Hello,

I want to upgrade my current PC tower, and possibly run MacOS X on it. I really don't want to spend hours to hack and configure neither the hardware nor the OS, and as far as possible want something that works out of the box : is it possible, if the hardware is carefully chosen ?

Here are the components of my PC that I will kept :
- the tower
- the power supply
- the DVD reader/writer (LG)
- a few PCI cards (LAN, modems) that I don't really need anymore, so it's not a problem if they do not work.
- a 160GB IDE disk

I will replace (or add) :
- the mainboard and CPU
- a 1To SATA disk
- a rack for extractible SATA disks

My local store proposes me :
- a MSI mainboard with the H55 chipset
- a Core i3 530 (I don't need much CPU power)
- a WD disk
- a xxx rack

I guess indeed that one should choose hardware as close as possible as the one in the existing Macs : what do you think of the above ? What is there precisely in a iMac (mainboard brand and chipset, particularly) ?

Is the disk brand important, or any disk will do ? Same question for the DVD... The rack is probably not an issue, since it's only an interface.

And what about the integrated GPU on the Core i3 ? Is MacOS X able to use it, or do I need a separate video card ?

Thanks for all your advices,

I actually wouldn't get rid of the old IDE HDD, I have the same HDD configuration.
As for whether the disks matter.. well they don't. Im using a 160GB IDE HDD dedicated to SL and a Windows 7 Ult. Edition x64-bit installation on my 1Tb disk, and not a single R/w error.
If you want working wireless, id recommend either looking into dedicated Mac hardware, or going to InsanelyMac's article on adapters that will work out of the box. Aka, Plug n' Play.
The main thing I would do is look for a compatible graphics card. The worse thing is to be stuck with a graphics card that's a fish out of water when it comes to Snow Leopard. I'm sure theirs an article about that somewhere too.
Never, ever, get a Nvidia GALAXY GT 240. Linux will hate you. Snow Leopard will too. It's been the root of all my Unix problems. If you don't need a snazzy new GPU, look into a i3 Clarkdale w/ GPU capabilities. I'm not sure about the PnP possibilities, but it might work.
Remember - CLARKDALE. Not Sandybridge.
Hope this helps, I just got my hackintosh off the ground, but i've messed with unix and windows systems for years now.