Build a Perfect Mac for less than $250

[shoult]

For $149 I'm tempted to try the MSI Wind PC barebones desktop (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856167032). While I haven't tried it yet, it looks like MSI basically took the Wind netbook motherboard and put it in a small desktop case. They even use the same external 65 watt PSU as the netbook.

 

It's a barebones unit that will require HDD, DVD and RAM, but if you have ANY of those hanging around it's a REAL DEAL. I have some SATA 2.5 and 3.5" drives laying around and a LG SATA DVD burner. So I'm good there. For $30 I can max out the ram to 2GB. One other cute little feature is that they have included a dedicated CF-IDE connecter so you could use a Compact Flash device as a boot/Main drive for an almost noiseless solution (There is one small case fan). I'm guessing that getting OSX to boot from a CF card using an IDE connector would just not work though.

 

I guess I'll wait until my Wind Netbook arrives before I start on another project though.

[Yoni Yoni]

Well, I saw this thread about the Intel Atom and I wanna add my 2 cents.

 

I built my Hackintosh with the new D945GCLF2 (Atom 330 Dual Core + Hyperthreading = 4 cores.

 

Motherboard = $115 including Next day Delivery

2GB RAM = $30

CD-DVD Burner = $24

250 GB SataII HDD = $55

MI-100 ITX Case = $56

Mac OSX Leopard 10.5.4 = $130

 

Total: $410

 

Mac Mini Price: $599

Specs: 1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz

1GB memory

80GB hard drive

 

I replaced the noisy chipset heatsink & fan with a small (same foot-print) heatsink to make it completely fan-less and dead quiet. Kalyway 10.5.2 got the rest done right when I needed it the most! (Sorry I couldn't install from the Retail DVD but I needed it for my wife's MacBook Pro anyways...) Currently running 10.5.5 with all the bells and whistles. Leopard runs lovely in this small thing.

[roli]

I just made my little hackintosh with original (1 core) little falls board. I am using it for HTPC and I am realy not happy with the perofrmance. I find it strange that it doesn't play 720p mkv files. While it does play them they are realy choppy. I am using plex as media center.

 

Is it possible to turn of services that are not needed in media center (printing, dashboard, dock (no I don't need it))...)? Or is there any other way to get a little more out of Atom? Because with a few mhz more it would play 720p videos normaly.

[z00100]

I just made my little hackintosh with original (1 core) little falls board. I am using it for HTPC and I am realy not happy with the perofrmance. I find it strange that it doesn't play 720p mkv files. While it does play them they are realy choppy. I am using plex as media center.

 

Is it possible to turn of services that are not needed in media center (printing, dashboard, dock (no I don't need it))...)? Or is there any other way to get a little more out of Atom? Because with a few mhz more it would play 720p videos normaly.

 

Just to let you know, this has very little to do with the computing power of the Atom CPU.

 

It has more to do with the GMA950 video card which does not have any decoding features to offload the stress from the CPU. that being said even modest C2D's have issues rendering high rez videos on their own.

 

I am also looking for a PCI video card with decoding features. Will keep you posted on how my search goes.

 

Regards,

[roli]

Hmm I think that Plex uses only processor to decode video! But I am not sure. Because when I run a normal mkv in VLC it is not watchable. But when I run the same video in plex I get preaty good palyback but still not realy watchable (I am realy sensitive and I notice every droped frame :-D)

[z00100]

How did you manage to get to 10.5.5?

 

I used the method in the first post and I am at 10.5.3 perfectly. Everything works fine.

 

Can you please let me know how to get to 10.5.5?

 

Thanks in advance!

[bibendum]

How did you manage to get to 10.5.5?

 

I used the method in the first post and I am at 10.5.3 perfectly. Everything works fine.

 

Can you please let me know how to get to 10.5.5?

 

As he said:

 

I used the guide at http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=126595 to do the actual update, and then had to reinstall the GMA950 kexts again.

 

Patrick

[z00100]

The thread you pointed me to is from 10.5.4 to 10.5.5, what about if I have 10.5.3?

 

Sorry for being so anal, but the forums are huge and searching is not the easiest thing in the world

[mega]

I built one out of a D945GCLF2 dual core and it's working great

 

does anyone know if there's any performance gain or loss from enabling hyperthreading? I've always disabled it for games that are single threaded and need all they can get

[jricks92]

The thread you pointed me to is from 10.5.4 to 10.5.5, what about if I have 10.5.3?

 

Sorry for being so anal, but the forums are huge and searching is not the easiest thing in the world

The instructions are the same for the the 10.5.3->10.5.4 update and the 10.5.4->10.5.5 update.

