Hi all,
First off I want to say what a great help this site has been, I've been reading and studying various posts for a while now and I've finally ordered all the bits I need to build a hackintosh.
I have listed it here in the hope to help others in finding decent parts at cheap prices and to encourage them to build their own.

The total I've spent is £274.82 inclusive of delivery and taxes (£350 was the best price I could find for a CoreSolo Mac mini with 1GB ram).

(I already have a monitor and 500GB SATA hard drive so these weren't included in the price).

Here is the parts list ..

£51.98 E2200 dual core (very OC-able)
£44.00 4GB Patriot Viper RAM (2x2GB)(bargain!)
£49.99 GIGABYTE GA-G31M SOCKET 775 PENTIUM
£45 8600 Inno3D(bargain!)
£20 OCZ Vanquisher Fan
£29.98 Tower case
£45.99 keyboard +mightymouse (bargain!)
£22.40 LiteOn 22x Internal IDE DVD±RW Writer Burner (bargain!)
£10 Internet wifi dongle (with mac drivers) (bargain!)

Total = £274.82

I plan on doing the install using Leo4AllV3 with the following settings (I do own a licensed copy of Leopard)...

# Install Method: LEO4ALLv3 -selected:Vanilla Kernel 9.2.2, EFI, & ICHx Chipset drivers
# SM Bios 2.3, ACPI 1.0b, PnP 1.0a, DMI 2.0
# Audio: Realtek ALC662 works with AppleHDA patcher & alc662.txt or Use Azallia Audio on installer DVD
# LAN: Works out of the box, recommended to set ip address manually.
# SATA & IDE: Work OOB using ICHx chipset patch on installer DVD

With the following BIOS settings..
BIOS settings
-SATA in AHCI mode
-SATA in native mode
-disable the max CPUid value limit

One thing I will add, my DVDRW drive is PATA. Will I still be able to boot direct from that with Leo4allv3 without any issues??

Hope this list is useful to you guys!

Nate

Looks great man, I think your DVD drive is ok, good luck

Originally Posted by icchansan

Looks great man, I think your DVD drive is ok, good luck

Hey thanks for the feedback, I will be sure to post my results on here when I've finished the build. I plan to use it to run my CS3 suite until I can afford a real mac (plus I look for any excuse to experiment with computers).

I've been researching the OC ability of this board and ram combo, should see 1066mhz ram + 3 Ghz comfortably.

Here's links to some of the parts I've ordered...

Patriot 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400 Viper RAM (2 Availiable) on eBay, also, Memory, Desktop PC Components, Computing (end time 13-Mar-09 13:18:36 GMT)

1897 LC323 MIDI TOWER BLACK SILVER TRIM 500 WATT PSU on eBay, also 301-450 Watts, Desktop PC Cases, Desktop PC Components, Computing (end time 11-Feb-09 17:05:01 GMT)

OCZ Vanquisher CPU Cooler Skt AMD 754/939/AM2 Intel 775 on eBay, also Fan Heatsink Combos, Fans Heatsinks, Desktop PC Components, Computing (end time 13-Feb-09 00:34:37 GMT)

Nate

PS - I hope to contribute best I can with my build as my way of giving something back to this forum.

Hi all,
I got the hackintosh working with the hardware mentioned above.
I had issues with the geforce 8500gt, to get it working I had to install leo4allv3 WITHOUT video drivers, then reboot and install Nvinject. The card's now recognised and I have a selection of resolutions to play around with.
The sound works even though it's not displayed on system profiler.

I now have a few questions to ask..
The USB wifi drive is a Zydas model and it's not being recognised at all, I've tried using the mac drivers it came with but I've had no luck (10.3 - 10.4 & later). Also Flash USB drives aren't being loaded by finder (although they are appearing in system profiler).
Am I missing a setting for USB devices in the BIOS??

Apart from these few problems everything else works perfect, it loads in next to no time and it recognises all the hardware as well as the CPU and RAMs true overclocked speed (2980MHz + 1066MHz).
Any help ironing out these last few issues would be greatly appreciated as I'm a bit of a mac newb!

Cheers
Nate

Hey all, disregard the last message all is good! I am writing this from my now fully functional hackintosh!

To get the Zydas driver working (wifi usb) I had to DL wi-fire drivers (I can't find the link but I still have the file if anyone is interested - I used version 10.4 and it works perfectly with 10.5.x - unlike the actual 10.5 drivers!)

All I have left to do is install CS3 and I will have achieve what I originally set out to do - create a budget design PC perfect for students who cannot afford to pay the extortionate mac tax!

Good to hear that, enjoy

After much testing the only issue I can see is that you occasionally you have to have a usb device connected during boot up as it doesn't recognise it in Finder, sometimes the USB wifi isn't recognised but it's a simple case of unplugging it and putting it back in.

I hope my post has helped some people with making their own hackintosh, if you want any info please get in touch and I will try to help best I can.

nice job man, cheers bud . i am doing a clone of your system and im a on a tight budget big time and this has helped me out nice one. did you overclock the e2200 or leave it standard cus im am just wondering if you would have to bother with a chunkier heatsink...... oh yer is this board easier to use than the g41m :}

i found the e3500 cpu cheaper than the e2200 and its alot better place to start work from so any 1 interested should give it a look