Found Footage: The $900 'Mac Pro' in a cardboard box
Plato said, "Necessity is the mother of all inventions." He must have been talking about the guys at One Block Off the Grid, which is a cooperative of sorts for buying photovoltaic solar panels at a group discount. One of their staff members was running into issues trying to run Adobe After Effects on a slower Mac, so they had another staff member -- Kalvin -- build a fast hackintosh in the Amazon cardboard box that all the computer parts came in.
That price doesn't include the labor involved in putting it all together, and it originally had a rather odd power switch, which was a standard jumper stuck on the end of a plastic cable tie. The computer itself has pretty good specs, with a 2.66 Intel Core i5 CPU, a 1 TB hard drive, 8 GB of 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM, and an XFX Radeon HD 5770 1GB DDR5 Graphics Card. To run Snow Leopard on this computer, Kalvin used iBoot and MultiBeast.
As noted on the 1BOG blog, "this procedure may potentially violate Apple's End User License Agreement for Mac OS X." On the other hand, it's a great way to get a fast computer and not spend a lot of bucks.
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Plato said, "Necessity is the mother of all inventions." He must have been talking about the guys at One Block Off the Grid, which is a...
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An i5 is a Mac Pro equivalent?!?
And for only $300 more you could build an i7-based one with a case.
Yeah, I take exception to saying that this is like a Mac Pro.
The current base ($2500) Mac Pro uses a quad-core 2.8GHz processor, probably most like this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117181
On NewEgg the processor costs $1372. This one part alone exceeds the $900 budget. I know that the performance difference may not matter to many people, but for Mac Pro purchasers it does.
This is more like an ugly iMac with a fast graphics card…
It's still cool, of course.
MoonWalkerCTE
What makes this different is the installation method. iBoot is a boot helper to allow the retail disc to load on non-Apple hardware and MultiBeast is an all-in-one post-installation tool designed to enable boot from hard drive, and install support for Audio, Network, and Graphics.
For more information on the installation method: http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2010/04/iboot-multibeast-install-mac-os-x-on.html
The cardboard box, and jumper power switch.
October 05 2010 at 1:59 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyClever, but the cardboard box is definitely not a good idea. Major fire hazard. Just get an el cheapo $20 ATX case and call it $920. :)
October 05 2010 at 1:10 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyOr save the $20 on a case and just have it on your desk. I've done that plenty times. I'm not even sure why this is cool.
October 05 2010 at 7:03 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Replywhy not just buy a $1000 PC from places like costco and use iBoot to install Mac OS X.
October 05 2010 at 1:05 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyBecause it wouldn't be the equivalent of a mac pro in specs.
October 05 2010 at 1:52 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI admit there's some curiosity value. But, "a great way to get a fast computer and not spend a lot of bucks." You can't be serious.
How expensive is a case !!! great effort however.
October 05 2010 at 12:48 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyLooks like a fire hazard waiting to happen. At least put it in a standard PC case or something lol
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