[z00100]

The instructions are the same for the the 10.5.3->10.5.4 update and the 10.5.4->10.5.5 update.

 

 

Thanks for your help!

[S0L]

Got my D945GCLF2 this morning! Woot! *ahem*. Courtesy of Novatech in the UK.

 

It'll get popped in the case later on when I get home, but one immediate thing I noticed is that the box it comes in is smaller -which when I opened it, is as they've reduced the size of the heatsink + fan combo on the Northbridge.

 

It's now a low profile one, which is good news as I'll not have to mod it to fit in my Morex 2699 case (on the old D945GCLF, I had to replace the stock heatsink + fan with a smaller one as I couldn't fit in my optical drive otherwise...).

 

I'll do some comparisons between the new board and the old one for video playback and Mame and pop them up later...

 

Sol

[z00100]

Got my D945GCLF2 this morning! Woot! *ahem*. Courtesy of Novatech in the UK.

 

It'll get popped in the case later on when I get home, but one immediate thing I noticed is that the box it comes in is smaller -which when I opened it, is as they've reduced the size of the heatsink + fan combo on the Northbridge.

 

It's now a low profile one, which is good news as I'll not have to mod it to fit in my Morex 2699 case (on the old D945GCLF, I had to replace the stock heatsink + fan with a smaller one as I couldn't fit in my optical drive otherwise...).

 

I'll do some comparisons between the new board and the old one for video playback and Mame and pop them up later...

 

Sol

 

 

It's a pretty solid board.

 

Running Kalyway upgraded to 10.5.3 (soon to 10.5.5) and it's running like a champ!! No hiccups, slowdowns or crashes.

 

I'm thoroughly amazed at how well this dual core Atom performs.

 

It even seems as fast if not faster than my wifes 1st Gen Macbook!!!

[S0L]

Yup - nice and solid - though maybe not as much faster than the Single Core Atom as I thought it was gonna be.

 

I'd already got Kalyway 10.5.3 working just nice on the old board, so I did some quick benchmarking tests, then popped the lid and swapped the boards over. Kalyway booted up just fine, but I had to delete the NetworkPrefs stuff (NetworkInterfaces.plist and preference.plist) as it added the new boards ethernet adapter as an additional one to the old board. This buggered up Itunes until I fixed it, as it wouldn't let me authorise the computer...

 

Anyway, that resolved, I did the same checks on the new board, so here is what I found...

 

---

 

Video - I'd grabbed a couple of free videos from US Itunes, so these should be a good idea of general video playback. Rather than play them in Itunes, I went with Quicktime, and pulled up the Movie inspector to watch the frames per second:

 

Heroes Seasons 2 - Episode 1 - '4 Months later' 720P HD TV Show.

Averaged about 12-15 fps on Atom 230.

Averaged about 24 fps on Atom 330 - so nice smooth playback!

 

Knight Rider (2008) - Knight in Shining Armour - SD TV show

Atom 230 - Full 24fps.

Atom 330 - Ditto

 

---

 

I'd also got some other stuff off the internet which I wanted to try..

 

Big Buck Bunny (720P)- This is one of the Blender Projects test videos.

 

Atom 230 - Dropped to 12FPS when it got busy on Atom 230.

Atom 330 - Did better, but still dropped to 12fps - just not as often.

 

Empire Strikes Back (1080P) - Bit of a stress test, I'd got a sample clip from some dubious newsgroup

 

Atom 230 - 2-3 fps - when it wasn't skipping like hell.

Atom 330 - 4 - 8 fps - still skipped, but a lot better then I expected.

 

-

 

Interestingly - if I switched to using Plex, Big Buck Bunny ran just fine. Empire also ran quite smoothly, though the audio started going out of sync. I suspect as long as you stick with 720p, you'll got good playback for most things.

 

---

 

Next I gave MacMame (102u2) a spin. I set frameskip to 0 so it was trying to run everything accurately, again, you'd likely not actually play this way, but I wanted to see what difference in performance there was. Popped on the in-game frame counter - and then played each game for about 30 seconds or so.

 

Star Wars (Atari) -

Atom 230 - 30fps (full speed) except for the Death Star explosion.

