Hackintosh and Pro Tools

OK,

I apologize ahead of time, I am sure this question has been asked many times before. I have searched the site and have gathered a lot of information but I am having trouble consolidating it. I have a PC now that was built by a company that specializes in building DAW's None the less I get way to many error messages when using Pro Tools. Hands down Macs work best with Pro Tools but I can't afford a Mac, so like many others I discovered this site which I believe to be a great alternative to buying a Mac. I want to build a Hackintosh specifically for Pro Tools. I am having trouble cross referencing hardware that is optimized for both Pro Tools and a Hackintosh. Pro Tools is very sensitive about the hardware you need to use in a self build. I have been to the Avid website and have reviewed many successful i7 self builds. I have been all over this site and have seen many successful Hackintosh self builds. Now I need to consolidate this information and build a successful, stable Hackintosh for Pro Tools. I have a Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3 motherboard which may or may not be a good start. Specifically I have the following questions,
1) Will the Mobo I have work well?
2) Which processor is best to use with this board?
3) Which Graphics card is best?
4) Which Firewire card is best?
5) Which is the quietest cooler to use?
6) Which is the quietest case to buy?
7) I want to buy a SSD and install both Windows 7 and a Mac OS. What size and manufacturer would you recommend?
8) Which Mac OS version for a Hackintosh has proved most stable to use with Pro Tools

I am sure there are probably many more things to consider but this are all the questions I can think of now. If there is anything more please let me know. Let me express my gratitude in advance for any information the users on this site can give me

Sincerely,
Todd Homchick

missed the holy grail on that list

What would that be?

Audio interface, of course!

Digidesign Digi 003 RACK+

for me lion is the most stable up to now.
128 gb ssds are fine. the vertex's 4 look really great.

i have a x58+i7 950 build from about 1,5 year ago. i just went for it and it has been great.
i dont think there is a motherboard better suited for pro tools. or even a processor. but i would choose a i7-3770.
as long as you respect the tonymac guideline when choosing your parts you should be fine.

I have no problem understanding and buying the components for a successful Hackintosh build. Just copy one of the Golden builds. The problem is also having components that are compatible with Pro Tools as well. Pro Tools is real particular about things like graphic cards and firewire chips.

I never got what was the big deal with Pro Tools for a lot of people... why not just use Logic Pro.

Anyways chances are that you are going to run into a few issues along the way using Hackintosh for Pro Audio (I am, and I have...).
But there's nothing that shouldn't have a good workaround for it as long as you're prepared.

For Graphics I chose a mid-level card that I saw was hackable to gain full capability (the RadeonHD6850). After all we are doing audio not graphics but if you want to do any post-production for film/TV then it might pay off to have a decent card. I also do a lot of multimedia stuff in apps like Max/MSP so the OpenGL performance is important to me. But I don't see the point in dropping over 200$ on the graphics card.

For case I would get something modular that you can easily get into for modding, thumbscrews, etc. I use the ThermalTake Lanbox because it has a convenient built-in handle and can potentially host a touchscreen in one of its bays.

For FW I would first try to get something with a Texas Instruments chipset, but hey, I've used two (one PCI and one Expresscard) with Agere chipset and they've worked fine for me so far (although, the Agere PCI worked fine with an M-Audio interface but refused to work with a Presonus that was using a class-compliant Apple driver rather than its own driver).

Long story short my solution is using a MOTU 24 I/O x2 as this bypasses the FW issue altogether. I'm tracking in Logic partly because there is a great preset for TouchOSC for Logic that helps me to get around on the DAW using my iPad from anywhere in the studio. I don't think ProTools has anything like that for it right now.

For CPU stick with Sandy Bridge, I'm using the 2700K which is overclockable. 8Gb RAM should be enough but my Asus MoBo has two more free slots if I want to step up to 16.

I recommend sticking with a regular 7200RPM HDD and put in a separate SSD for all your read-only data like sample libraries. You'll be getting the best of both worlds and only having to deal with slightly longer boot times (and application load times, but then you could install apps to the SSD too).

Why I recommend this setup is that there has been no long term testing on stability of SSDs and many people are warning about the reduced performance of SSDs that have taken a lot of writes. I had two bricked OCZ SSDs in a row performing heavy writes so I won't trust them for heavy disk writing just yet. You probably don't want to lose your OS and Application setup, but its not a big deal to lose a sample library setup that you have backed up entirely somewhere else. I would avoid writing my audio project files to the SSD as well just in case.

Don't bother with ML just yet there are still a ton of issues relating to drivers etc. you don't want to have to deal with.

I've just got my ML Hack completely stable and working perfecting with Pro Audio Apps.

Spec -

Core i7 3770
Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H
Corsair Vengence 16GB
Raedon HD6870
Generic 1TB HD
OCZ 60GB SSD
Fractal Designs Define R3
Moutain Lion

There were quite a few issues with crashes, and it all seemed to be graphics related. One simple thing helped me out though.
My board shipped with BIOS Version F5. I read that its important to update your BIOS first before you do anything... I read this 4 weeks after having it up and running but with issues. I upped it to F8 after finding that people were having issues with the latest F14 and now its running like a dream. SO pleased after all that ballache of crashes, random freezes, PT just bouncing in the dock when i try to open it...

Now, Pro Tools 8 actually OPENS, and works with video and audio, ive already completed a few projects. Also, something that shouldnt work, is the Mbox 2 but I installed the drivers and we're good! Logic runs smooth, just got to test a few other pieces of software now...

Just thought i'd drop in what my experience has been like.

Hope it goes well for you mate

Ok, I am a 100% newbee about to build my first self build DAW for Pro Tools. I have all my hardware. Here is my list

GA Z68XP UD3 B3 motherboard
i7 2700k CPU
Corsair Vengeance 16gb "blu" Ram
OCZ 800w modular power supply
Gigabyte 6850 graphics card
Coolermaster Hyper 212 plus CPU cooler
Sony Optiarc optical drive
Syba firewire card with TI chipset that is compatible with Pro Tools
modified MAC G5 case with case wiring adapter harness

Keep in mind that these components have to be compatible with both a Hackintosh and Pro Tools

I have a Mac book Pro and I have downloaded the latest version of Mountain Lion from the app store. I have also downloaded unibeast but I am already confused because I see no option for Mountain Lion on the screen just 2 check boxes, one for legacy and one for laptop. Do I just ignore those boxes and assume that Mountain Lion is there?