Customac Mac Mini Hackintosh Deluxe Desktop 2013 configuration

A week ago I did a blogpost on building a Mini Mac Pro Hackintosh. It now raises a new question …

Mini compared to what?!

Yes the supercool looking Bitfenix Prodigy cases are indeed smaller than a ‘traditional’ Apple Mac Pro case, but isn’t it strange that a case designed for a M-ITX mainboard? Has the size of a Micro ATX case? So let’s build something better (on paper still):

Customac Mac Mini Hackintosh
Deluxe Desktop 2013 configuration

mITX case

Let’s start at the actual casing.

M350

The M350 is a popular mini ITX case.

Price: ± €40 excl. PSU

However by just doing diligence on the actual configurations,
I ran into another awesome candidate …

Akasa Euler AK-ITX05 Fanless

The Akasa Euler Fanless Solid Aluminum THIN Mini ITX Case – VESA Mountable is a great solution to Home Theatre PC builds, the fanless Euler case is designed to dissipate heat straight through its aluminum casing. This allows the Euler to operate without using noisy fans pushing airflow through the chassis. In addition the Akasa Euler is VESA mountable, so you can bolt it to the back of your monitor and keep your desk clean and organized.

Link to manufacturer: click here

Designed specifically for Intel mainboards like the Intel DH61AG (Sandy-Bridge) and DQ77KB (Ivy-bridge). Not sure if the 2nd is Hackintosh compatible …

Price: ± €100

Power Supply

120W external PSU included with the Akasa Euler. When using M350, probably get picoPSU 150 with 90-102W adapter. More on that later in this article …

Mainboard

Gigabyte Z87N-WiFi; link to specifications.

And According to Mini-ITX.com

Typical M350 configuration: To use this board in the M350, we recommend the 150W AC Adapter and picoPSU-150-XT or picoPSU-160-XT together with a 65W TDP CPU and Akasa 7106HP or K25 heatsink or 35W TDP CPU and supplied heatsink, plus 1 or 2 sticks of DDR3 RAM and a 2.5in HDD/SSD (add an M350 HDD tray to use 2x HDD/SSDs).

So adding a fast SSD and 2x8GB sticks for a total of 16GB RAM.