Atom 330 - Same

 

RoadBlasters (Atari)-

Atom 230 - 32fps (about half speed)

Atom 330 - 40fps (about 60% speed - so better)

 

OutRun (Sega) -

Atom 230 - 12fps (about a quarter speed)

Atom 330 - 14fps (not much better)

 

Galaga 88 (Namco) -

Atom 230 - 30fps (about half speed)

Atom 330 - 30fps (pretty much the same - not sure how)

 

Galaga (Namco) -

Atom 230 - 50fps (about 90% full speed)

Atom 330 - 55fps (about 95% full speed)

 

R-Type (Irem) -

Atom 230 - 30fps (about 50% full speed)

Atom 330 - 40fps (about 60% full speed)

 

Gauntlet (Atari) -

Atom 230 - 50fps (about 90% full speed)

Atom 330 - 55fps (about 95% full speed)

 

So there is a difference, but it wasn't as big as I expected. Again, dropping to an older version of Mame would likely speed things up, but still not going to be running Killer Instinct 2 regardless of the Dual Core

 

---

 

WoW - I was wary of running WoW as I'd previously accused it of killing my initial D945GCLF, but I suspect the original board was genuinely faulty, as both boards have run it just fine. You're not going to be going on any massive raids any time soon no matter which one you pick - though it's likely to be fine for a spot of solo play. I went with running it in a Window at 1024x768, with most of the options on low or off.

 

World of Warcraft -

10-18fps in Elwyn Forest Starter Area

12-20fps in Elwyn Forest, so quicker, but not by much!

 

So yeah, again here, don't seem to be getting much of a performance increase, but it is better.

 

---

 

So if you've got the D945GCLF - is it worth upgrading?

 

Well for me, the fact that 720p now plays back smoothly made it a worthwhile upgrade. My main aim was for a nice media centre I could pop into a HDTV - with the opportunity for some old games under emulation as a nice side effect. If you've got similar hopes, then yeah, go for the Dual Core.

 

If it's just a day to day internet system you're after - then I suspect you're just as well going with the D945GCLF with the single core atom. It doesn't feel any noticably quicker for general desktop use or internet use.

 

Then again, there is little difference in the price, and well, you do get a low profile Northbridge fan on the D945GCLF2 - so if you've got a cramped case, that might swing it for you!

 

Overall happy with it at any rate

 

Sol

[z00100]

By the way, I upgraded the chipset fan to this in my atom board.

 

 

http://www.coolermaster.com/products/produ...e=1&id=3875

[evilduck]

The instructions are the same for the the 10.5.3->10.5.4 update and the 10.5.4->10.5.5 update.

 

 

Just to clarify, if you've did the Kalyway 10.5.3 combo update from the Kalyway 10.5.2 disc, you can do the 10.5.4 update directly from Apple without any issue.

 

If you do that with 10.5.5, you'll break your system and you'll get a kernel panic during the upgrade. You have to follow the guide I linked so that Apple's update doesn't hose your install. On my machine, I had to reinstall GMA drivers after each update.

 

 

 

Additionally, I ordered a 40mm Scythe fan from Newegg for my northbridge. It's too tall to fit in the brackets the original fan fit in, but some dremel work and a hose clamp or rubber bands will solve my problem. It's not passive, but the Scythe fan is practically silent and pushed more air, i.e. the hard drive I'm using is louder and warmer. At the moment, the only fan output from my system is from my PSU, and everything remains comfortable to the touch even without input vents. I also replaced the thermal grease for both heatsinks with Arctic Silver rather than the standard thermal tape, just for kicks.

 

(p.s. I ordered a ZALMAN ZM - NBF 47 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16835118014 and it will NOT fit the northbridge on this board. The mounting brackets it comes with will not fit northeast/southwest hooks, only northwest/southeast ones, like the CPU's brackets. If you were willing to epoxy it down or could fabricate the hook clips, you could use it, as it clears the ram slot and CPU heatsink just fine).

[mega]

I cant get wow to work on my kids atom box, crashes the whole OS as soon as it launches

 

I even deleted the wtf folder, thinking it was a setting, but no luck

[mikemm]

Ok .. so i bought one of these little fck*** today... a single core Intel atom board

(D945GCFL) and a bar of 2GB mem (for roughly 75euro)

 

and followed all instructions from the topicstart.. went fine so far till the part were you should install 10.5.4 via the 'Software update'

 

i got 10.5.3 Kalyway running now! : ) with the gma950 kext.. ..runs ok .. but no QE/hardware acceleration??? (im on 1680x1050 reso)

 

but when i click on 'Software update' it wants to install 10.5.5 : / .. im not so sure if thats a good idea, is it?

 

(also i forgot to select the 'timemachine fix' during OSX installation - can / should i still do this?.. i do would like to use it)

[roli]

After I installed 10.5.3 and GMA kexts QE didn't work either. But I rebooted and installed the kexts again and then I got QE.

