Build your own Hackintosh Mac Mini!

Thanks to the dedication and hard work of a guy named Tony and some of Tony’s cronies over at tonymacx86.com it’s possible to build your own Mac Mini (Or Hackintosh) for half the price and with much better spec.

 

A Hackintosh is a computer running Mac OS X but built with unsupported hardware. The idea of running Mac OS X on a unsupported system has been around for some time and it has been possible for a while to get the Mac OS running as a virtual machine on your Windows machine.

 

But the Hackintosh Mac Mini is a system built from scratch with parts that (with a few tweaks) can run the Mac OS X software better than the actual Mac Mini itself.

The project is very much still a work in progress and unless you have some patience and some knowledge of IT and building PCs then it may not be for you. But what can be better than running Mac OS X Lion with a 3.1G Ghz, HD3000 graphics processor, 8 gigs of RAM, maybe a SSD hard drive and a nice shiny HDMI monitor still for less than you would buy a Mac Mini.

 

So the shopping list?

 

• Mini ITX Case with 250W PSU
• Intel Core i3 2105 3.1GHz Socket 1155 3MB L3 Cache Processor
• Gigabyte GA-H67N-USB3-B3 H67 Socket 1155 Mini-ITX Motherboard
• Corsair 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1333MHz XMS3 Memory CL9 1.5V Unbuffered
• Any SATA hard disk (maybe you have one lying around) or even an Solid State Drive @ 3Gb/s (from the list of supported models) if you can afford one.
• Sony 24x SATA DVD RW Dual Layer ReWriter AD-7280S-0B
• An HDMI capable monitor – mines a 21.5?HP 2159m HDI monitor (potentially you can use this build with your TV!!)
• An Edimax Wireless nano USB adaptor (or opt to use the PCI-E slot or another supported USB device) if Wifi is needed otherwise the LAN slot works just fine.
• An OSX Leopard CD and eventually the OSX Lion download
• A USB keyboard and mouse (at least to begin with). Upgrade to a wireless set after the build.
• A USB key larger than 8GB (you can pick them up very cheap these days)
• Various downloads from the tonymacx86 website such as iBoot CD.

 

The list above might seem scary but in many cases you may already have many of the parts available to you. I already had a spare SATA disk, an HDMI monitor, the mouse and keyboard and the USB key. And it can be modified or even bettered to suit your needs. A more comprehensive list can be found at Tony’s site.

 

Bear in mind the Hackintosh Mac Mini is recommended to only work with an HDMI monitor so you’ll need to bin that hefty CRT monitor. Some people on the tonymacx86 forum have been successful using the HDMI port and then an DVI convertor to get it working with their DVI monitors.

 

The official forum for the build is here – Official CustoMac Mini 2011 Forum Thread. But here is the general gist of what you need to do (if you’ve got the hardware I went for):

 

• Put the parts together. This shouldn’t be too hard even for a novice. The most nervy bit is attaching the processor to the motherboard.
• Power up your new PC and go in to bios and update it to Gigabyte’s F7 revision. You can download the F7 file from the Gigabyte website using another PC (or Mac) and attach it to your new one with a USB key.
• Reboot and then make some necessary changes in BIOS. First load optimized defaults, save, reboot and then enable HPET 64bit mode and also change SATA to AHCI mode. Finally change the video RAM setting (this was the hardest setting to find amongst the bios). If you have 4gb of System Memory change the video RAM to 384mb and if you have 8gb of System Memory change the video RAM to 480mb (more details can be found on the tonymac website).
• Boot your computer from the downloaded (and burned) iBoot CD – from here, once loaded swap it for the Snow Leopard DVD, hit F5 and load the Snow Leopard Install. Before proceeding with the installation, use Disk Utility to format and partition your disk.
• After installation continue to use iBoot to boot in to the system, this time choosing the Leopard installation on the hard disk.
• Update Leopard to 10.6.6 (you’ll need internet now, so either use the LAN cable or try and get a wireless config to work). Avoid updating past 10.6.6 as I made this mistake and was unable to get the App Store to work. You’ll need 10.6.6 to get the app store to work at all however and you’ll shortly format the hard disk anyway and get rid of Leopard so future updates are not needed.
• Purchase Lion from the Apple App Store – over 4 gigs!.
• Use UniBeast from the tonymacx86 website – here – to create a Bootable Lion Installer on your USB Pen Drive.
• With that complete, restart your computer and boot from your USB Pen Drive and load the Lion Installer. You can choose to boot from USB at the BIOS screen, remove the iBoot CD to avoid confusion if it is still in the drive.
• Before installation, format your hard disk again, this time calling the partition ‘Lion’ or something along those lines.
• After installation, reboot, boot from the USB pen this time choosing the Lion installation (you wont need to do this for much longer). You also now have a USB pen that you can use again and again to install Lion without needing to install Leopard so you have done the hard work pretty much. I did about 6 formats and reinstalls before I was confident I had done everything right and I had a stable system.
• You now need to download MuliBeast from the tonymacx86 website and use it to install Audio, Network, SATA and tweak a few other settings using a DSDT file that you also need to download and drop on the desktop of your new Mac. My HDMI monitor worked out of the box but I ran the settings anyway. The settings you need for MultiBeast are on the tonymac website. It helped with other issues like sleep mode and audio not working.

 

Bear in mind things may have changed since I did the installation but I have a stable system and have been using it for a few weeks. Check out the tonymacx86 website and forum for the build for troubleshooting tips and updates on how to tweak the system.

 

Good luck!!!!