Mac Pro-like Hackintosh Guide, $900 (Lifehacker)

[Tesselator]

Yeah, getting a home built system to be both quiet and cool takes a lot more research and tinkering than one would at first think. There's a lot to consider:

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/8031326/

Fan types, placements, speeds, and home made baffles & cowling, are all very important.

 

[nanofrog]

Yeah, getting a home built system to be both quiet and cool takes a lot more research and tinkering than one would at first think. There's a lot to consider:

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/8031326/

Fan types, placements, speeds, and home made baffles & cowling, are all very important.

Absolutely.

I've put in hours in research before I purchased anything, and tinkering. I even put in more this weekend. Skipped the baffle for now, but did make some adjustments to physical location (PCIe cards), and re-pasted the CPU on the chance it was a tad too thick.

The paste was fine, but the relocation did help with a 10C drop at load.

 

[Andrew Henry]

Absolutely.

I've put in hours in research before I purchased anything, and tinkering. I even put in more this weekend. Skipped the baffle for now, but did make some adjustments to physical location (PCIe cards), and re-pasted the CPU on the chance it was a tad too thick.

The paste was fine, but the relocation did help with a 10C drop at load.

Or.. I'll just water cool mine!

 

[gugucom]

Or.. I'll just water cool mine!

I wouldn't want water in my computer. Perhaps single malt, but definitely no water.

 

[nanofrog]

Or.. I'll just water cool mine!

If the OC is hotter than I'm willing to live with, I may have to reconsider it, despite the added cost and complexity.

But I might skip using water, and use a different coolant. EXCELTHERM 500

I wouldn't want water in my computer. Perhaps single malt, but definitely no water.

Keep it separate. The water for the computer, the single malt for the user.

The end result: Both should be rather happy.

 

[Zaap]

Right, Apple uses only magical ethereal fans made from mithril and the blood of a 1000 martyred pixies. Their screams are forever consumed in the process by the great gaping maw of Wozniak, The Silencer.

Yeah- silent performance with either Macs or PCs is really not the great mystery people sometimes make it out to be. It's really not a Mac vs. PC issue- it's a cheap crap vs. quality issue.

A a video card with a heatsink rather than a fan makes (all together now class) no noise. Period.

These days most motherboards have heatpipes and sinks not fans. No noise.

Watercooling hardware won't magically start making noise- unless it springs a leak, then I guess you'd hear a sizzling noise.

A decent PSU won't make much noise. Decent case fans, properly mounted and rated for low noise won't make more noise unless they're damaged or something. Hard drives can easily be made virtually silent by proper shock-mounting. A decent third party CPU cooler can easily be silent. Companies like newegg post all the db level noise stats on hardware like that.

It's often been my experience that people that build PCs with fairly decent hardware then complain they're too loud, or suddenly 'got loud' -presumably by osmosis- didn't know to turn on hardware fan control in the BIOS,or worse, never hooked their fans to the proper control headers to begin with.


Most of my own PCs are dead silent- you don't even have to spend that much money to do it. Some $7 120mm case fans to replace a stock, a decent CPU cooler (maybe $50), passive video card cooling, shock mounts for anything that could rattle ($5 or so) a decent case ($60+) and voilà- the lovely sound of silence.

 

[nanofrog]

Yeah- silent performance with either Macs or PCs is really not the great mystery people sometimes make it out to be. It's really not a Mac vs. PC issue- it's a cheap crap vs. quality issue.

A a video card with a heatsink rather than a fan makes (all together now class) no noise. Period.

These days most motherboards have heatpipes and sinks not fans. No noise.

Watercooling hardware won't magically start making noise- unless it springs a leak, then I guess you'd hear a sizzling noise.

A decent PSU won't make much noise. Decent case fans, properly mounted and rated for low noise won't make more noise unless they're damaged or something. Hard drives can easily be made virtually silent by proper shock-mounting. A decent third party CPU cooler can easily be silent. Companies like newegg post all the db level noise stats on hardware like that.

It's often been my experience that people that build PCs with fairly decent hardware then complain they're too loud, or suddenly 'got loud' -presumably by osmosis- didn't know to turn on hardware fan control in the BIOS,or worse, never hooked their fans to the proper control headers to begin with.


