Building my Windows Tower last year was fun, so I have been looking for another project. Then I found this page at Tony Mac’s on building a Hackintosh Mini.
What I’m looking for is a small system to hook up to the TV in the Den. The motherboard in the parts list has a HDMI port, and I already have a remote keyboard/trackball to use. There is an Ethernet switch where I want to put it so, no need for a WiFi card either. I figure I can build it for around $470. That includes $20 for a copy of Mountain Lion MacOS. Not bad considering low end Mac Minis start at $600, and that is with a 500 Gig HD and 4 Gig of RAM. I’m planning on a 2 TB HD and 8 Gig of Ram. The foot print is a little bigger than a Mac Mini, but I’m replacing a mini-tower, so the space isn’t a problem.
Here is the parts list I’m looking at:
- Intel Core i3-3225 Dual-Core Processor 3.3 GHz – $135
- Gigabyte GA-H77N-WIFI Motherboard – $114
- Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600 MHz RAM – $41
- MI-008 Tower Black P4 Chassis with 250W Itx Psu+sata Power Supply -$48
- Western Digital Green 2 TB Desktop Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, SATA III, 64 MB Cache – $110
Filed under: Apple, Geek Skills | Tagged: Apple, build, Hackintosh, Operating System |
Urbin Technology 
Got all the parts, put everything together and absolutely nothing happens when I try to power it own. I rechecked all the cabling/connections, twice, and still nothing. Either the power supply, or the power switch itself, is DOA. Ordered a replacement chassis/power supply. Try again in a couple of days.
It’s up and running OS X Mountain Lion and hooked up to the TV in the Den. I’m going to have to jump through some hoops to get sound to pump over HDMI, but it is mostly done. A fun and satisfying build
Converted this over to Linux (Ubuntu desktop) a few years later.