How to build a Hackintosh

First let me say, that none of what I’m about to walk you through could have been possible without Tonymacx86.  His site provided comprehensive shopping lists and how to make all the non Mac-conventional hardware work with Mac software.  I’d also like to say that, again, none of this would have been possible without Steve Jobs, who pushed and pulled and bullied his way through to a really great product.  While I’m now running official Mac software on unofficial Mac hardware, I purchased all my software from Apple and did so happily.  It truly is worth every penny.

Let me also begin with a disclaimer.  I’m a dad, small business owner, entrepreneur and Mormon.  I’ve never built a computer, taken a computer science class or hung out in geek clubs.  Some of what’s covered I have no idea what I’m talking about so if my terminology is off, feel free to flame away in comments.  But remember I’m not very technical.

The shopping list.

We’ve covered this before, but I’d like to expound on it a bit with some justification on why I picked what I did and how it all worked together.  My goal was to spend as little as possible, but as usual, I ended up spending a little more than expected.

Tonymacx86 has a whole page dedicated to the right parts and pieces to buy to build your system, no matter how average or powerful you intend it to be.  Everything on this list is so-called “approved” to be covered under the kexts and patches they provide to get the hardware running Mac OS.  Basically, if you stick to this list, you can use their standard utility installation thingies to make everything work.  He calls these “kits” CustoMacs and provides product links to Newegg, Amazon, etc.

What I bought and costs.

• Motherboard — – $115 — – http://goo.gl/XG3LD
• i3 CPU — – $135 — – http://goo.gl/hwSM7
• Graphics card — – $55 — – http://goo.gl/49C0E
• Case — – $50 — – http://goo.gl/kUJKq
• Ram (8gb) — – $46 — – http://goo.gl/7YLMt
• Power supply — – $70 — – http://goo.gl/v1Xz2
• Hard drive — – $100 — – http://goo.gl/2pAdd – — – used one I had laying around
• Optical drive — – $21 — – http://goo.gl/PUOi6
• Keyboard — – $50 — – http://goo.gl/fMo1C
• Mouse — – $30 — – http://goo.gl/gcF68
• PCI wireless network card — – $20 — – http://goo.gl/YypsM
• OSX Lion Thumb Drive — – $60
• 16 gb thumb drive — – $20

Total I spent was $672, but if you have to buy a hard drive, you’ll spend $762.  But I also bought a new screen for me and used my old one for the Hackintosh – so I spend another $250 on top of that.

Putting it all together.

There were a number of things I got caught up on when I was putting the actual components together.  Like I said, I’ve never done this before, so I had to do a little homework to be sure I was getting everything plugged in right.  Fortunately, I got everything right the first time, except for one power cable, which was easily noticed when the machine wouldn’t power up.

Pretty much everything was self explanatory with the exception of the little cables that come from the case that go to the bottom corner of the motherboard.  With those, you just have to look at the motherboard manual and compare what is supposed to be plugged in where.  The cables are all labeled.

Below is a breakdown of the location of all the parts and pieces I had to put together on the motherboard.  The 12v power plug was the power component I got hung up on.  The actual cable was an 8 pin cable, but it was actually two 4 pin connectors joined together.  This was deceiving to me at first.  However, once I realized what the dealio was, I snapped them apart and plugged one in and voilà.  Also, I bought an optical drive, but as of this post, it hasn’t come in yet.  I didn’t need it to install the os because I’m awesome; er Tonymacx86 is awesome.

1. The CPU, or processor we chose was an i3 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz little monster.  We’ll be putting an i7 in it this summer, but this was all we could afford this go around.  This was an interesting install because I knew it was the brain.  It was actually quite fascinating to see the underside of this thing.  I should have taken a picture, but I didn’t.  Sorry.  The actual CPU was small, maybe the size of a large stamp and as thick as 5 credit cards stacked.  It was pretty heavy too.  Like bowling ball heavy.  It was weird.  Kidding. But to be installed on top of it was a radiator looking device with a fan on it – I assume to keep it cool once it begins thinking.
2. This is the power cable that through me off.  It’s also below.
3. This is where the ram went.  We bought 8gb of ram for this one, but we’ll upgrade to 16gb in a few weeks, actually.
4. This is the front panel audio connector.  There were connectors on the cable, I just plugged one of them in and it all worked.
5. This was a 1tb hard drive I had that I cleaned off.  Saved me $100.
6. The power supply we chose was the Corsair CX600.  I wanted to make sure I got something that would be enough to power everything.
7. Yea.  It came with a mess of cables.
8. I knew I wouldn’t need an optical drive to get it going, so I just did before it came in.
9. Motherboard was of Gigabyte brand. This is pretty important as just any ‘ol motherboard won’t work with a hackintosh well.  I picked this one specifically because it was recommended.  I also spent a little more proportional money on this since it’s essentially the central nervous system of this whole machine.
10. The front panel cables for the case were the most confusing part.

This is that pesky power cable that through me off.

