary still wilth ML?

I will get the DVI cable tomorrow. Thanks again!

Oh, one other thing. I do have the 120gig SSD drive, but, booting takes somewhat of a "long time" because of all the steps the bios goes through when initializing, is there anyway to speed this up at all, or maybe reconfigure the boot sequence so it's faster?

Click to expand...

I checked the DSDT database and there is one available for the H61N-USB3/F8 BIOS combination. I'd certainly look into installing that.

I had to do the the AppleHDA.kext rollback for my 4530s laptop, but don't think I had to do it for my Z77X-UP5 machine - just the 'Internal Speaker' selection in SysPrefs/Sound.

Sorry, can't help you with the SSD because I don't have any experience with them (yet!), but check your BIOS to see if there is a "Quickboot" option.

-bth

UPDATE:

Well, it is a week since i was able to start playing with the build process and it has certainly been a very steep learning curve. After a few failed attempts and lots of kernel panics i have finally been able to get the machine up and running with audio working, dvi/vga video tested, on HD3000 and working, still have to connect my network cable and test, and my graphics seem to be at the appropriate 1600x900 that the monitor supports and has a list of selectable options. Have updated to 10.6.8 as well.

The issues so far:

1. When i turn on the computer it will go through its boot processes, get to the apple logo gray screen with the spining progress indicator and after a few seconds it will go to a black screen. Seems like the monitor, keyboard and mouse are still operational but noting happens. I press the power button and the computer goes to sleep, or at least thats what it looks like, i press the power button again and voiala! it arrives at the desktop with no problems. I found another post with this issue and it seems to be a snow leopard thing. At one point i tried turning off all things related to sleep and putting the computer to sleep and i was unable to boot into osx again, i had to reinstall everthing from scratch to fix it and obviously not do that again.

2. Sometimes while moving the mouse pointer around the screen the cursor will change to the text indicator and will stay that way no matter where i am on the screen even if im not hovering over text, it works normally and i can click and select things, just doesnt look like the normal arrow pointer.

I will certainly not keep snow leopard but i have to redownload my copy of ML tomorrow to get everything setup.

Another noob question, do i have to update to Lion in order to then go to ML or can i just run the ML strategy directly from SL to update using Unibeast?

Thanks!!

Will post some pics tomorrow.

Should i just update to ML and not worry about the sleep issue or do i have to fix this now before hand? Also, do i need to go through lion first before going to ML??

Thanks

UPDATE Oct-19-2012 12:20am :

Downloading Mountain Lion from the App store as i type this. Seems current download version offered is 10.8.2 specifically, i guess this means i only need to run the installer, run multibeast and i should be ok, no worries there about issues? No need to worry about updating from 10.8.0 onwards, right?

Im going to try an update from the already "functional" Snow Leopard installation i have. If it doesnt work out i will repartition the drive and start from scratch.

Lets see what happens.

Here's my favorite pic of the build, combine that with a couple of sleepless nights and pulling of my hair and you get a good idea of it all.

OH! On a side note, i will definitely update to a full size tower with a bigger more complete board later on, this one only has 2 sata ports that get taken up by the internal main HD and the optical drive, i have a particular interest in running more than 1 internal hard drive, unless i purchse a new external drive i dont think i will keep this machine once im done. Who knows, i might buy a USB3.0 external 2TB drive and perhaps i will, we'll see how this goes.

Eurika! Modafoka!! It's Alive! Alive!

Well, after more than a week of frustration, my Hackintosh seems to be running fine. I have been banging my head against the wall for the better part of 2 weeks trying to get this working. After i would do the installation and reboot, i would run multibeast 5.0.2 or 5.1.2, and the machine would not boot up, it would halt/freez either at the apple boot logo or right at the login screen. It seems there are issues with the current version of 10.8.2 from the appstore and the multibeast patches that cause something to go kaput, im not going to speculate what it is but read this thread for more info on that if you're having that problem:

http://www.tonymacx86.com/mountain-...956-10-8-2-problem-post475861.html#post475861


The only real issues i have to deal with now are:

1. Orange (external) drives, which i know there is a fix somewhere around here for that.
2. And make sure that the system is stable and doesnt crap out or freeze.

I did notice one little thing, im sure its nothing, but when in Finder Prefs, at the Sidebar options if you click through the check boxes to turn on the different things you want displayed it will turn them all off after you hit the user one or if you try to just check them all, then after you close that window and comeback to it all the check boxes will be off, they wont stay on for what ever is activated.

In the mean time, thanks to all those on this forum who've contributed to this community, i dont think i couldve persisted if it wasnt for all the information here. I hope this is the start of something interesting. I had said to my self "i think i am a little rusty when it comes to building a computer, lets attempt something dramatic for a change to stay on point" and boy! did this test my abilities and patience!

Thanks a bunch guys, keep this rockin!

I think i will definitely be tossing in a little contribution later on.