Hackintosh Desktop Project

Hackintosh Quad core silent Audio workstation for under $1.6k AU

My aim was to replace my current G5 dual 1.8 ghz desktop with a quicker machine that can handle the bigger audio and video projects i'm working on without losing sync and stuttering during playback also the firewire ports on my mainboard had failed me long ago and now the extra firewire pci card i installed started to do the same causing my motu to randomly shutdown and erraticly output static just like this guys does.

 

I was looking at new mainboards online and they were pretty expensive, i really didn't want to invest so much cash into fixing up old technology (apple classes the model as vintage and no longer make the parts) so your left to scramble for refurbished boards from 2nd hand dealers and online and i knew something else would fail soon the thing was 5 or so years old and it was time to move on.

After having great some sucess installing and running OS X on Aspire One netbook that i use for serato on tour i decided to bite the bullet and look at replacing the G5 machine with a hackintosh desktop.

I wanted a machine that could handle the following things

 

Logic Pro 8, Reason 4 and a heap of plugins and rewire

Support my 2x Samsung 19' wide DVI Displays

Onboard Firewire for my Motu Ultralite

Must Sleep/Shutdown properly 

Wifi

I also wanted to make this machine last me for the next 3 or 4 years and keep up as things progress in the audio work for as long as possible so I spec'd it fairly high with the following PC components.

NZXT Hush Silent ATX case 

Cooler Master Silent Pro 600W PSU

Gigabyte EP45-UD3P Mainboard 

Intel Quad 9400 2.6ghz 

Pioneer DVD-RW DL Sata

2x 1TB Seagate SATA HD's

2x Geil DDR2 800Mhz 4GB KITS (2x2gb)

MSI 9800GTX+ 512MB PCI-E 

Generic broadcom based PCI wifi card (I just wanted it to work like an original airport with no additional drivers)

What i ended up with has really exceeded my expectations, it handles everything i throw at it!!

The system is currently overclocked to 3.08ghz thanks to some guy in the US with a really annoying voice that put together these videos on UD3p overclocking...

Final Cut Pro, Adobe CS3, Logic Studio 9, Reason 4 work flawlessly, My Novation synth, BCF2000, External Raid case and other Gear all work fine, having 8 Usb ports on the motherboard is really nice and my Motu Ultralite runs better than it did on my real mac.

Duel Dvi Displays work great in extended desktop mode at 1440x900.

I can switch to Windows Vista easily thanks to the Chameleon EFI

It responds like a real mac in every aspect except for a couple of things like it doesn't chime when you switch it on, sometimes when you wake it up from an overnight sleep one out of the 2 displays will display a scrambled image until you switch the scrambled display off and on again. it dosent support firewire target mode.... all 3 of these things i can live with.

The first wifi card I installed had really bad signal strength it dropped on and off the network all the time I was originally recommended a Encore card but I wanted to find a cheaper wifi card and it was simply terrible, I have since replaced it with the Encore card and although it isn't recognized as a standard airport device the 3 antenna's on it pickup the signal really well. 

If you get an encore you need the railink 10.5  (RT2860) 10.5 drivers for it.

You can still get all the gear except i couldn't see the 9800GTX+ on Umarts site anymore so i linked you to a MSI 9800GT that will be just as good.

NZXT Hush Silent ATX case - NZXT HUSH BLACK W BLUE LED - $136

Coolermaster Silent Pro 600W PSU - COOLER MASTER SILENT PRO M600W RS600-AMBAD3 - $168

Gigabyte UD3P Mainboard - Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P P45+ICH10 FSB1600 DDR2 SATA2 GbN RAID 1394 ATX  - $195

Intel Quad 9400 2.6ghz - Intel BX80580Q9400 CORE 2 QUAD Q9400/ 2.66GHz/ 6MB/ 1333FSB/ LGA775/ Quad Core - $269

Pioneer DVD-RW DL Sata - Pioneer SATA DVR218L 22X DVD Black & Cyberlink - $68

2x 1TB Seagate SATA HD's - Western Digital 1TB SATAII HDD 32M  Cache Green Power - $109 

2x Geil DDR2 800 4GB KITS - Geil DDR2 4G PC-6400 800Mhz DDR2 Dual Channel(2x2G) GeiL 5-5-5-15 2x $75

MSI 9800GT 1GB PCI-E - MSI NVIDIA GF9800GT PCI-E 2.0 1GB 256Bit, DDR3 Core 550 MHz, Shader 1375MHz, Memory 1800MHz - $209

WIFI

Airport extreme Generic broadcom based PCI card - EBAY -$25

or

Encore ENLWI-N Pci Wifi Card Ebay -  $65

Totals about $1550 inc shipping maybe a bit more with the encore card.