Most of my own PCs are dead silent- you don't even have to spend that much money to do it. Some $7 120mm case fans to replace a stock, a decent CPU cooler (maybe $50), passive video card cooling, shock mounts for anything that could rattle ($5 or so) a decent case ($60+) and voilà- the lovely sound of silence.

Planning, the right parts, and knowing what/where/when/how (why's optional ), make a big difference.

 

[richard.mac]

Yeah, getting a home built system to be both quiet and cool takes a lot more research and tinkering than one would at first think. There's a lot to consider:

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/8031326/

Fan types, placements, speeds, and home made baffles & cowling, are all very important.

what is your view on Noctua fans? for my build im going to use the Noctua U12P heatsink (which includes a P12 fan) and an S12 for the case fan.

 

[sammich]

Ow, I was just thinking I needed a new computer, I wish I hadn't clicked on this thread which I had been avoiding for a while, I was just gonna eBay myself a cheap mac mini and plug a whole heap of USB HDDs in.

I was just looking for a cheap file server with like 50 HDD bays, and maybe do some video conversion. Well, I've bookmarked it and will hunt around Sydney based online stores for those cheap bits. That said, anyone here in Australia got something like this put together, how much was it all up?

I guess for future proofing (sorry if this was mentioned before) but would openCL work on that 9800?

 

[nanofrog]

what is your view on Noctua fans? for my build im going to use the Noctua U12P heatsink (which includes a P12 fan) and an S12 for the case fan.

I have that cooler and multiple Noctua 120mm fans (all P12's). The cooler is nice, but Nehalem runs hot, and at stock temps, I'm getting 40 - 42C for idle, and 67C load.

I'd prefer it to be cooler. I think I'm going to try lapping the base on it, and see what happens. Otherwise, I'll either have to live with it, or change to something else. Maybe liquid. The True Copper is nice, but it's heavy. 1900g for just the cooler. Also ~2x what I picked up the Noctua 1366 kit for.

The fans are great, and are used for cooling the CPU and drives (set in backplane adapters).

 

[Tesselator]

what is your view on Noctua fans? for my build im going to use the Noctua U12P heatsink (which includes a P12 fan) and an S12 for the case fan.

I dunno. There's a shop I go to that has a sound-guarded dimly lit room (almost like for speakers at a stereo shop) and about 150 or 200 different fans mounted that you can switch on or off or speed control. So I just go there when looking. But one thing is usually true: One manufacturer makes MANY different kinds and quality levels of fans. So I'm not sure you can go by a maker name. I think you need to get on the web and investigate the construction along with the specs and then hopefully meet one in person first - though the later may not be feasible in the Aussieland unless you're in a big city.

I of course like maglev type fans with ripple blades best (very silent and powerful!). What are the Noctua fans you're looking at?



.

 

[nanofrog]

I dunno. There's a shop I go to that has a sound-guarded dimly lit room (almost like for speakers at a stereo shop) and about 150 or 200 different fans mounted that you can switch on or off or speed control. So I just go there when looking. But one thing is usually true: One manufacturer makes MANY different kinds and quality levels of fans. So I'm not sure you can go by a maker name. I think you need to get on the web and investigate the construction along with the specs and then hopefully meet one in person first - though the later may not be feasible in the USA unless you're in a big city.

Nocuta's a bit unique. They only offer a few models (self designed, but OEM for manufacture). I've no idea who they use as their OEM source.

But I've never found them in a shop either. I liked the specs, and took a gamble. And I've been using them ever since.

 

[andyOSX]

In short, my $900 "Hack Pro" sports nearly as good or better hardware than any Mac that Apple sells short of the $3,300 8-Core Mac Pro

This article is definitely misleading. He states in the article that the 3GHz Core 2 Quad he is using is FASTER than a 2.66GHz Nehalem Xeon Core i7.

Sorry buddy, apparently you don't know very much about computers...

I'm not saying you couldn't build a computer with similar specs to the Mac Pro for cheaper, but it would be FAR more than $900. Especially if you consider what the prices were back in March, which is the last time the Mac Pro's price was adjusted.

Also, it's not like you couldn't buy that RAM and those HDs for the same price and put them in your Mac Pro... So it's really just the processors/mobo case etc that you save money on. But that plus running OS X properly is what makes the Mac Pro special. If you take the Mac Pro out of the Mac Pro you just have a PC running an unstable OS X install.

