Here is another Hackintosh OSX86 PC build. This Mac OSX Leopard build on PC hardware was done by one of my co-workers, let’s call him “Leon” for the total cost of $350. At the heart of this budget PC build is a Gigabyte motherboard. Gigabyte brand motherboards have been found to be one of the most Mac OS X operating system friendly. This particular hackintosh build was done using the Gigabyte motherboard model EP45-UD3L (Intel P45 chipset).
The CPU / Processor he chose was the Intel Pentium Dual Core E5300 which is rated at 2.5 GHz to keep the cost down, and performance relatively snappy along with the 4GB of OCZ Platinum RAM running at 800Mhz. It is wise to note here, that Intel processor are more preferred when building Mac OS X hackintosh computers, despite support added to AMD processors by many OSX86 hackintosh distributions such as iDeneb, Kalyway and others, I found that is has always been much less hassle getting it to work on the Intel CPU platform. If you want even faster budget processor Intel E6500 rated at 2.98 Ghz and only cost $75.
For graphics “Leon” has used the Nvidia chipset, the video card he chose was the EVGA 8400GS PCI 512 MB which is a budget video card, but more than does the job in most cases (video editing) but again this was a budget hackintosh build. With the Nvidia EVGA 8400GS video card QE/CI can be fully enabled. QE/CI is a graphic component that needs to there for games, photo and movie editing to work, even some audio apps require it.
For the DVD drive you can pretty much use any IDE DVD-RW or Dual Layer drive you can get your hands on and finally for the hard drive “Leon” chose a Seagate 500GB SATA drive. SATA is more preferred to using IDE hard drives. From most installations that I have seen SATA seems to work with less hassles.
Now you must be asking yourself…”OK so I got all the hardware, now what?” Once you have put the all your hardware together, the next step you will need to do is download the OSX86 hackintosh build that will work on this hardware set up. “Leon” used the OSX86 hackintosh distribution called “IPC 10.5.6″. Just Google it, then use BitTorrent to download it, chances are some torrent site will have it. Once you have download it and burn it to a DVD then you are ready to install it.
1. Boot up from the IPC OSX86 10.5.6 DVD
2. At install page, go to “Disk Utility”
3. Erase drive, to Mac Journaled
4. Click “Customize” button
5. Choose all components for your hardware – you must find out what sound card and network/wi-fi card is on the motherboard
6. When install completes, reboot
Installing “Kext” Drivers
————————
- EVGA 8400GS Nvidia PCI express – use NVinject 2.0 for Mac
- On board sound card – Realtek AC’97 - kext / drives available in “Customize” settings during install
Specification:
Motherboard: Gigabyte UD3L EP45 mobo
CPU / Processor: Pentium dual core E5200 CPU
RAM: 4GB OCZ Platinum 2×2GB.
Hard Drive: Seagate 500GB HDD SATA
Graphics: EVGA 8400GS 512MB Nvidia PCI express
Operating System: OSX86 IPC10.5.6 Mac OS X distribution
Based on Leon’s testamonial, this dual core hackintosh he has built runs exceptionally fast. Incidently, he also owns a Mac Book Pro, and Leon says that this hackintosh he has built runs just as well, and slightly faster than his Mac Book Pro (1st gen) , however he is very pleased with it because he only paid $350 to build it meanwhile a lower end “Mac Mini” computer from Apple will run you $600 and that is only with 2GB of RAM, 160GB hard drive.
This budget hackintosh configuration is perfect for a basic computer for the kids or even a machine used to connect to the large screen LCD TV for watching movies, surfing the internet and basic photo, music production and video editin. If you want to increase the graphics capabilities it will probably run you only $50 bucks more for a better video card than the EVGA 8400GS Nvidia PCI express. This is well worth the effort in building…you pay about 40% less than a Mac Mini, and you are learning a heck of a lot about putting together a computer and internals of Mac OS X.
If most people, put their minds to it and focus, ask questions they can build their own hackintosh computer.
Enemy on June 2nd, 2010 at 9:24 am says:
hi,
great low budget mac
I will buy the same Mobo as you used with an E6600 cpu. I hope that i can use may Geforce xfx 9500gt and my own 3GB ddr2 800 ram.
Is everything working fine in that mac? Like usb and so on?
greetings from germany
Editor on June 6th, 2010 at 3:46 pm says:
Yes everything works with this Hackintosh, and you can use XFX GeForce 9500GT many people have got this working with the NVinject 2.0 drivers / kext. Good Luck!
Enemy on June 9th, 2010 at 6:04 am says:
Thx a lot. Today I will give a try
sonar12 on July 11th, 2010 at 1:56 pm says:
wow thats the old way. now, i have the same board
and just use the full leopard snow dvd from bit torrent and the pre-bootloader, it installs Leopard 10.6.4 no problems in about 20min and everything
reads as a mac license
sonar12 on July 11th, 2010 at 2:03 pm says:
Added Note forget all those kext and extra steps to
install, buy the gigabyte UD3LR amazon for 89.00
and the Intel 45 dual core 2.8 gig from newegg.com
for 79.00 set youre bios to achi not sata or ide
power manager to 64bit go to piratebay.org and
get Snow leopard 10.6 and the snow pre-boot loader youll need a dual layer 6.4gig to burn osx
and youre done. no kext no extra vidieo dr nadda.
also stick with nvidia cards the ati doesnt seem to work unless you get the $300 one. Peace
Editor on July 13th, 2010 at 7:07 pm says:
Great Sonar12, thanks for your input much appreciated.
Editor on July 13th, 2010 at 7:09 pm says:
Again Sonar12, some great input and advice MacOSXonPC.com readers will certainly appreciated the great info…I (Editor) certainly appreciated it.
Other readers keep the comments and inputs coming…we love to hear them.
Editor
SickDuck on August 10th, 2010 at 4:36 am says:
Does anybody know if the Gigabyte UD3L P43 and P41 also work? In europe, it seems that the P45 is hard to get, while the p43 and p41 versions are not.
Greetings from Holland:)
Editor on September 18th, 2010 at 10:21 am says:
Hi Visitor from Holland. Most definitely Gigabyte motherboards based on G31 and G41 chipsets do work. P41 also works, if you get one both 10.5 and 10.6 hackintosh Mac OS x should install on them no problem. I have built a Snow Leopard 10.6.3 using G41 motherboard and iAtkos S3 10.6.3 hackintosh OS.
RealTime - Questions: "Which is motherboard support mac os and which intel processor?" on December 1st, 2010 at 7:56 am says:
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