Hackintosh 10.5.5 Retail Rig - Starting at $305

[Kaido]

from the succinct reply, i gather 2 things. There is no i5/i7 replacement board that is as awesome as the udp3?

and that link is on back order

I just upgraded to an MSI X58 Pro-E: (the one without USB 3.0 & SATA 6G)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-226-_-Product

It's pretty nice! A couple small bugs to work out, but haven't had a single kernel panic in 2 months. I'm still on the UD3P as my main machine because I donated the X58 to my in-laws (8-cores...I'll never have to build them a computer again! muhahaha). The two main kinks are (1) when you shutdown it reboots (I think something got tweaked wrong in the DSDT, but SpeedStep works), and (2) the two Jmicron ports (eSATA and one onboard SATA) show up as ATA and don't support full Hot Swap. But everything else works. Great price too.

Edit: Hot dang - $30 MIR! Hmm...

 

[K_Panic]

As previous mentioned I believe the P55 chipset is MORE awesome than the UD3P (I own one, now my wife's). I have replaced my other UD3P with a P55M-UD4 and replaced both my old G31-ES2L with a P55M-UD2.

The P55M-UD4 is truly awesome, everything works, sound, lan, sleep, auto sleep, sleep from power button, wake from sleep, speed step, and the (2) Jmicron ports are hot swappable. Pretty much everything is now support with 10.6.3. If you want to save a few bucks go for the P55M-UD2, the big difference between the two boards is the sound chipset, the UD2 on board sound was broke in the last point update. I remember when this happened to my UD3P. The easy solution is use a USB sound stick like Kaido has suggested in the past.

The P55's are easy to setup. Finally gigabyte BIOS is more hack friendly, no more BIOS reset problem.

Another advantage of the P55 solution is it is used in the new i5 and i7 iMac...more vanilla. As of yet the X58 platform is not implemented in any Mac. The P55 also uses dual channel memory where the X58 uses triple channel, again not implemented yet in any Mac.

Stell (remember him, the man behind the life hacker article, the killer script for NBs) couldn't get sleep or sound to work and had other issues with his MSI X58, he got rid of it. I think he may be using ASUS now, for some reason he didn't like gigabyte, well everyone has a opinion.

No doubt the X58 is a great board and way fast and could be a viable solution if apple implements it in the new MacPro. Very possible, however, not implemented yet.

 

[Kaido]

As previous mentioned I believe the P55 chipset is MORE awesome than the UD3P (I own one, now my wife's). I have replaced my other UD3P with a P55M-UD4 and replaced both my old G31-ES2L with a P55M-UD2.

The downside with the P55 chipset is (1) you're limited to 16GB RAM instead of 24GB (not a big deal for most people), and (2) you can't use the new 6-core 1366 chips (also not a big deal for most people). Plus, unless you're doing some crazy overclocking, the 875K is just more money for about the same OC performance (all the 920's, 930's I've worked with hit 4ghz super easy).

But overall the boards and stuff are cheaper, so there's more support in the community because they're more affordable. Which means more progress, yay

The P55's are easy to setup. Finally gigabyte BIOS is more hack friendly, no more BIOS reset problem.

Oh man...I had forgotten about that BIOS reset bug...shudder

 

[vailr]

New low price for an OSX friendly, DirectX 10 class video card (good thru 6/30):
MSI GeForce 8400 GS 512MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card $15.39 shipped, after Bing CB + MIR.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127472

 

[K_Panic]

from the succinct reply, i gather 2 things. There is no i5/i7 replacement board that is as awesome as the udp3?

and that link is on back order

Check out tony mac x86 site for info/support for the P55 (i5, i7) boards. The P55 is in the same price range as the UDP3 and are easy to setup, rock solid systems. You will get better performance out of the i5/i7 than the C2D/C2Q cpus.

 

[idlehands]

I actually googled my way to the tonymac site and think i'm going to go UD2 and now just have to come up with a case/cpu idea, i.e. 2 or 4 cores.

I'm not sure if i want 4 or 8gb of ram to start off with. I'm just tired of linux on my work laptop with 2gb of ram and fighting with visio/word in a vm. such a pain!

