Joseph Lam http://www.lamjoseph.com Aspiration . Innovation . Life Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:15:52 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Building a Hackintosh Pro (2012)! http://www.lamjoseph.com/2012/01/09/building-a-hackintosh/ http://www.lamjoseph.com/2012/01/09/building-a-hackintosh/#comments Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:14:28 +0000 Joseph Lam http://www.lamjoseph.com/?p=33 Introduction

People who know me know that I am a huge PC and Microsoft fan. I do not own anything Apple; no fancy iPad, no fancy iPod and no fancy iPhone for me - I just don’t see the appeal in Apple’s devices, especially with the premium they tend to tag to their “stylish” products.  Things changed when I got my hand on an Apple MacBook while I was on my honeymoon in late 2011.  Wanting to see where all the hype is about, I bravely ventured into an Apple store in Florida, and as all of you know honeymoon means shopping spree – I bought an Apple MacBook Pro – this is where everything changed.

Admittedly with the amount of money I paid for the Apple MacBook Pro, I could have purchased a PC laptop with much better specifications, but as a photographer and a beginner videographer I wanted to experience first hand why so Macintosh is the platform of choice for so many professionals.

While there are aspects of the Macintosh platform that I still do not like (i.e. minimalist user interface), here are a few things that absolutely blew my mind away:

  1. The OS is fast.  My desktop running on an Intel i5 2500k @ 3.3Ghz is slower than my Macbook Pro running on an Intel i5 @ 2.3GHz.  And by a large amount.  Surfing with Safari is an instantaneous experience.
  2. Reliability.  I have been running on my Macbook Pro for a week now without any slowdowns, reboots and crashes.  This is true reliability.
  3. Multimedia capability.  My primary purpose for purchasing a Macbook Pro is to use it for photo and video editing, and Aperture and Final Cut Pro are the two best multimedia applications I have ever used.  Simple enough to get a hang of, yet powerful enough for advanced projects.  I used to swear by Adobe Lightroom and Premiere Pro, but not anymore.
  4. Everything is simple, in a good way.  The laptop worked right out of the box.  Minimal set up work was needed, and everything is so simple and well laid out.  Heck, even the help documentations that many application teams seem to neglect nowadays are very well written and presented.

Rationale into Building a Hackintosh

So, if I think this highly of an Apple product, why am I building a Hackintosh?  The reason is simple – as nice as I think the Mac line of products are – they are simply overpriced.  Since I will be using this new machine as a video editing/compilation workhorse, I initially looked into an iMac because of its price and the nice monitor it comes with, then I looked into a Mac Pro.

  1. As nice as an iMac might be, due to the fact that everything is stuffed inside the monitor it is very limited in its expandability.  What really turned me off from buying an iMac is the fact that it will take a TONS of work (if it is even possible) to reuse the monitor on a PC, or on another system if the iMac decides to go bye-bye.  This is a complete waste considering that I was thinking about buying the 27″ model.  Additionally the memory upgrade was extremely costly.  The machine also comes with a mobile version of the Radeon video card, and a limiting single hard drive configuration (I’m not a fan of external hard drives).  This basically led me to scratching the iMac off my list.
  2. The Mac Pro is a much more expandable option, but it comes at a premium.  Starting at mid $2000 the Mac Pro does not come with a monitor, and has what I consider to be nearly identical specifications as the iMac.  The only exception is that it comes with a beautifully crafted and well laid out chassis.  Upgrading the Mac Pro to a respectable 3.2GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem” CPU, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB hard drive will bring it to a near $4000 mark.  Being a PC builder myself, I just cannot justify paying $2000+ in premium for the “Apple” brand.

