Considering the hack route

Hi all,

I'm thinking of replacing my Mac Pro with a Hackintosh, and I've been reading this fantastic website as I think about starting this journey.

Some background:

I've had my Mac Pro 3,1 (the 2x2.8ghz model) since it came out in 2008, in that time I've upgraded the memory a few times, added lots of hard drives (and an SSD!), upgraded the GPU three times (now on a flashed 6870 with works great), added USB 3.0 and generally taken the machine a long way from it's lowly beginnings with 2Gb of ram and a 2600xt

It's coming time to replace this machine now, and it really seems like apple no longer have a machine that can do what mine has done over the last 7 years

I thought about going for a used 2012 Mac Pro, but I'm not comfortable with paying what would be about £1000 for a 3 year old system, that doesn't even come with USB 3.0! I want something I can utilise over the next 7 years or so and upgrade as I go along.

What I do:

I'm a photographer, that's my business, and my Mac Pro handles about 50k images a year along with all the paperwork that goes with running the business, email, and general home use.It also acts as a Plex server for my living room TV, it basically does everything in this house!

I also do video, using FCX and I play games. One of the things that's making me think it's time to upgrade is that GTAV is about to come out and one of my Xeons only just meets the minimum requirements!

So i guess the main things I do that tax a computer could be summarized as:

Lightroom
Photoshop
FCX
Logic
3D Gaming

I'd probably build something along the lines of:

Intel Core i7-4790 3.6GHz Quad-Core Processor
Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD3H ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
Kingston Fury Red Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory
MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GB Video Card

And I'd use hard drives and SSDs that I already own.

This is a bit of a ramble, but I did have some questions so I thought a bit of background was going to be handy!

Q: I'm pretty comfortable with computers. If I built using those components listed above, and was careful in my build, and maintenance, should I expect a stable machine, free of KPs, reboots etc?

Q: Will Time Machine, App Store, iCloud and iMessage all work for me, or will this be a challenge? ie: will it be exactly the same as my Mac Pro is?

Q: Would you recommend taking a bit more time to figure out Clover? I'd be wanting to dual boot between OS X for work and Windows for gaming.

Q: Do you think it's stupid to trust my business work to a hackintosh?

Thanks so much for any help you can provide

Inutopia said:

Hi all,

So i guess the main things I do that tax a computer could be summarized as:

Lightroom
Photoshop
FCX
Logic
3D Gaming

Q: I'm pretty comfortable with computers. If I built using those components listed above, and was careful in my build, and maintenance, should I expect a stable machine, free of KPs, reboots etc?

Q: Will Time Machine, App Store, iCloud and iMessage all work for me, or will this be a challenge? ie: will it be exactly the same as my Mac Pro is?

Q: Would you recommend taking a bit more time to figure out Clover? I'd be wanting to dual boot between OS X for work and Windows for gaming.

Q: Do you think it's stupid to trust my business work to a hackintosh?

Click to expand...

You've got a start to a very capable and solid build. I'm using the UD3H-BK or black edition. Chose
that because it's pre-tested 24/7 for one week before you get it. That way you're guranteed that every
thing will function from day one. All usb ports, ram slots, PCI-e lanes etc. Plus it's already burned in
for you, although you will still have to test the CPU yourself by stress testing it. Get a good 3rd party
air cooler to go with your I7. I would also start with a 32 GB ram kit. That way you'll be future
proofed and can handle those large RAW photos with ease. With an 1150 System and clover you can
get everything working and have a stable build, you just have to make a greater effort to do that than
with a Mac Pro. Sounds like you're experienced enough to make it all happen. I would go for this build
in a minute for a photo editing build.

Inutopia said:

Q: I'm pretty comfortable with computers. If I built using those components listed above, and was careful in my build, and maintenance, should I expect a stable machine, free of KPs, reboots etc?

Click to expand...

That's what I got for the last ~5 years, and that's what you should get when choosing compatible components.

Inutopia said:

Q: Will Time Machine, App Store, iCloud and iMessage all work for me, or will this be a challenge? ie: will it be exactly the same as my Mac Pro is?

Click to expand...

iMessage/FaceTime can be a pain, because Apple might change anything in their protocol without announcement (happened a few times since iMessage came to OS X). At the moment it works, but that might change every day...