 

[scootermaster]

So what does 10.6.4 break?

 

[K_Panic]

I actually googled my way to the tonymac site and think i'm going to go UD2 and now just have to come up with a case/cpu idea, i.e. 2 or 4 cores.

I'm not sure if i want 4 or 8gb of ram to start off with. I'm just tired of linux on my work laptop with 2gb of ram and fighting with visio/word in a vm. such a pain!

You can't go wrong with the P55M-UD2, its a great board, lots of support at tonys and elsewhere if you need it.

I like these two cases:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811129042
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811119137

And these cpu's
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-215-_-Product
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-214-_-Product
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-368-_-Product

4 Gigs are just fine...I use Ripjaws.

BTW - updated with the 10.6.4 with no issues on my P55M-UD4 and my P55M-UD2 other than using 10.6.2 applehda.kext in SLE for audio as I did in 10.6.3.

 

[GWestphal]

Didn't break anything on my P35-DS3L hack. Remember to remove SleepEnabler and and *HDA kexts from /E/E or /S/L/E and of course as always back up your kexts just in case.

 

[alfa147x]

Man I need to get back to hackintoshing! It sitting at 10.6 i would try to get it to 10.6.4 but don't have anything to move data on to

 

[Kaido]

You can't go wrong with the P55M-UD2, its a great board, lots of support at tonys and elsewhere if you need it.

I like these two cases:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811129042
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811119137

I've had my Coolermaster 690 for years and it's been super solid. It's like a black Mac Pro case, minus the handles. Heavy, large, and solid.

I've been looking at the Antec 300 to replace my Antec Sonatas...I've got 3 of those and the doors have broken off all of them

 

[mosslack]

Didn't break anything on my P35-DS3L hack. Remember to remove SleepEnabler and and *HDA kexts from /E/E or /S/L/E and of course as always back up your kexts just in case.

I've now done mine as well. For me, I previously was using Meklort's universal version of the SleepEnabler.kext, so for those using this you need to remember to change the following in the com.apple.Boot.plist file which is located in the /Extra folder.

<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>pmVersion=20</string>

Also if you are using VoodooHDA.kext in /S/L/E as I am, you need to be sure AppleHDA.kext has been removed from that location prior to doing the update. Since it didn't cause a problem with 10.6.3 I left mine there, but it definitely causes problems with 10.6.4 so it must be removed. I will be adding an update to my guide as soon as I have reports from others that this method works okay. HTH

I have updated my guide for 10.6.4 also. You can find it here:

http://groups.google.com/group/hq-a/web/install-guide-gigabyte-ga-p35-ds3l-usb-10-6-x

 

[Kaido]

thepiecesfit posted a nice guide for 10.6.4 Snow Leopard on the DS3L board:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=222316

 

[alfa147x]

thepiecesfit posted a nice guide for 10.6.4 Snow Leopard on the DS3L board:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=222316

just set my Hack in my new apt
trying this now
will report back

 

[mosslack]

For anyone who setup a dual boot system (Snow Leopard/Windows 7), with a common shared DATA (fat32) partition, have you checked to see if the DATA drive is visible in WIndows 7?

Oddly enough, on 3 of the ones I setup, the DATA partition (drive D), was no where to be found in Windows 7. As I had set mine up according to my own dual boot guide, it seems that Windows doesn't know how to deal with a pre-existing fat partition on the system.

The solution is to recreate it using Disk Utility once the dual boot is working correctly and Windows is operational. Strange but true.

 

[scootermaster]

To I'm finally making strides to retire my venerable 10.5.8 install, and I'm up to 10.6.4. Haven't really tested much, but a ton of bugs that plagued 10.5.8 seem to be gone (password on screensaver works, haven't seen any QT/mouse lag issues, my logitech mouse buttons are recognized -- because there's no crap LCC install here, I think even autosleep works, etc)

So, I've got a pretty much stock install with nothing added but CCC. I've CCCed my install to two different 10gig partitions, SL Test and SL backup. I figure I'll never touch SL Backup, and any install-tweaking I'll do on SL Test. That way, if it doesn't work, I can just restore SL Backup to SL Test and start over. (If it does work, I can do the changes on the main partition.)

