[X4U] OS X On Generic PC Hardware

[Stroller]

On 16 Nov 2007, at 19:58, Zane H. Healy wrote:
>> ...
>> Not counting the different high end dual slot Motherboard.
>
> Based on looking at Slot 1 Motherboards a few years back, you can  
> probably figure in excess of $500 for the motherboard.  Also keep  
> in mind that Dual CPU Xeon motherboards are less common than they  
> were prior to the Dual Core chips being released.

To be fair, the cost of dual-proc Xeon motherboards at retail  
probably reflects their low sales volume.

I'd imagine that every motherboard manufacturer (Abit, AOpen, ASUS,  
ASRock, and then the Bs) feels compelled to offer one in order to   
complete their product range, but they probably sell 100 or 1000  
times as many £30 motherboards for Celerons.

I don't see anything on a dual-proc motherboard that would make them  
inherently more expensive to build than a single-proc one. Older  
Xeons used to require an additional voltage regulator board, but I  
don't know if this is still case. Nevertheless, most of the expense  
of these boards is R&D, so Apple must be able to absorb that  
somewhat, if they're only manufacturing Xeon-based m/boards for their  
towers. Additionally, it seems to me that Apple may well have the  
largest sales-volume of Xeon-based machines, spreading the cost.

> That Mac's are more expensive on anything other than the low end is  
> fast becoming untrue.

I believe this has been the case for some time.

Nevertheless, I believe that the hackintosh article doesn't simply  
raise the question of what someone might expect to pay for a  
comparable PC, but what they might expect to pay for a PC which meets  
their needs. Were I buying a machine to run XP or Linux on my desktop  
I certainly wouldn't be looking at quad- or eight-core Xeons - it is  
only Apple's limited range that pushes me in that direction, and I  
would be quite grateful for a £1000 Mac tower.

Stroller.