I did a fair amount of research before i began to ask questions on any forums i found the most useful information at the osx86project wiki 

I used their 10.5.6 components guide to source my components and was able to get most of it from either umart.com.au in OLD or i-tech.com.au in Sydney, they messed me around pretty bad at Umart I definitely recommend getting as much as you can from local suppliers..

I then created this post on insanelymac.com to double check my components would all work together. I was assisted my a person called Zaap who was kind enough to answer all of my questions..

I used the following guides Zaap recommended -  Anywhere I have strayed or added to the guides to suit my setup better Ive marked as red text. 

Credit where credit is due to the guys that worked all this out.. they are all listed in the guides below.

Auzigog's Hackintosh 2.0 Guide

What To Expect

This guide will let you install OS X Leopard 10.5.6 from the retail disk (straight from Apple!). You’ll have a system with full functionality and minimal hacking.

I have not tested this setup extensively since I got it working, so I make no guaranty about it’s stability. The way I went about it isn’t the cleanest, but it works. I’m hoping weaksauce12 will release a Universal OSx86 Installer plug-in for this board in the near future. Keep an eye out on my blog for another post involving that installation.

Required Goodies

Here is what you’ll need to complete this guide.

• Retail Leopard install disk Note: Please purchase the CD and support the Apple developers!
  
• Download the handy UD3P-package I compiled for this motherboard. See “Credits” section below for all the original content in the package.

Preparation

• Burn grub-dfe.iso to a CD. Disco is a handy app for doing this, Mac users can just use "Apple disk utility" to burn image.
• Put the UD3P-package onto a USB flash drive. add the ralink wifi driver too if you are using the encore card
• Run through the bios settings guide to setup your bios, although I have found that simply setting 

BIOS Settings for the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P motherboard with F8 BIOS 

MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T.) 

CPU Clock Ratio: [9x] * 8x may be the default, so be sure to update to whichever multiplier matches your CPU - 8x for Q9400

Standard CMOS Features: 

Date: [set] 

Time: [set] 

Drive A: [None] 

Floppy 3 Mode Support: [Disabled] 

Halt On: [No Errors] 

Advanced BIOS Features: 

Hard Disk boot Priority: [set your boot drive as #1] 

First Boot Device: [CDROM] 

Second Boot Device: [Hard Disk] 

Third Boot Device: [Disabled] 

Password Check: [setup if desired] 

HDD S.M.A.R.T. Capability: [Enabled] 

CPU Multi-Threading: [Enabled] 

Limit CPUID Max. to 3: [Disabled] 

No-Execute Memory Protect: [Enabled] 

CPU Enhanced Halt (C1E): [Enabled] 

CPU Thermal Monitor 2(TM2): [Enabled] 

CPU EIST Function: [Enabled] 

Delay for HDD (Secs): [0] 

Full Screen LOGO Show: [Disabled] 

Init Display First: [PEG] 

Integrated Peripherals: 

SATA RAID/AHCI Mode: [AHCI] 

SATA Port0-3 Native mode: [Disabled] 

Azalia Codec: [Enabled] 

Onboard H/W 1394: [Enabled] 

Onboard H/W LAN1: [Enabled] * Disable this if you are using a separate network card 

Onboard H/W LAN2: [Disabled] * You can enable this if you want to use both NICs 

Green LAN: [Disabled] 

Onboard SATA/IDE Device: [Enabled] 

Onboard SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode: [AHCI] 

Onboard Serial Port 1: [Disabled] 

Onboard Parallel Port: [Disabled] 

USB 1.0 Controller: [Enabled] 

USB 2.0 Controller: [Enabled] 

USB Keyboard Function: [Enabled] 

USB Mouse Function: [Enabled] 

USB Storage Function: [Enabled] 

Power Management Setup: 

ACPI Suspend Type: [S3(STR)] 

Soft-Off by PWR-BTTN: [Instant-Off] 

PME Event Wake Up: [Disabled] 

Power On by Ring: [Disabled] 

Resume by Alarm: [Disabled] 

HPET Support: [Enabled] 

HPET Mode: [64-bit mode] 

Power On By Mouse: [Disabled] 

Power On By Keyboard: [Disabled] 

AC Back Function: [Soft-Off]

Steps

1. Boot with GRUB-DFE boot cd.
1. At the “fake darwin” screen it will say have a prompt that says “Boot:”. Switch out the boot cd for retail leopard.
2. When prompted for a 2-digit hex number, press “fe” to boot to the Leopard CD.
2. Note: I used retail verison 10.5.0, but any retail disk should work.
   
