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Someone Built a Hackintosh Pro

mmntech said:
That's quite impressive. Here's the full build log.
http://www.tonymacx86.com/mac-pro-mods/120757-mac-pro-late-2013-replica.html

Those idle chipset temps are worryingly high though. Hope that's just a glitch.
Click to expand...

The chipset temperature is not accurate; the program probably is not able to get a reading from the probe it is looking for. I've seen this happen in other programs, defaults to high threshold. Else chipset at 127C would probably not be viable, no reason for components that draw more power, using same ventilation to run 80-90C cooler.
 
Rakehellion said:
It has a Core i3 and a Radeon 7750. Well, at least they tried.
Click to expand...

Probably didn't want to spend too much on the build. Though with the GPU, it's a half size/hight card, which I could only find up to an HD 7770 in. Thermals might be an issue too with the CPU. The real garbage can Pro has a giant heatsink up the middle for it's 130W TDP processor.
 
Rakehellion said:
It has a Core i3 and a Radeon 7750. Well, at least they tried.
Click to expand...

I would imagine that part of the problem comes down to cooling. While he was able to stuff everything into a shape that resembles the Mac Pro, the innards look nothing like it. I'm not talking about the lack of a Xeon or a Fire Pro, but the separate logic cards attached to the large, triangular heatsink. Ultimately, he's stuck cooling a full-fledged Mini-ITX board and a GPU.
 
The whole reason the mac pro looks like a trashcan is to enable the single fan and general shared cooling system. Its not really a form they wanted more one that was chosen by the engineering of the solution itself. To take a normal form factor and cram it into a trashcan design without the cooling solution takes all the drawbacks of the trashcan and none of its benefits.
 
BrightCandle said:
The whole reason the mac pro looks like a trashcan is to enable the single fan and general shared cooling system. Its not really a form they wanted more one that was chosen by the engineering of the solution itself. To take a normal form factor and cram it into a trashcan design without the cooling solution takes all the drawbacks of the trashcan and none of its benefits.
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Do you think they arrived at the unified thermal solution first, and then built the system around it? That would make the most sense, but I wonder what led them to that in the first place.
 
Interesting project.

That looks like an exposed PSU on one side- that would scare the crap out of me. Potential electrocution every time you needed to open it up.
 
Zaap said:
Interesting project.

That looks like an exposed PSU on one side- that would scare the crap out of me. Potential electrocution every time you needed to open it up.
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Just like the genuine MacPro's 450 W PSU:
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Mac+Pro+Late+2013+Teardown/20778

mkyo.jpg
 
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It's a neat idea, but it looks kinda shitty to me. It's far from the best form factor from a looks standpoint and I don't think this one is highly engineered like the Mac Pro.

And really, it's a Mac Pro in looks only; those are pretty lowly specs...
 
TheStu said:
If you got the image from ifixit, then you would have also seen that the PSU is sandwiched between the I/O board and the logic board. It's not quite as exposed.
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To add to that, Apple really, REALLY doesn't want you taking their stuff apart. Most people who buy these things won't anyway.

I personally would have gone with an external PSU. Haswell i3s (some of them) only have a 35W TDP. There's not to many DC-DC options though. Many I saw online just power the mainboard and don't have 12v power connectors for SATA.
 
mmntech said:
To add to that, Apple really, REALLY doesn't want you taking their stuff apart. Most people who buy these things won't anyway.

I personally would have gone with an external PSU. Haswell i3s (some of them) only have a 35W TDP. There's not to many DC-DC options though. Many I saw online just power the mainboard and don't have 12v power connectors for SATA.
Click to expand...

You can get a Thin-mini-ITX board (I like to call them Thini-ITX), that takes a 19v DC input, and coverts it on the board. Has a SATA power connecter there as well on the mobo so you can connect drives.

I've been playing around with one on a mod/case that I've been working on, they're fairly full featured. The biggest drawback with them is that you're stuck with onboard video since they only have PCIe x4 slots. The spec calls for the board to go into a thin, wide enclosure, and use a special heatpiped heatsink.
 
TheStu said:
You can get a Thin-mini-ITX board (I like to call them Thini-ITX), that takes a 19v DC input, and coverts it on the board. Has a SATA power connecter there as well on the mobo so you can connect drives.
Click to expand...

You can also just use a PicoPSU to accomplish the same without being stuck with a thin Mini-ITX board. If you want to avoid the awkwardly large perpendicular item on the board, you can do what I did with my Streacom case when I wanted to install a 3.5" HDD and found that the PicoPSU was too tall. I took a 4" 24-pin ATX power extension cable and used it to move the PicoPSU to a more open location.

If you used a 160W PicoPSU, you could probably even toss in a lower-end dedicated graphics card like a Radeon 7750. Although, you'd most likely not want a high-end CPU (maybe a 65W model), and you'd still most likely run it close to the limits of the PicoPSU.
 
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