hackintosh My 2nd ever build and it's a Hackintosh...

[NeonThunder]

1. Budget - £600 / $775

 

2. Aim / Upgrade - building a hackintosh to replace my dying imac. The idea is that the system will be better then the current iMac cheapest iMac specs and be upgradable overtime when money allows.
I shall be using it for web / email / media streaming and my design work. So photoshop, illustrator etc. Also wanting to get into video editing and 3D modeling / printing.

 

 

3. Monitors

Plan on running two monitors maybe a 3rd in the future.

 

4. Peripherals

Keyboard.... Possibly
Montior - Already got one but would like to the same and need a mounting system for them.

Will be using sites such as eBay / amazon / ebuyer.co.uk for my purchasing my parts
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Hopefully my build will make sense I've copied and pasted it from a thread on another forum.

So I've not built a pc in a long time!! I think it was 15 years ago since my last build! I built myself a pc as I could make it better spec and for half the price of a mac at the time. Then throughout the years I gradually moved to apple, got myself a G4 power book (which is still going strong!) and an iMac. My reason for this build is i need a new mac due to my iMac being on its last legs and apple is now a rip off! Only good thing about them is the OS and I don't have £1000 spare. 

So I'm building a Hackintosh on a budget that will hopefully cost half the price of the basic spec iMac and be alot better! 
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iMac Spec - www.apple.com/uk 
21.5-inch iMac - Item Price: £1,049.00 
Hardware; 
1.6GHz dual-core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 2.7GHz 
8GB 1867MHz LPDDR3 
1TB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm 
Intel HD Graphics 6000 
Magic Mouse 2 
Magic Keyboard (British) & Users Guide (English) 
Accessory Kit 
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I've been using tonymacx86.com to help with the right configuration of parts to build the hackintosh. 

My new Hackintosh Spec (Hopefully) 

Gigabyte GA-Z170-HD3P Socket LGA1151 HDMI 7.1 Channel Audio Motherboard £112.12 
Intel Core i5 6600 3.3GHz Socket 1151 6MB L3 Cache Retail Boxed Processor £214.98 
Gigabyte GTX 750 Ti 4GB GDDR5 Dual-link DVI HDMI PCI-E Grpahics Card £118.20 
Corsair Vengeance LPX 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 DRAM 2133MHz C13 Memory Kit - Red65.97 
Samsung 850 EVO 250GB 2.5inch SSD £88.18 
Corsair Carbide 300R Case with Window £72.98 
Corsair VS Series 550 Watt VS550 Power Supply £38.49 
Edimax Gigabit PCIe Network Card £9.68 
LG Super Multi Blue Internal 14x Blu-ray Disc Rewriter WH14NS40 £58.22 

Total: £778.82 

ALL PRICES / PARTS SOURCED FROM EBUYER.COM - this is just a guide for now, parts need changing in places - Im wanting to get the build cost under 600 Including 2 monitors. 
Now the under £600 MIGHT BE A CHALLENGE.... BUT I LOVE A CHALLENGE!! And Im not going to get the parts right on first go

[WaterCooledNoob]

instead of a 6600 but maybe a older i7 4790 or a 3770 they will perform a lot better and will be cheaper as well as be better supported by apple due to apple using the same cpus in there 2014 and 2015 macs . 

[NeonThunder]

So first place to start is the case - iMac's are nice and shiny but do like custom built pcs
So to save money I dichted the Corseair case and got this http://www.ebuyer.com/725458-avp-mam...reader-cas-748beauty! For £20 delivered.
 

Now while its not the prettiest of cases it does have a free card reader and window panel plus a free fan and it's got enough room for everything. Only thing is I want some customization and I can always change the case at a later date and it also give me something to do whilst I get the rest of my parts. It's actually in more parts then that now as I wanted to paint it all. I'm going for a grey / pink theme on it.

 

 

So been sketching ideas for my case and this is roughly what it will look like

[WaterCooledNoob]

NICE 

 

1 hour ago, NeonThunder said:

-snip-

3770 is http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Intel-Core-i7-3770-3-4GHz-Quad-Core-Processor-PC-CPU-LGA1155-/252967314281?hash=item3ae606e369:g:hJsAAOSwlMFZLw8y

[NeonThunder]

It now looks like this. 

 

 

more to come on the asthetics soon!!

[WaterCooledNoob]

1 hour ago, WaterCooledNoob said:

3770 is http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Intel-Core-i7-3770-3-4GHz-Quad-Core-Processor-PC-CPU-LGA1155-/252967314281?hash=item3ae606e369:g:hJsAAOSwlMFZLw8y

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GIGABYTE-GA-H67M-UD2H-B3-SKT-1155-uATX-MOTHERBOARD-FULL-RETAIL-PACKAGE-TESTED-/282486456683?hash=item41c581416b:g:R1gAAOSwGJlZIB~A

 

1 hour ago, NeonThunder said:

It now looks like this. 

more to come on the asthetics soon!!

nice vinyl wrap .

[NeonThunder]

First attempt at wrapping something big but me think its went well
 

Checked out the processor you mentioned it is a possibility but i had thought about going with this spec.....

Case - £20

Gigabyte GA-z170 - £110

Intel i3 Processor 6100 - £110 enough processing power for what i need currently.

GTX 1050 Ti OC / 4GB - £240

Toshiba SSD 120GB - £50 

Crucial RAM - 8GB DDR4 2133mhz (could change this too 4GB would save me about £20)

Blue Ray Drive - £50 (Could skip this as it's not essential) 

Corsair VS series 550 Watt - £40 

That brings me too £528 - If i downgrade too 4GB ram and skip the blue ray, Im saving myself £70 so my total is £450 which leaves me with £150 for monitors and a wifi card, maybe USB 3.0

 

Should also mention Im rescueing the 1TB out of my iMac as it's only a couple year old and hardly been used.

 

Any other suggestions to save money where I can?

 

thats about it for now, part of me wants to make a ryzen build as I loved AMD back when i made my first comp. The processors are fanstic for stuff like photoshop / editing. Might save Ryzen for the next build... 

[Droidbot]

10 minutes ago, NeonThunder said:

My new Hackintosh Spec (Hopefully) 

Gigabyte GA-Z170-HD3P Socket LGA1151 HDMI 7.1 Channel Audio Motherboard £112.12 
Intel Core i5 6600 3.3GHz Socket 1151 6MB L3 Cache Retail Boxed Processor £214.98 
Gigabyte GTX 750 Ti 4GB GDDR5 Dual-link DVI HDMI PCI-E Grpahics Card £118.20 
Corsair Vengeance LPX 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 DRAM 2133MHz C13 Memory Kit - Red65.97 
Samsung 850 EVO 250GB 2.5inch SSD £88.18 
Corsair Carbide 300R Case with Window £72.98 
Corsair VS Series 550 Watt VS550 Power Supply £38.49 
Edimax Gigabit PCIe Network Card £9.68 
LG Super Multi Blue Internal 14x Blu-ray Disc Rewriter WH14NS40 £58.22 

Total: £778.82 

- you don't need Z170 for a locked CPU

- get the 6500 instead, it's cheaper and like 200Mhz slower

- get a 1050 or 1050Ti instead and use the Nvidia beta drivers

- good

- good

- good

- bad PSU, get a Corsair CXM instead