[evilduck]

Ok .. so i bought one of these little fck*** today... a single core Intel atom board

(D945GCFL) and a bar of 2GB mem (for roughly 75euro)

 

and followed all instructions from the topicstart.. went fine so far till the part were you should install 10.5.4 via the 'Software update'

 

i got 10.5.3 Kalyway running now! : ) with the gma950 kext.. ..runs ok .. but no QE/hardware acceleration??? (im on 1680x1050 reso)

 

but when i click on 'Software update' it wants to install 10.5.5 : / .. im not so sure if thats a good idea, is it?

 

(also i forgot to select the 'timemachine fix' during OSX installation - can / should i still do this?.. i do would like to use it)

 

Don't use the Software Update for system updates. 10.5.4 can be downloaded here http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosx1054update.html It should "just work" if you're running Kalyway 10.5.3 (you'll need to reinstall GMA kexts tho). If you don't have QE/CI, it sounds like you didn't install all of the graphic drivers. Read my posts from the last couple of pages in this thread for the answer to that.

[z00100]

Using my D945GCLF2 board I can upgrade to 10.5.4 perfectly (I still have a reboot problem), but other than that everything is perfect.

 

But I've tried over 4 times to upgrade to 10.5.5 but always manage to hose my system

[Slip]

SOL

 

Thanks for the Bench Tests!

 

Like to build one . Can't justify building another Box right now.

[dustinsterk]

Hey everyone....I just wanted to say that I just build a D945GCLF2 machine with a 500 gig SATA hdd, 2 gig memory, IDE CD/DVD burner with the Kalyway 10.5.2 and it went GREAT!!! The only thing left still to do is fix my sleep issue.

 

Once the computer wakes from sleep the CD/DVD Drive continously tried to open and close itself. It will not stop and pressing the open button does nothing. Is there anyway around this or a fix? As of now I just disabled sleep all together and it works fine.

 

Other than that I have upgraded to 10.5.4 just fine.... but DO NOT upgrade to 10.5.5. I have tried a few times and hosed the system with a kernal panic eror. I have not tried the guide posted by "EvilDuck" so I cannot say if that works or not.

 

Other than that perfect fast stable system running at 1680x1050 resolution. Thanks again for a great thread and everyones help on making a cheap hackint0sh!

 

 

UPDATE: The Link posted by EvilDuck works perfect and I am running 10.5.5 just fine! Thanks again!!!

[H8TR]

I know this is a bit off topic, but for those of you who have the Apex MI-008 case, can someone take a picture and show me where the spring in the front panel goes. Mine popped out and I have no clue where it goes.

 

Also, do how you guys get USB working? I need to install 10.5.3 combo update from my Flash Drivebut my USB ports don't work. None of the 4 in the back nor the 2 connected to the USB header.

[evilduck]

Hey everyone....I just wanted to say that I just build a D945GCLF2 machine with a 500 gig SATA hdd, 2 gig memory, IDE CD/DVD burner with the Kalyway 10.5.2 and it went GREAT!!! The only thing left still to do is fix my sleep issue.

 

Once the computer wakes from sleep the CD/DVD Drive continously tried to open and close itself. It will not stop and pressing the open button does nothing. Is there anyway around this or a fix? As of now I just disabled sleep all together and it works fine.

 

Other than that I have upgraded to 10.5.4 just fine.... but DO NOT upgrade to 10.5.5. I have tried a few times and hosed the system with a kernal panic eror. I have not tried the guide posted by "EvilDuck" so I cannot say if that works or not.

 

Other than that perfect fast stable system running at 1680x1050 resolution. Thanks again for a great thread and everyones help on making a cheap hackint0sh!

 

 

You have to follow the guide's instructions or you will hose your system every time. It's really only 1 command line command that ensures the 10.5.5 update doesn't install a certain kext, but it's easier to just link the guide and prevent redundancy and to direct questions/problems to the right thread instead of having them posted here. Currently running 10.5.5 without issue and I've yet to hose my system even once (this board is my one and only hackintosh install).

 

I read earlier in the thread about power usage during idle and sleep on the D945GCLF, and there's only a watt or two difference between just leaving it on and properly sleeping. I wouldn't worry with it, but that's me. The dual-core board with a better northbridge might be worth fixing though.

 

Also, do how you guys get USB working? I need to install 10.5.3 combo update from my Flash Drivebut my USB ports don't work. None of the 4 in the back nor the 2 connected to the USB header.

 

See this thread: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=95789 It fixed it for me. Mine would work if they were plugged in from boot time, but not after the system had turned on.