I think that I will try to build a hackintosh and follow these directions

Rather than buy everything at once, I'm going to get piece by piece so that way I don't have to put that money up front.

Reason I want to do this? Because even though I love my iMac, I really miss a true desktop, and the Mac Pro is just too expensive!

For those of you who have built your own, does this one look good? I want a LOT of USB ports and at least 3 firewire ports.

I'm with you. I've been poking around sites and looking at building a PC for a while, and with the addition of our recent transfers it's piqued my interest.

This part does too, from the link;

At the moment, the cheapest Mac in the Apple store is a Mac mini sporting a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 120GB hard drive. For $300 more, I'm running a 3.0GHz Quad-Core processor, 8GB of RAM, a 1TB hard drive, and a damn saucy video card. I could have made this build much cheaper by skimping on hardware and still ended up with a great little machine, but I liked aiming for around the $800 price point from my last build—plus I really wanted to make it fly.

Antonio posted a couple of good resources in this thread too.

Well, you will probably build yours before me because I can't get all of the pieces at once. Be sure to start a thread on doing it so that we can talk about it!

I wonder if there are any limitations as far as what software works/doesn't work if any?

There shouldn't be any limitations unless it comes to games or programs that depend on a graphics card - Intel integrated graphics will be good for most other things, but not sufficent for a lot. It'd be a good idea to pick up a compatible and good graphics card. (I hope Apple announces they're going to use the latest and greatest from NVidea and ATI in January - I'd love to see how 3D in OS X flies with a Radeon 5870!)

Well, those instructions say to get this video card. I wonder how good it is?

EVGA 512-P3-N871-AR GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

Click for full size

An ATi HD4870 should work fine too I would think.

I saw like 4 or 5 different brands of cards that are 4870. Are they all the same?

They should be the same - however, it wouldn't hurt to check and compare numbers in magazines like Maximum PC and CPU, or look for what others have to say in other PC/Mac building sites. Generally, though, you should (theoretically) be safe with anything for which Apple has created a driver for and that hasn't been heavily modified.

I would double the ram and make sure the video card can support Open CL.

You have to remember nVidia makes the GPU and other companies like EVGA make the card. Other words they can be very different from the core clock, video memory to the BIOS coding. You can have two of the exact same cards from two different vendors and each one will work slightly different, one might be fully compatible but the other can not support Quartz Extreme or no DVI support all because it uses a different hardware string.

Some people have been able to modify the KEXT files to use the proper string but you will only be able to go so far.

Can you use any intel processor? Reason why I ask is because that instructions call for the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 3.0GHz 12MB L2 Cache LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor which sells for $324, but I would be happy with this one:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 Yorkfield 2.83GHz 12MB L2 Cache LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor $259

And can you use other motherboards or do they use what's on that list because of OSX?

Was curious...looking for a motherboard that you could put 2 processors on but can't seem to find them.

As long as the CPU supports SSE3 then you're golden. Some of the CPUs that are Apple certified will let you have a better chance to use the Vanilla Kernel.

And how do I find out if a CPU supports SSE3? Looking at Newegg, SSE3 isn't listed on any of them.

Find the CPU you want then locate the data sheet from Intel's website. Most Core duo and higher supports SSE3.

ok, thanks.

In what order should I purchase the items? I figure it's best for me to buy a piece (or 2) at a time rather than the whole shebang at once.

Case
CPU
board
video card

Those are the 4 big ticket items, though the case is only $99. but I didn't know if any of the things like CPU/board/video card fluctuate in price a lot.

You biggest ticket item is the CPU, second is power supply, third is the video card. fourth is the motherboard, fifth is case and so on and on.

I would buy the CPU and motherboard first. then buy the videocard and case then buy the power supply and hard drive. Buy the memory last because the memory is the cheapest really and by then you can decide on how much memory to dump into the system.

oh, powersupply doesn't come with the case?

Usually not.
Who knows what you might put in the case... something lightweight... or an energy consuming beast.

The article you linked to has a case that does include the Power supply though.

Wish I knew more what I was doing because then I would be able to choose boards/cpu's with ease.

Are the i7 CPU's faster than the Core 2 Quad?

For instance, this Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache CPU.

Of course, then I would have to get a board such as this:
GIGABYTE GA-P55A-UD4P LGA 1156 Intel P5...mp; SATA 6 Gb/s

But will those fit in the case listed on that site and is that enough power?

Sheesh...more and more research...

Heh...yeah. Uhm, it's not so easy to find where it says support for SSE3 on Intel's site.
http://www.intel.com/support/processors/corei7/

This will help.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSE3

Thanks, so it looks like all i7 CPUs support SSE3

Most cases come with a power supply but I wouldn't trust it. Most cases come with a cheap off brand power supply and ether die with in a year or isn't enough to power the whole system.

Here are the main brands to look for.

Ultra
Logisys
Aerocool
Thermaltake
Zalman

If you want to go cheaper use Rosewill. A lot of people don't like Rosewill but every power supply I have used by that company has worked fantastic.

Only reason why I mentioned the SSE3 thing is for just in case if some one else decided to follow this thread to build their own but using sub-par hardware.

ok. Can you recommend me a good motherboard for an i7 CPU? And are i7 CPU's faster than the Core 2 Quad ones?

I don't know much about them, but I don't want to spend a LOT of money. Probably keep it in the $2-300 dollar range max, but the cheaper the better for me. I was looking at this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128409

and what wattage should the power supply be?

Interesting reading the comments about people building theirs and the problems.

http://lifehacker.com/5360150/install-snow-leopard-on-your-hackintosh-pc-no-hacking-required

Scroll down and read some of the problems....hmmmm

There are some decent power supply calculators out there, just google them.