If you are smart you would buy the Mac Pro right after it's been updated... not 6-9 months later.

 

[beaner454]

I'm not saying you couldn't build a computer with similar specs to the Mac Pro for cheaper, but it would be FAR more than $900. Especially if you consider what the prices were back in March, which is the last time the Mac Pro's price was adjusted.

That is the saddest argument for why one shouldn't do a Hackintosh that I've heard. Why should he compare the price of a potential hackintosh using prices from March? That's the whole point-Apple doesn't adjust prices as they become cheeper. Which then forces us, the consumer, to look to alternate venues.

I agree that an exact reproduction of a Mac Pro would cost more than $900, but don't apologize for Apple's lack of price adjustments.

 

[Tesselator]

Nocuta's a bit unique. They only offer a few models (self designed, but OEM for manufacture). I've no idea who they use as their OEM source.

But I've never found them in a shop either. I liked the specs, and took a gamble. And I've been using them ever since.

Cool. I have a PC that I used all ball bearing type scroll fans on. That was interesting. The ones for the CPUs are modeled to look like jumbo-jet engines. They suck directly upward through the sink and blow directly out (past a baffle) the back of the case.

 

[Ploki]

Mine's not a hackintosh. Yet. But it's not really loud. Fans are 20dbA, save graphics, which I don't run hard. But it took effort and planning.

I'm still thinking about some rework for temps (see other thread). Not terrible by any means, but I know it could be better.

How did you make that measurement?

 

[richard.mac]

I have that cooler and multiple Noctua 120mm fans (all P12's). The cooler is nice, but Nehalem runs hot, and at stock temps, I'm getting 40 - 42C for idle, and 67C load.

I'd prefer it to be cooler. I think I'm going to try lapping the base on it, and see what happens. Otherwise, I'll either have to live with it, or change to something else. Maybe liquid. The True Copper is nice, but it's heavy. 1900g for just the cooler. Also ~2x what I picked up the Noctua 1366 kit for.

The fans are great, and are used for cooling the CPU and drives (set in backplane adapters).

67C load isnt that hot, but it is on the warm side. if you want a cooler CPU on load try upping the fan speeds or use a different fan as there are better cooling fans out there, but may not be as quiet.

I dunno. There's a shop I go to that has a sound-guarded dimly lit room (almost like for speakers at a stereo shop) and about 150 or 200 different fans mounted that you can switch on or off or speed control. So I just go there when looking. But one thing is usually true: One manufacturer makes MANY different kinds and quality levels of fans. So I'm not sure you can go by a maker name. I think you need to get on the web and investigate the construction along with the specs and then hopefully meet one in person first - though the later may not be feasible in the Aussieland unless you're in a big city.

I of course like maglev type fans with ripple blades best (very silent and powerful!). What are the Noctua fans you're looking at?



.

dont really have a place where i can test fans in my city.

im looking at the S12 and P12 fans, the ones with the brown fan blades, which are made by Noctua an Austrian company who specialise in fan noise and cooling.

i read about them on silentpcreview.com and were awarded the quietest along with the Nexus. but i dont think they have the best cooling as a concequence... but i dont think my build will need ultra cooling fans.

 

[Umbongo]

This article is definitely misleading. He states in the article that the 3GHz Core 2 Quad he is using is FASTER than a 2.66GHz Nehalem Xeon Core i7.

Some things run faster on the Core 2, games notably. For most things you won't get more than 15% extra performance from the Core i7. Some well coded things like certain video encoding applications, winrar and things that are memory bandwdth intensive see larger improvements. You could easily overclock a Q9650 to outperform the Core i7 on everthing but those few specific things.

I'm not saying you couldn't build a computer with similar specs to the Mac Pro for cheaper, but it would be FAR more than $900. Especially if you consider what the prices were back in March, which is the last time the Mac Pro's price was adjusted.

This depends on what you consider far more and what you class as similar specs. When the Mac Pros came out you could get $999 2.66GHz Core i7s systems from Dell. You can build a 2.66GHz Core i7/Xeon 3500 system now with 3GB memory, 640GB storage, comparable graphics to the 120 GT, 750W quality PSU, optical drive, X58 board and a nice case for $850. If you want the exact same features as a Mac Pro (1KW PSU for a single socket processor and graphics card), are counting in an Apple mouse and keyboard, or just an expensive set, adding on the OS price, adding on firewire and a comparable case then the price rises, but you can still do it for $1,250. Half the retail of a Mac Pro. More than $900 (a third could be considered far more I suppose), a lot less that Apple.

