DIY : iGyaan Hackintosh Build : Parts
We recently decided to build us up a hackintosh, and while the project is slightly time consuming and laborious, the outcome truly makes it worth your while.
We were highly conflicted between a mac-pro and a hackintosh, and the latter made sense for the kind of ‘on the fly’ upgradability we need.
Here are the parts that we used, and we are listing both INR and Dollar Prices for the convenience of easy purchase.
1. Corsair Graphite 600T Cabinet
2. Motherboard : Gigabyte GAZ97x UD7TH
The motherboard is one of the few that has thunderbolt ports that can be enabled even though the process of doing so is tedious.
3. Intel® CoreTM i7-4790K Unlocked 4.0 GHz
4. EVGA GTX 770 Superclocked with Boost 4 GB DDR 5
While there are many upped GPUs available, this one works out of the box with a mackintosh and is SLI ready so it works well with a similar card over the bridge. We got two of these so it made sense. Although EVGA cards are slightly difficult to find, you do get similar cards, also 2GB cards are available easily. Linked below.
5. Kingston HyperX Fury 8 GB DDR3 RAM ( 4 Slots)
No particular reason we chose this RAM. The Corsair Vengeance is alternative incase you don’t like the Kingston units.
6. Samsung 850-pro SSD
We got a 256 GB drive that we will use for a boot up and main app drive, we used a Thunderbolt RAID which was bought separately.
7. LG Ultrawide 25 inch monitor
We almost dropped our money for the Samsung 4k Monitor, but with the rumor mill abuzz about a Apple 5k Thunderbolt display, we wanted to wait just a bit longer. This monitor has a great 21:9 aspect ratio for editing and also does screen split, which is useful for better multitasking.
8. Thunderbolt Raid
This raid allows for 4 Full-Size Hard-Drives or SSDs and connects via Thunderbolt 2, also has a Thunderbolt out, for convenience of Daisy chaining.
9. Drives for RAID
We bought the HGST 7200rpm Deskstar 4TB drives for the Above Raid, and they work really well. They are designed for a commercial desktop NAS systems, so you can expect them to last long.
10. Bluetooth Dongle
The Motherboard does not come with Bluetooth, and most of the locally available adapters/dongles don’t work. Here are few that do.
11. TP-LINK TL-WDN4800 Wi-Fi Card
This is the most compatible card and it works out of the box.
12. Corsair RM 750 PSU
This 750watt PSU is powerful, efficient and easily available.
13. Corsair H100i CPU Cooler
This fits perfectly in the cabinet we chose, and is pre sealed with the cooling liquid, radiator and pipes come pre installed. So it’s a complete package ready to install, and it works well.
14. Apple Magic Mouse
What the heading says, it’s Apple’s mouse, so it just works, provided you get your bluetooth up and running.
15. Apple Magic Trackpad
You learn the importance of this trackpad once you start using it. Improves efficiency during multitasking. This is optional for those who want it. Works like a Charm.
16. Apple Bluetooth Keyboard
This final piece of the puzzle is highly recommended. You can also find any alternative Apple compatible keyboard. i.e. one which has a “cmd” key.
That is basically the list of parts for our Hackintosh build. Our Install guide will be up shortly.
You will also need a 16 GB USB 3 pen drive to make the install boot disk. It’s great if you have one lying around. Else we recommend :
What we ended up Spending? A Whopping Rs. 3,13,000!
Not all Mac-Hackintosh builds are or need to be this expensive. However this one worked the best for us. and we are happy.
