If you’re like me who completely adores Mac OS, and is really looking for a high end machine for anything but gaming, then you sure have the most common option to go for a Mac Pro, and shell out around Rs. 1,50,000. Woah, huge isn’t it? Don’t worry there’s another route viz. Hackintosh that you may take.
So what really is hackintosh?
It’s a computer system with Mac OS, but not necessarily Apple hardware. Enough babbling, lets get to work now.
Stuff that we need.
Required hardware
Order all your hardware from here.
Processor – Intel Quad Core Q9550 – Rs. 12000
Motherboard – Gigabyte EP45C-UD3R – Rs. 9000
Cabinet Case – iball Workhorse Silver Without SMPS – Rs. 2250
Power Supply – Cooler Master Extreme 600W – Rs. 3500 Graphics Card – Any of these MSI GTS 250 512MB – Rs. 9800
MSI GTX 260 896MB – Rs. 10500
If you’re graphic requirements are not so heavy you could just buy one of these cheap cards to fill in.. MSI 9400 GT – Rs. 2800 XFX 8600 GT – Check price (Not above 3k)
Recommended hardware
RAM – 4GB Corsair Dominator 1066 Mhz (Or anything above) – Rs. 8000
Hard Disk Drive – Minimum 250GB Western Digital – Rs. 2500
Rest of the hardware could be of your choice. You could buy Apple keyboard and Apple Mouse from Apple India store for Rs. 2400 and Rs 2200 respectively though. Your Logitech Mouse/Keyboard kit would work great anyway.
For display you could either just plug in your Samsung LCD or shell out some 32k to buy the Apple Cinema Display 20″ from the Apple Store.
We recommend buying at least a 20″ display, since anything less cripples the way Macs work.
Order all your hardware from here.
Software
Now comes the task of getting hold of the Mac OS DVD, first you have to decide if you want to go for the tried and tested Mac Operating System leopard, or you want to take a dive into the newly launched Snow Leopard. We recommend staying with Leopard for a while, but you can switch to Snow anytime you wish, or switchback as well, since your hardware is going to support both of them.
Now the download link for DVDs
You could get the Leopard Disc Image from here.
Or the Snow Leopard Disc image from here.
Now all you need is to install Mac OS on your Shiny New Macalike Hardware.
So that’s how we build a Mac Pro for 1/3rd the Price, and trust me it’d outperform the original, slightly though. Comment here if you’ve any queries.
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