This is the 24 pin main power cable.  This is pretty much what powers the whole computer.  Looks powerful, huh.

Below is the shot from the lower right of the motherboard in the top pic.  This was really the most confusing part.  These cables were the four cables that came from the front of the actual computer case.

• The orange/white cable is connected to the PW slot, which is wired to the power button on the front of the machine.
• The blue/white cable is connected to the reset slot.  This is wired to the reset button that’s found just below the power button on the front of the case.
• The red/white cable is the hard drive activity led light.  So, as your hard drive is doing stuff, this light flickers.
• The green/white cable is the power led, which is lit when the computer is on.
• The multi-colored 8/10 prong cable to the left of the front-case cables is the front case USB connector – which is how the USB ports on the front of the case work.
• The silvery, sort of transparent looking three-prong cable to the left of this assembly is the system fan, which is on the front of the case.

In this shot you can see a close up of the radiator-looking device and cooling fan for the processor.  Notice the fan cable that’s plugged in right above the motherboard.

This is what made it all possible.  And oh so easy.  Tonymacx86 provides a little program that basically takes the OSX Lion software off this little Apple USB dongle and puts it on the jump drive in a way that it will install Lion on the hackintosh.  But we’ll get into that in a couple.

Getting everything installed.

Putting together the hardware was the part that I thought was going to be the easiest.  But it wasn’t.  Getting the machine up and running was even easier.  And fast too.  I did it in a morning, like a short morning.

I need to begin this section stating that I didn’t know how to do any of this.  But following all the directions from Tonymacx86 to get the system ready here (link 1), then following the directions to get everything installed here (link 2) made it all very simple.  On the first link, I stopped reading at the part where I needed to get the CD ready, since I didn’t have an optical drive.  that’s where I moved over the thumb drive directions (next link).

Changing the BIOS.

The first thing you have to do is set your BIOS to ACHI mode.  Now I had no idea what the heck this meant.  And after tons of google searches I FINALLY figured it out, but it wasn’t really straight forward.  It was, however, super easy.

Note: all the instructions I got from here. 

In order to get into your BIOS, on the Gigabyte boards, you have to hold down the Delete button at startup.  This will take you into a DOS-looking program screen.  It’s all blue and only lets you move around with the keyboard.  No mouse.  Here is what I did:

• Started up and held down the Delete button
• When I get to the CMOS Setup Utility Screen, I down arrow to Integrated Peripherals and hit enter
• Arrow down to PCH SATA Control Mode (second option down), hit enter, then arrow to the AHCI and hit enter
• Then make sure all your other screens match the screens on this page correctly.  Hint: look at the top of the screen in the pictures, just below the CMOS Setup Utility text and it’ll tell you which page he’s on.

Once I got my BIOS stuff all set, I just needed to get Mac OSX Lion installed.

Getting Lion ready. 

As mentioned earlier, I purchased the OSX Lion USB dongle from apple.  I spent $70 on it, but there is a cheaper way.  Tonymacx86 has created a very nifty little program that will put Lion on a thumb drive, ready to be installed on your hackintosh.

Basically, follow all the directions he has, to the T, right here.

These directions made everything stupid easy.

I will say that I had one hang up once I got everything done.  It caused a kernel panic and ended with me having to reinstall the OS (which literally took like 10 minutes).  I got hasty and just checked all the boxes on the Multibeast install screen.  When you’re going through this, just make sure you check ONLY the boxes that are checked in this image below (also on the directions in the second link above).

This was the beginning, what’s in store for the future.

This was intended to be a base model.  I bought everything with the intention of upgrading in the very near future. Here is what I’ll be doing next.

• Upgrading from 8gb of ram to 16gb
• Upgrading from the core i3 dual core to the core i7 quad core
• Upgrading the graphics card
• Putting the OS and all apps on a 120gb SSD drive (currently running that with my Macbook Pro and it screams)

If you wanted to build a beast, this is what I would recommend.

You can pick from a very comprehensive shopping list here.

• Motherboard — – $155 — – http://goo.gl/TSnre
• i7 CPU — – $320 — – http://goo.gl/RWBcO
• Graphics card — – $200 — – http://goo.gl/aPvQH
• Case — – $50 — – http://goo.gl/kUJKq
• Ram (16gb) — – $92 — – http://goo.gl/7YLMt
• Power supply — – $120 — – http://goo.gl/wyk5I
• 1tb hard drive — – $130 — – http://goo.gl/oli53 – — – for storage
• Crucial SSD hard drive — – $210 — – http://goo.gl/Ai9h6
• Optical drive — – $21 — – http://goo.gl/PUOi6
• Keyboard — – $50 — – http://goo.gl/fMo1C
• Mouse — – $30 — – http://goo.gl/gcF68
• PCI wireless network card — – $20 — – http://goo.gl/YypsM
• OSX Lion Thumb Drive — – $60
• 16 gb thumb drive — – $20

Total cost to build: $1478