£600 Mac Mini Killer
This week I built a new Hackintosh. I’ve built a few over the years but I then get the urge to move to Linux so I sell the parts, install Ubuntu or a Ubuntu disto on a separate drive in my gaming PC and set everything up for Rails development. A month or 2 later I change my mind and think about building another Hackintosh.
Ubuntu is great and that but there are still a number of things I like about macOS. Mainly the great applications made for it such as 1Password, Querious, Tower, Tweetbot, Dropshare, Alfred and iTerm2. Just to name a few!
After seeing this Snazzy Labs video I had the big urge to build the same machine so I started looking for parts…
The parts I’m using are as follows:
- Gigabyte H170N-WIFI
- Intel i5-6400
- Crucial 16GB DDR4 RAM (2x8GB)
- Plextor 256GB M.2 SSD
- Streacom 120W nanoPSU & power brick
- Streacom F1CWS Silver
- Noctua NH-L9i
Because this machine will be plugged into by Gigabit LAN, I don’t need a wifi card which is supported by macOS.
As for the cost of the components:
- I found a good deal on the motherboard and RAM on eBay for £140
- For the case, PSU and cooler, I bought them from QuietPC for £195
- I already had the Core i5 from a project but they are new for £170
- I already had the M.2 SSD as well as this was my first M.2 SSD but they range from £80-£100 for a 256GB one. macOS doesn’t have full support for NVMe drives so skip these.
So in total it comes to under £600. A bargain really compared to the price of a 2014 Mac Mini (yes, Apple haven’t updated them in 2 and a half years!). Also, this machine can be upgraded unlike the Mac Mini! Need 32GB of RAM in the future? Not a problem! Want to upgrade to an i7? Again, not a problem!
The Gigabyte H170N-WIFI is one of the most supported motherboard for Hackintoshing at the moment. There are 2 posts on the tonymacx86 site (which is a FANTASTIC resource for building Hackintosh machines) for this motherboard.
If you are using the Intel HD 530 Graphics like me in this build, you may suffer from graphical glitches. These can be easily fixed thanks to the help from this post
Here’s some photos of it:
So far I’m really happy with this low power & very fast machine!