I've also got a SL Files partition I want to keep the majority of my files on, just in case I need to clobber the main SL install partition (so hopefully that'll at worse clobber the apps, not the data themselves). Should I be even more paranoid? Move my home directory off-partition? Move my apps directory? Relax and have a coke and a smile?

But really, my question for you kids is this:

Before I start tainting my beautiful new install with applications and data and other things that make things ugly and slow and dirty and break things, what should I do, to make sure I can go back to a nice, pretty, clean, stable state? Time Machine? Superduper? More CCC? Stand on my head and recite from the book of psalms?

Should I install "core" apps and then clone that someplace else (I don't have a partition for that, but I could clone it to a file and stick it somewhere). I just want to start using SL instead of Leo, but I don't want to have to start from scratch if I need to reinstall again.

Thanks!

 

[thepieces]

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=222316 10.6.4 guide for GA-P35-DS3L is now updated with single click kext installers that fix permissions. Along with bonjour, temp bug fix, and a nice chameleon theme that looks like the boot camp loader. Hopefully this makes it even easier than ever before

 

[alfa147x]

thepiecesfit posted a nice guide for 10.6.4 Snow Leopard on the DS3L board:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=222316

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=222316 10.6.4 guide for GA-P35-DS3L is now updated with single click kext installers that fix permissions. Along with bonjour, temp bug fix, and a nice chameleon theme that looks like the boot camp loader. Hopefully this makes it even easier than ever before

Thanks to Kaido I got it working! I needed to add this to the boot plist:

<key>Graphics Mode</key>
<string>1920x1200x32</string>

Thanks thepiecesfit for you AWESOME guide and help!

 

[GregGreen]

Just did a SL install using the tonyx86mac guides/method on the hardware in my sig. Definitely recommend the method to anyone looking to do a p55/core build. Was an absolute cinch to get to 10.6.4 with no issues.

 

[silverpig]

Just upgraded to a 9800GTX (from a 7900GS) and that let me go to 10.6.4 tonight (couldn't do it previously as it wouldn't install on anything less than an 8xxx).

However, now I have run into a terrible problem: The 9xxx cards (and similar ones... 240 and 8xxx are affected too), just plain don't work when you connect anything via HDMI. Even DVI-HDMI doesn't work, and I've got an HDTV I use for plex. Right now it's stuck in VGA mode

 

[mosslack]

Has anyone tried the Carti BIOS for the UD3P yet? I see it's now available, but there are 2 different ones for the GA-EP45-UD3P. One for version 1.x (except 1.6) and one for version 1.6. I sent the sticker with that info on it in for the rebate. Anyone know off hand what version these boards were when we bought them?

 

[vailr]

@mosslack:

Look at the board's "southeast" corner (when viewed with the external ports at the bottom).
See the board photo (version 1.0) here:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128358

At any rate: always keep a photo scan of the rebate submission, in case of possible "rebate invalid" notices.

 

[mosslack]

Thanks, I was hoping to avoid opening it up again, but I'm pretty sure it's not a rev 1.6, so I feel reasonably safe to go with the 1.x version of the bios. As for the copy of the rebate sticker, I had it, but who knows what happened to it. Will be interesting to see just how well the Carti BIOS works.

 

[vailr]

Thanks, I was hoping to avoid opening it up again, but I'm pretty sure it's not a rev 1.6, so I feel reasonably safe to go with the 1.x version of the bios. As for the copy of the rebate sticker, I had it, but who knows what happened to it. Will be interesting to see just how well the Carti BIOS works.

Can also check via Alt-F9 while looking at the bios setup screen.
The UD3P board 1.6 version uses "letter only" bioses (FA -> FE), while the 1.0 & 1.1 versions use Letter and number combinations: F4 -> F10

 

[mosslack]

Yeah I thought there was something like that. Anyway, I have flashed the BIOS and I have it working, but I can't say I'm all that impressed with it. Booting w/o DSDT I have only 1024x768 video, no QE/CI, no sound. Plus following his directions I had no LAN ports working either. This may be the way to go for the future, but it's not ready for primetime just yet. BTW, the system works the same as before with DSDT enabled, so no big loss, other than some wasted time.