Building a Mac Computer
I want to build a Mac Pro piece by piece. I don’t have much money and I want to build it as I can afford the parts. I’m already familiar on how to put computers together since I do it for a living, but I would like to know where I can buy memory and processors and motherboards for Mac computers. Any ideas?
Apple’s quality control standards make building a D.I.Y. Mac virtually impossible. Even though the basic components of a PC and a Mac are the same (Hard Drive, Motherboard, Optical Drive, Ram, Processor, etc.), Apple designs each machine using components optimized for the particular model.
I asked Mark Taylor to verify my answer. He’s the genius that the geniuses at the genius bar send you to when they can’t fix your Mac. He suggested buying a used Mac from eBay and upgrading it.
Other World Computing sells Apple upgrade components. They don’t just list the products they sell. The Web site has a wizard that walks you through the component selection process based on the Mac model you’re wanting to upgrade. That insures you won’t end up with incompatible parts.
Also check out the Apple Outlet Store for good deals on refurbished Macs and discounted stuff.
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If you want a decent Mac, but can’t afford a Mac Pro, i recommend picking up a SSE3 capable Intel CPU, Intel Motherboard, ATI X1600 graphics and the rest of the parts needed to build a system and install OSx86 on it…If the CPU’s are similar to the ones in a Mac Pro, you’ll get VERY similar performance to the Mac Pro. I have OSx86 running on my desktop which is basically a Mac Pro and it runs perfectly. To find out all the hardware and stuff supported by OSx86, check out: http://wiki.osx86project.org/
I want to do the same using this guide
http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=26508&hl=
From Chile
@Koke - I have an OSx86 box on a laptop with a 2.4Ghz P4 (SSE2), 768MB RAM, NV Geforce4 MX420 and it runs really well.
After watching the show I checked out a site called Allmac.com They seem to have all the parts one needs to build a mac from scratch. It might be worth checking out.
Well, yes, you could always build a PC onto which you can install OS X (just take care about the components you select), but updating won’t be as easy, and you don’t know if in the next version Apple does something to effectively prevent you from running OS X. Having a real Mac would be better (and isn’t illegal…)
Hm, I’m somehow wondering what happens if you get a Mac Pro board. If I understand it correctly that’s $299 from AllMac.com. You might also want to buy a case, dunno if it’s ATX or not, and it looks great. But the rest… you can get a Xeon CPU everywhere, the RAM is pretty standard as well, hard discs, optical drives, … you would have to install a hacked driver to use the video card with OS X, and somehow you’ll need a copy of OS X, but other than that… looks doable to me, one would have to test if one CPU is enough (saves money). Should be cheaper too.
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