But that plus running OS X properly is what makes the Mac Pro special. If you take the Mac Pro out of the Mac Pro you just have a PC running an unstable OS X install.

As well as having Apple's support if you value it. However I don't think it is too hard to see why having $1,000-$1,500 in your pocket is worth putting up with the hassles and losing the few pros you get.

 

[monokakata]

I wondering if anybody's made a small but reasonably-fast hackintosh?

I have a situation where a Mac Mini would be perfect, but I could never be happy spending that much for that little. So it's out.

Lian Li (I always used their cases when building PCs; I've built a dozen or more) has a smallish case (PC-V351B) that's about 11 x 10 x 15. Much larger than a mini, of course.

Then the Gigabyte G31M-ES2l, an E7500, 4 gigs, Gigabyte BV-NX72G512E2 video, Seagate 1 tb, PC Power&Cooling 370x, and whatever's out there for DVD -- I can get these parts for just over $500.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to build it before I see how quiet it's going to be. I don't require dead silence as I have with my Mac Pro 1,1, but I need it to be quiet.

So, again, has anybody made a small form factor hackintosh and if so, how's the noise?

 

[parakiet]

As well as having Apple's support if you value it. However I don't think it is too hard to see why having $1,000-$1,500 in your pocket is worth putting up with the hassles and losing the few pros you get.

depends why you need that rig.

sometimes it just needs to work, without problems. one messy deadline could be enough to justify the 1000 euro diference.

with my pc i had some stupid typically windows stuff right before an important deadline. - not funny -

with those 1000 euro saved i could have bought a second rig.. one for surfing, mailing, gaming and other stuff. in reality however keeping my two rigs apart wasn't working for me
it even didn't work with swapping HDDs on my pc

long story short: just loving the way mac works. might not be the fasted or the cheapest but it is stable and seems to keep being stable.
almost a year without big errors, formats, hardware changing etc

that's worth all those $$$

 

[Umbongo]

long story short: just loving the way mac works. might not be the fasted or the cheapest but it is stable and seems to keep being stable.
almost a year without big errors, formats, hardware changing etc

that's worth all those $$$

Yes in the end its about the overall experience you get. However people, especially new potential OS X users, don't factor that in when comparing pricing. On the other hand sometimes Apple push things too far, and the pricing on the new Mac Pros was a slap in the face for a lot of people and will continue to be so I expect.

 

[zmttoxics]

Those who are worried about noise should look at the Antec P18x / P19x series cases. They are the quietest towers I have ever built (I have 1 p180 and 2 P182). The Sonatas are nice (I have 5 at the office and 1 at home), but aren't nearly as nice as the P182s.

 

[fehhkk]

I wondering if anybody's made a small but reasonably-fast hackintosh?

I have a situation where a Mac Mini would be perfect, but I could never be happy spending that much for that little. So it's out.

Lian Li (I always used their cases when building PCs; I've built a dozen or more) has a smallish case (PC-V351B) that's about 11 x 10 x 15. Much larger than a mini, of course.

Then the Gigabyte G31M-ES2l, an E7500, 4 gigs, Gigabyte BV-NX72G512E2 video, Seagate 1 tb, PC Power&Cooling 370x, and whatever's out there for DVD -- I can get these parts for just over $500.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to build it before I see how quiet it's going to be. I don't require dead silence as I have with my Mac Pro 1,1, but I need it to be quiet.

So, again, has anybody made a small form factor hackintosh and if so, how's the noise?

My HackPro has that motherboard, E8400, 4GB DDR2 800 and an nvidia 9500GT and a coupe hard drives. I use it for a HTPC in my bedroom, works great with 10.5.8

The only issue is upgrading it, and installing patches, you gotta be careful with that sometimes. I'm really wanting to upgrade it to SL, but I have to see other people do it before I dive in; pretty sure it will break

 

[Zaap]

I wondering if anybody's made a small but reasonably-fast hackintosh?

I have a situation where a Mac Mini would be perfect, but I could never be happy spending that much for that little. So it's out.

Lian Li (I always used their cases when building PCs; I've built a dozen or more) has a smallish case (PC-V351B) that's about 11 x 10 x 15. Much larger than a mini, of course.