Not finding the perfect solution I stumbled across an article on nofilmschool.com about building a Macintosh out of PC components (the so called Hackintosh).  This results in a substantially more powerful Mac machine at more than half the price.  I decided to pursue this as a fun project on the side, keeping the following 2 caveats in mind:

  1. The machine must be built with hardware that is compatible with the Mac OS (a list is available here -> http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/HCL_10.7.2), and
  2. Upgrading the Mac OS might be tricky in the future – as OS and driver changes might suddenly cause a hardware to not work (or a function of it).

I think these are reasonable drawbacks provided with the economical and performance advantages listed above.  So with these said, let’s get started.

Hardware Components

I want my Hackintosh to be as powerful as possible with the budget I have.  I also need it for video editing, so it needs to have a powerful CPU, plenty of memory, and an independent graphic card to aid with the process.  Here’s a complete list of hardware components I purchased for this build, and where I purchased them from:

  • Intel CPU BX80623I72600K Core i7-2600K 3.40GHz 8MB Level 3 Smart Cache LGA1155 Turbo Boost Retail, $319.99 (NCIX)
  • Gigabyte Z68XP-UD5-B3 ATX LGA1155 Z68 DDR3 3PCI-E16 2PCI-E1 2PCI SATA3 USB3.0 SLI Motherboard, $279.99 (NCIX)
  • Gigabyte Radeon HD 6870 Windforce 915MHZ 1GB 4.2GHZ GDDR5 2xDVI HDMI Display Port PCI-E Video Card, $189.99 (NCIX)
  • Corsair Vengeance Blue 16GB (4x4GB) 1600MHz DDR3 CL9, 1.5V DIMMs (CMZ16GX3M4A1600C9B), $88.88 (NCIX)
  • Western Digital Caviar Black () 1000GB (1TB) SATAII 7200RPM 32MB Cache (OEM), $159.99 (Canada Computers)
  • Corsair (CWCH60) Hydro Series H60 High Performance CPU Cooler for Intel Socket 2011/1366/1156/1155/775 & AMD AM2/AM3, $59.99 (NCIX)
  • Antec CP-850 CP Series 850W Continuous Power Supply, $114.88 (NCIX)
  • Antec P183 PC Case, $50 (NCIX)
  • Generic DVD Drive, $30 (NCIX)
  • Apple Mac OS X, $29.99 (Apple Store)

Here’s some snapshots I took of the various hardware components, and their product labels for your reference:

IMG_6569 IMG_6570 IMG_6573 IMG_6574 IMG_6575 IMG_6576 IMG_6577 IMG_6580

Software Components

Assembly

Experience

Results

]]> http://www.lamjoseph.com/2012/01/09/building-a-hackintosh/feed/ 0 The Story of My 2008 Honda Civic… http://www.lamjoseph.com/2010/02/07/the-story-of-my-2008-honda-civic/ http://www.lamjoseph.com/2010/02/07/the-story-of-my-2008-honda-civic/#comments Mon, 08 Feb 2010 03:03:05 +0000 Joseph Lam http://www.lamjoseph.com/?p=29 http://www.lamjoseph.com/2010/02/07/the-story-of-my-2008-honda-civic/feed/ 0 Into the World of Photography… http://www.lamjoseph.com/2010/02/02/hello-world/ http://www.lamjoseph.com/2010/02/02/hello-world/#comments Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:14:40 +0000 Joseph Lam http://www.lamjoseph.com/?p=1 Summers 2009 proved to be somewhat of an exciting time for me, as I picked up a few new hobbies and attempt to widen my scope of the world.  Among some of these new hobbies is one that have captivated me and dominated a good amount of my time during the latter part of 2009 – my dive into the world of photography.

I started off with an entry-level DSLR camera, namely the Canon Rebel XS (probably one of the cheapest DSLR cameras you can buy off the market today), which came with a walkaround kit lens.   But this kit lens wasn’t lonely for long because soon after the purchase of the camera, many other lens have joined my arsenal of photography equipments – the good old Canon 50mm f/1.8, the telephoto Canon 70-200mm L f/4, the wide angle Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 and the macro Sigma 70mm f/2.8.

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