Inutopia said:

Q: Would you recommend taking a bit more time to figure out Clover? I'd be wanting to dual boot between OS X for work and Windows for gaming.

Click to expand...

I switched over to Clover a few months ago, and for me it was worth it (wasn't that difficult btw). It makes things easier when using a Fusion Drive (like I do), especially regarding iMessage. Also made the installation of my new graphics card (R9 280) a breeze.

Inutopia said:

Q: Do you think it's stupid to trust my business work to a hackintosh?

Click to expand...

No, you just have to be careful, e.g. always keep a bootable backup before performing updates or other changes. My Hackintosh is as stable as a real Mac, so I don't see any problems there. Just remember that you might easily **** things up when you don't think before performing changes...

Thanks for the advice, both of you

It's definitely tempting to me, I much prefer to be in control of whats in my machine but I don't think I could handle using windows for anything apart from games.

Going for the BK version of the motherboard does seem like a decent idea, it would be frustrating to run into hardware issues that you weren't sure about with booting OS X.

Are there any builds that would be more compatible than this one? I understand the implications with using a Maxwell GPU I think, I'm kinda used to the GPU side of things from owning a mac pro. From what I gather I'm mostly talking about the mobo here.

One other question - for multi-threaded stuff (like Lightroom exports and encoding video) do you think the 4790k will be faster than my 2 Xeons? They're E5462 Harpertown chips.

Inutopia said:

Thanks for the advice, both of you

It's definitely tempting to me, I much prefer to be in control of whats in my machine but I don't think I could handle using windows for anything apart from games.

Going for the BK version of the motherboard does seem like a decent idea, it would be frustrating to run into hardware issues that you weren't sure about with booting OS X.

Are there any builds that would be more compatible than this one? I understand the implications with using a Maxwell GPU I think, I'm kinda used to the GPU side of things from owning a mac pro. From what I gather I'm mostly talking about the mobo here.

One other question - for multi-threaded stuff (like Lightroom exports and encoding video) do you think the 4790k will be faster than my 2 Xeons? They're E5462 Harpertown chips.

Click to expand...

Bumpity boo incase anyone has any advice on these further Qs

Inutopia said:

Are there any builds that would be more compatible than this one? I understand the implications with using a Maxwell GPU I think, I'm kinda used to the GPU side of things from owning a mac pro. From what I gather I'm mostly talking about the mobo here.

One other question - for multi-threaded stuff (like Lightroom exports and encoding video) do you think the 4790k will be faster than my 2 Xeons? They're E5462 Harpertown chips.

Click to expand...

Can anyone help with these two questions?

Inutopia said:

Can anyone help with these two questions?

Click to expand...

Single core performance will be significantly better on a Haswell I7. You will probably be
about the same when using heavily multithreaded programs. You only get 4 cores and 8
threads so I don't believe it will greatly out perform your xeons. The mobo is a great choice
for your specific usage. Get enough ram and some high quality pro SSDs and you'll be just
fine.

trs96 said:

Single core performance will be significantly better on a Haswell I7. You will probably be
about the same when using heavily multithreaded programs. You only get 4 cores and 8
threads so I don't believe it will greatly out perform your xeons. The mobo is a great choice
for your specific usage. Get enough ram and some high quality pro SSDs and you'll be just
fine.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. Yea I figured the i7 would be way ahead on single core performance, it's several generations newer and has over 25% higher clock. I guess I was sort of hoping it would smoke my Xeons on renders etc too but I guess HT will never equal real cores.

that's something I've never quite understood. Surely if your 4 cores are all pegged (like on an export for example) then hyperthreading would have no advantage at all, it can't invent more resources can it?

I've revised my build a bit, now looking at the following:

Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor[
Scythe Kotetsu 79.0 CFM CPU Cooler
Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD3H-BK ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Asus GeForce GTX 970 4GB STRIX Video Card
Fractal Design Define R5 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case
be quiet! 680W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply

256Gb Sandisk SSD (Already Owned)
3TB Samsung Spin point (Already Owned)
2TB Western Digital (Already Owned)
1TB Samsung Spin point (Already Owned)

Any alarm belly ringing with this?

Cheers