Then the Gigabyte G31M-ES2l, an E7500, 4 gigs, Gigabyte BV-NX72G512E2 video, Seagate 1 tb, PC Power&Cooling 370x, and whatever's out there for DVD -- I can get these parts for just over $500.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to build it before I see how quiet it's going to be. I don't require dead silence as I have with my Mac Pro 1,1, but I need it to be quiet.

So, again, has anybody made a small form factor hackintosh and if so, how's the noise?

I've built quite a few microATX Hackintoshes in a similar 'cube' configuration as the Lian Li PC-V351B.

If you want quiet performance, the smaller size of the case can definitely be an obstacle to that, but it doesn't have to be difficult or expensive. The most important thing once again would be use a passive video card. A video card with a fan in one of the smaller 'cube' cases will make an undue amount of racket.

You probably won't have room for a third-party CPU cooler that's quieter than the stock- but the stock for an E7500 Wolfdale shouldn't be all that noisy.

Use a decent PSU with a 120m fan for low noise- assuming the case fits a full-sized ATX PSU. Mount with an anti-vibration kit.

Use your choice of low-noise, high quality case fans. Some of my faves are this and this. Use an anti-vibration kit.

You can also use a similar anti-vibration mounting for hard drives.

All of these measures used together will make for a very quiet system, and pretty much silent from any reasonable distance. (Say in an HTPC use, for example).

 

[nanofrog]

Cool. I have a PC that I used all ball bearing type scroll fans on. That was interesting. The ones for the CPUs are modeled to look like jumbo-jet engines. They suck directly upward through the sink and blow directly out (past a baffle) the back of the case.

Got pics?

That would be rather cool to take a look at.

How did you make that measurement?

Sound Pressure Level (SPL) meter.

67C load isnt that hot, but it is on the warm side. if you want a cooler CPU on load try upping the fan speeds or use a different fan as there are better cooling fans out there, but may not be as quiet.

That temp was obtained at all 4 cores running flat out. I used Prime 95 to do it, but there's multiple programs that can (stress testing). Rather handy.

But it's definitely on the warm side. Nehalem runs hot, and that's with a decent cooler and fans, not the stock HSF shipped in Intel's boxed processors.

i read about them on silentpcreview.com and were awarded the quietest along with the Nexus. but i dont think they have the best cooling as a concequence... but i dont think my build will need ultra cooling fans.

Actually, they aren't bad. IIRC, they're rated to move ~54CFM at full rpm (full voltage).

Some things run faster on the Core 2, games notably. For most things you won't get more than 15% extra performance from the Core i7. Some well coded things like certain video encoding applications, winrar and things that are memory bandwdth intensive see larger improvements. You could easily overclock a Q9650 to outperform the Core i7 on everthing but those few specific things.

Exactly. The improvements don't produce gains unilaterally at all. Just in high bandwidth applications, specifically for memory access. So far, that's rather limited, and primarily server related (but not exclusive).

Server use is what the architecture was actually aimed at. Consumer users will have to wait for the software to catch up. As usual.

Lian Li (I always used their cases when building PCs; I've built a dozen or more) has a smallish case (PC-V351B) that's about 11 x 10 x 15. Much larger than a mini, of course.

Then the Gigabyte G31M-ES2l, an E7500, 4 gigs, Gigabyte BV-NX72G512E2 video, Seagate 1 tb, PC Power&Cooling 370x, and whatever's out there for DVD -- I can get these parts for just over $500.

Having parts around that you can recycle can save quite a bit of cash, and either allow you to get better parts than you otherwise would have, additional parts you want, or just save the cash.

Really nice when that works out.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to build it before I see how quiet it's going to be. I don't require dead silence as I have with my Mac Pro 1,1, but I need it to be quiet.

As you've got Lian Li cases, I presume they have rubber O rings for drive installations. If not, see if you can make them fit(or other vibration dampening product), as they make a big difference. It does in mine. Also, things like silicon rubber gaskets help with other things like fan and PSU vibrations, if it's ever been a problem in the intended case. Sound dampening foam can also be applied to the inside of the removable side panels, if it's still louder than you want.

It's not that expensive, and can be quite effective for a reasonable investment (complexity makes a big difference in cost though, so try to keep it simple).