3. Once you’re in the installer, format your drive (Utilities > Disk Utility). Make sure the partition type is set to GUID.
1. Install OS X normally.
2. When installation is done, restart (you might have to do this forcefully) and place the boot cd back in.
3. Boot to the boot CD as before.
4. This time when you’re prompted for a 2-digit hex number, enter “80″ to boot to your hard drive.
4. Follow the on-screen steps to complete the Leopard installation
1. When prompted to register, press CTRL+Q and select “skip”
2. When you create your account, keep in mind you can only have each username once. If you plan to migrate files from a previous OS X installation, pick a different “Name” and “Short Name”
3. Once this is done, it should load you into OS X.
4. add the wifi driver now if you need to to access the net via the encore card.
   
5. Install all updates (including 10.5.6) from Software Update. (current OS update is 10.5.8 you can still get the 10.5.6 combo update from here) Restart when directed to. 
1. Boot from the GRUB-DFE disk again.
2. Use -v at the real Darwin screen so you have verbose output. The update should apply itself during the boot process. When you see “MACH Reboot”, go ahead and forcefully restart the computer.
3. Boot from the GRUB-DFE disk yet again. 
4. Keep installing updates and restarting until there are no updates left in Software Update.
6. Run Chameleon_DFE_for_Hard_Disk.dmg (located in the UD3P-package) (Note: I don’t think this step is completely necessary since we install PC_EFI v9 later, but it definitely doesn’t hurt to do it anyway).
1. Drag all the files in the “Kexts for Chameleon” folder into the “Extra Contents” shortcut in Chameleon’s .dmg.
2. Run Chameleon_DFE_for_Hard_Disk.pkg to install the bootloader.
3. Reboot with the boot CD. Use -x to boot into safe mode
7. Use Universal OSx86 Installer
1. Select the following options:
• Do OSx86_Essentials as motherboard
• Boot timeout to 5
• Native resolution to 1920×1200
• Install PC_EFI v9 Chameleon
• Apply Ethernet EFI String (Time Machine Fix)
• Apply EFI String for video card (I selected NVIDIA DeForce 7600FT 256MB for my card) - select 9800GTX+ or 9800GT
• Click “Add extra kexts” and select all the files in the “Kexts for Uinstaller” folder.
2. Eject boot CD.
3. Restart
8. Everything should be working!!

Finishing up

1. System Preferences > Sound > Output > Switch it to “internal speakers”
2. Disable sleep and the “turn off monitor” features. For me, every time it went to sleep or turned off my monitor, it would come back with a blue screen. - didnt need to all works.
3. Migration Assistant
1. When selecting parts you want to restore, make sure you do not select Applications or Library. Restoring the Library folder could ruin all the work you’ve done to get your system running.
2. Press Transfer and let it go to work
3. You can start installing applications while you wait. I have a helpful list here. Some programs might not expect to be installed on one account (your current one) and then be used on another account (the on you’re transferring), so use with caution.
4. Fix drive icons if you wish - chameleon 2.0 RC2 did this automatically.

That’s all!

You should have a working system at this point. Please add a comment below if this worked for you or if it broke everything or if you just love me. Please share your own experience if it wasn’t based on my guide. Thanks to everyone at InsanelyMac for creating an awesome community of hackintosh-ers!

Bonus:
XBench Results (with hardisk): 135.72
XBench Results (without hardisk): 201.97

Credits

• Adapted heavily from basshead’s blog, the thread (for the EP45-UD3R board), and weaksauce12’s amazing guide (for the P45-DS3L board)
• Universal OSx86 Installer (Uinstaller.app) - Please donate to PCWiz for the incredible amount of work he has put into this application.
• Chameleon DFE for Hard disk
• grub-dfe.iso (download) An alternative is to use the boot-132 “modified kexts” ISO (download)
  
• .zip for audio kext

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In addition to all that I installed Chameleon-2.0-RC2-r640.pkg.zip

by installing the latest Chameleon that fixed my HD icons and turned them from Orange to the normal Grey but it also changed my standard apple grey boot screen to the funkier chameleon one and i kinda liked the original :(

The Railink 10.5  (RT2860) 10.5 drivers for the Encore Wifi card, once installed you will find the " WirelessUtilityCardbusPCI" utility in your applications folder.

I installed the 2nd HD and Booted to a Windows Vista Premium DVD and installed that on my 2nd HD along with the Gigabyte install cd, MSI & Encore drivers, FL studio, Cubase SX 2 and a couple of games to test out the 9800. I also installed Macdrive on the windows side so i could easily access my mac HD.

Because the bios is running in AHCI mode you cant install XP without setting up the AHCI system from a Floppy by hitting f8 during the xp install and unfortunately I don't have a floppy drive  :(

There are some guides to setup AHCI after XP has been installed like this guide but i haven't tried those methods yet

I had some initial kernel panics under mac OS X but this was caused by a bad ram card, I diagnosed this by removing all the cards and booting with them installed one by one running "memtest" on each until i found the faulty card.

Rember_pre1039.dmg -  great free RAM testing application GUI for "MEMTEST"

Hope you find this helpful