Hackintosh Build

[jcparks]

oh yeah it just occurred to me that I don't have an optical drive on my PC anyway...
Let me watch your build develop then I may take you up on that offer.

 

[fuzz092888]

The Hackintosh lives!!! IT LIVES!!!!!

 

[psbfan9]

The Hackintosh lives!!! IT LIVES!!!!!

Congratulations! Is she everything you hoped she would be?

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

 

[fuzz092888]

So I've run into a few snags in the OS install. Hardware all works fine, loading OS and and unibeast onto the USB went fine, installing OS and unibeast onto the SSD almost went without a hitch Forgot to disable something in the BIOS and after I went back and did that it was fine. However, I got to the OS install welcome screen and none of the USB ports worked, which means no mouse or keyboard. Had to reformat everything and started again. Turns out I had checked something I shouldn't have. Now I'm getting through most of the install options, but I'm getting hung up at the create keychain setting. I'm in the process of trying again to see if it will happen.

In the meantime here are some pics. Excuse the poor wire management. Never was my strong suit









Now here is my source of irritation. The liquid cooling unit didn't fit in the case with the motherboard like it should have, so I ended up having to mount the radiator on the inside and the fans on the outside. The issue is that the fans are too thick for that spot so the upper grill bows out when put into place. I'm thinking of looking into some thinner fans, but that will be for another time.

 

[fuzz092888]

OS installed successfully. Still working out a few kinks and I haven't even begun to set everything up, but so far so good. There are some known issues with HDMI audio and thunderbolt, but everything else seems to be working. Pretty cool.

 

[Adam]

Excellent! Bummer about the liquid cooler fans, though. Just curious, why did you pick that cooler? It's still has the heat exchanger in the case, so I'm wondering what the advantage is over a non-liquid system. Heck, you could be rockin' some heat pipes right now.

 

[fuzz092888]

Excellent! Bummer about the liquid cooler fans, though. Just curious, why did you pick that cooler? It's still has the heat exchanger in the case, so I'm wondering what the advantage is over a non-liquid system. Heck, you could be rockin' some heat pipes right now.

I'm thinking the advantage is that instead of keeping the heat close to the center of the case, it's pulling it towards the edge. Plus the liquid heats slower than air, it's being circulated, and it's being passed around the heat fins which have air being pulled through them by the twin fans. All of this leads to less heat in the case and lower fan speeds. I could have also just made all of that up.

 

[Adam]

Nah, transporting the heat to the edge wasn't made up. However, while that may decrease fan speeds on the case fans, you added two more fans. Nothing's free, as they say. I mentioned have the heat exchanger in the case because you actually don't decrease the amount of heat in the case - but you have more effectively moved a lot of it towards the edge of the case near the room air. I just don't know how much heat that processor gives off...and I'm too lazy to look it up.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

From my understanding liquid is more effective than air cooling, but not by much. Biggest benefits of liquid is higher thermal capacity and it's typically a bit quieter. That said air/heatpipes system is usually much cheaper

 

[fuzz092888]

Nah, transporting the heat to the edge wasn't made up. However, while that may decrease fan speeds on the case fans, you added two more fans. Nothing's free, as they say. I mentioned have the heat exchanger in the case because you actually don't decrease the amount of heat in the case - but you have more effectively moved a lot of it towards the edge of the case near the room air. I just don't know how much heat that processor gives off...and I'm too lazy to look it up.

True, but like I said I think the real benefit ends up being the fact that the CPU heat is being transferred to the liquid and not the air. Since liquid heats slower than air the temp the Fins get is lower (or should be I think) than heat pipes or fins directly coupled to the CPU which means less overall heat in the case. Depending on how the case fans are configured it could lower fan RPMs or disengage the fans altogether since the overall case temp would be lowered. So even though you add two more fans, fan noise could be lowered along with overall case temp. At least that's what I'm getting from the stuff I've read about the liquid CPU coolers.

 

[jcparks]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181080&cm_re=140mm_fan-_-35-181-080-_-Product
those should work on top.

 

[Haoleb]

You might want to turn your PS around. It looks like you have vents on the bottom of the tower which looks pretty similar to the corsair obsidian case I have. The idea is you draw air in the bottom of the case directly into the PS and directly out the back. Of course you don't have to but it is just a suggestion. It looks like you can take your HDD racks out too since you don't really need them with one SSD

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

You might want to turn your PS around. It looks like you have vents on the bottom of the tower which looks pretty similar to the corsair obsidian case I have. The idea is you draw air in the bottom of the case directly into the PS and directly out the back. Of course you don't have to but it is just a suggestion. It looks like you can take your HDD racks out too since you don't really need them with one SSD

Good catch - H is correct. there should be a vent below the psu and the psu fan should be facing down.

 

[Adam]

I always thought that the PSU fan was supposed to face into the case, so as to effectively provide one more case fan. PSU components can generally go to fairly high temperatures.

 

[jcparks]

You might want to turn your PS around. It looks like you have vents on the bottom of the tower which looks pretty similar to the corsair obsidian case I have. The idea is you draw air in the bottom of the case directly into the PS and directly out the back. Of course you don't have to but it is just a suggestion. It looks like you can take your HDD racks out too since you don't really need them with one SSD

Haha you just made my check my tower to see if that is the way I had my PSU. Indeed it is sucking air in from the bottom and blowing it out the back.
Totally agree with you on this one.

 

[fuzz092888]

You might want to turn your PS around. It looks like you have vents on the bottom of the tower which looks pretty similar to the corsair obsidian case I have. The idea is you draw air in the bottom of the case directly into the PS and directly out the back. Of course you don't have to but it is just a suggestion. It looks like you can take your HDD racks out too since you don't really need them with one SSD

I didn't take the HDD racks out because as I said up top, they'll be filled once I verify that this all works.

You're right about the PS, but it doesn't seem to matter since the fan has yet to activate at all so far. I might do it when I have to go back in for something like adding HDD's, but for now it's not worth the time when I still need to get the thunderbolt ports and HDMI audio going. Still lots to do until it's fully functional.

 

[fuzz092888]

So it looks liking fixing the thunderbolt ports isn't too bad. I have to do a windows install on a blank HDD so that I can load all the necessary drivers, or something like that and then they should work. I'm updating to 10.10.2 Yosemite right now, then I'll give it a go.

HDMI audio looks much more involved. Still reading through the material trying to make sense of it and exactly what I'm supposed to do. The bright side is that everything else seems to be fully functional and if I can get the thunderbolt ports working without issue, then I'll be in business.

 

[jcparks]

Thunderbolt and HDMI aren't an issue for me at all... Superbowl is tomorrow and I have a long day planned. (which unfortunately doesn't involve watching the Superbowl) but watch your PM on Monday so i can get some info and send you a flash drive...

 

[fuzz092888]

Thunderbolt and HDMI aren't an issue for me at all... Superbowl is tomorrow and I have a long day planned. (which unfortunately doesn't involve watching the Superbowl) but watch your PM on Monday so i can get some info and send you a flash drive...

Sounds good. To be clear, HDMI works fine for monitors and video, just no audio.