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I originally posted this on my other blog in February, 2008, but figured it was interesting enough to repost here. The original entry follows:

After some careful consideration (and the fact that I’m getting very tired of my desktop), I have decided to enter morally ambiguous territory and build a Hackintosh. What’s a Hackintosh?

Running a patched version of OS X on a generic off-the-shelf PC.

I started out reading Adam Pash’s Lifehacker guide on how to build a Hackintosh for around $800 (referenced below). It seemed easy enough. When his second guide appeared which relies on Kalyway’s 10.5.1 installation, I was convinced that this was the way to go for me.

I can hear you now: “But if you love Apple so much, you should just buy a Mac desktop!”

True, but I don’t want or need the small form factor that a Mac Mini provides, given what it sacrifices (processor, hard drive, video card, basically everything). And I can definitely do without the octo-core Mac Pros that start at $2799. Even if you knock out one of those quad-core processors, it only drops $500. So the middle option is the iMac, which is a great computer (I bought one for my sister), but I don’t need the all-in-one approach.

I’m basically filling in a missing product line: the headless intermediate Mac desktop. Not overkill like the Mac Pro, but not the underpowered (for my purposes) Mac Mini, either. i want a Mac Pro, Jr.

I recently sold one of my MacBooks and picked up a MacBook Air, which is a great secondary computer. But I’m missing the extra power that a more full-fledged Mac would provide.

OK, here is where it gets a little dicey. Given the current state of OSx86, your Hackintosh experience relies mostly on two things: motherboard and video card. Based on the research, it seems you’re in the clear with most nVidia cards 7300GT and higher. For motherboards, a lot of people use the Intel BadAxe 2 or the Asus P5W. Given the advice that I read on the Anandtech forums from Kaido, I settled on a DFI motherboard.

Here are the parts that I purchased:
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz (Q6600, G0 SLACR)
Memory: 4GB (2 x 2GB) Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 SDRAM
Hard Drive: 150GB Western Digital Raptor X 10,000rpm
Video Card: nVidia 8800GT 512MB
DVD: 20x DVD Burner
(Motherboard: DFI LanParty DK T2RS, Case: Antec Sonata III)

Price: < $1,100.00

Add-in Mac OS X 10.5 for ~$35 (I already paid $171.99 for a family pack with five users to use with my other Macs) and iLife '08 $16 ($79.99 for a family pack). If you add those costs to the Mac Pro Jr. (which you should!), you're still talking about <$1150.00 for a powerful Mac with the great software that is normally included with a Macintosh.

Hopefully, in the near future, I want to overclock the quad to 3 GHz+. But I'll be happy if everything just works tomorrow.

As of right now, all of my parts have arrived except for the motherboard, which should be arriving tomorrow. I'll try to document the installation process step-by-step for anyone interested.

Resources:
InsanelyMac Forums
Build a Hackintosh Mac for under $800 (Lifehacker)
How To: Install OS X on your Hackintosh PC, no hacking required (Lifehacker)
My experience with Hackintosh (Anandtech Forums)