Audio (DAW Oriented) Build Suggestions

[JLIT]

I'm a first time Hackintosh builder but have built custom pc's and did my own upgrading on the many macbooks, mac pro's I've had over the years.

First and foremost I've given myself a budget of $3,000 strictly for the build. I already have an interfae (UAD Apollo Quad) along with a OWC Mercury Pro Extreme 240GB SSD which I intend to use. Can someone please point me in the right direction or let me know if I've steered in the wrong one with the list of components I've chosen. Any suggestions, major or minor about how I can get the most out of the budget I've allocated would be amazing!

Sonnet Presto Gigabit PCIe

2 x Noctua NF-F12 PWM Cooling Fan

Corsair Hydro Series H100 Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler

LG Electronics GH22NS70B 22X SATA Super Multi DVD+/-RW Internal Drive (Black)

2 x Seagate ST2000DM001 Barracuda 7200RPM 2 TB SATA 6 GB/s NCQ 64 MB Cache

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) F3-12800CL10Q-32GBXL

Intel Core i7-3770K Quad-Core Processor 3.5 GHz 6 MB Cache LGA 1155

Thank you again, really could use your help as I plan this dream workstation.

 

[JeroenRansijn]

Hey,

as fellow sound engineer I have bought an Hackintosh recently.
Having some problems with pro tools, but in the end it all works.
One thing I noticed that it will be harder to get everything working, apart from that it will be the same in performance.
I think even better since you get more out of your buck then when using mac products.

For audio you need a stable system. A friend of mine runs Pro Tools HD, with the new iMac.
With fully sessions and all plugins in use (60 tracks or something) he has only 2% CPU use.
Incredible, this is during recording as well!

I did my mixing on a macbook pro 13 inch with 4 gb ram, and it works. Do this for 2 years now.

I suggest an SSD Drive, everything works incredible fast.
Will buy myself one of 256 GB. Enough for your programms and plugins, and you can store 2 projects on to work with.
The rest I would get 2x 4TB SATA as storage, one for Time Machine copies of your projects and one for storing your media.

I work sometimes with video, more RAM is handy then. My Macbook cannot handle it very well, run on 1/4 resolution in Premiere.
Will be running 8 GB on my mackintosh, now 6 Gb. This is sufficient.

If you have $3000 to spend, why not get the new iMac? Works great, looks definitely better and everything works without a hassle.
If you need more power you can go for a Hackintosh, but as an engineer you dont need more then the specs of a macbook to work in a nice way. The more tracks the more ram you need. If you go the CLA way (100 track session) you would need some extra RAM.

Gl man

 

[JLIT]

Appreciate the input. I'm currently on an 2.4GHz i7 w/16gb 1333MHz DDR3. I've replaced the original standard HD with a OWC Mercury Pro Extreme 240GB SSD (Fastest drive available for the Macbook Pro 15" I'm on. I've also removed the super drive and got my stock 750GB HD (using an adapter) in it's spot. I run Pro Tools 10, 11 (when 3rd party plugin developers catch up with their AAX 64bit releases) on a daily basis for everything from Production (others using the rig), to mixing (frequently), and mastering. The UAD Apollo Quad helps for sure and I'll be getting the Thunderbolt Expansion card to boost its transmission 12x that of Firewire 800. The iMac though logical in theory doesn't have the versatility to get beefed up to the extent I'd like to have the flexibility to do if the type of audio work I do changes. I've got all my samples, software instrument sample libraries, etc on an external Glyph 1.5TB which I've got plugged into my Thunderbolt port using a Firewire800 to TB adapter. It's been sufficient for what I've done so far but work is picking up and its time to go back to the desktop (I had a 2008 Mac Pro 3ghz 8 core, which I sold 6 months ago knowing that its value would probably drop once new Mac Pro's were announced). Anyhow, that's my thinking as to why i've asked for this type of advice.

 

[BoomR]

I'm a first time Hackintosh builder but have built custom pc's and did my own upgrading on the many macbooks, mac pro's I've had over the years.

First and foremost I've given myself a budget of $3,000 strictly for the build. I already have an interfae (UAD Apollo Quad) along with a OWC Mercury Pro Extreme 240GB SSD which I intend to use. Can someone please point me in the right direction or let me know if I've steered in the wrong one with the list of components I've chosen. Any suggestions, major or minor about how I can get the most out of the budget I've allocated would be amazing!

Sonnet Presto Gigabit PCIe

2 x Noctua NF-F12 PWM Cooling Fan

Corsair Hydro Series H100 Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler

LG Electronics GH22NS70B 22X SATA Super Multi DVD+/-RW Internal Drive (Black)

2 x Seagate ST2000DM001 Barracuda 7200RPM 2 TB SATA 6 GB/s NCQ 64 MB Cache

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) F3-12800CL10Q-32GBXL

Intel Core i7-3770K Quad-Core Processor 3.5 GHz 6 MB Cache LGA 1155

Thank you again, really could use your help as I plan this dream workstation.

I don't see a motherboard listed...???

If you look at my Studio 2.0 build (see my sig for link), I just built a clone of it for a buddy who used to be my GC Pro rep. He's got the UAD Quad PCIe card and the machine is smokin' fast.

i think I would opt to use the onboard GigE connection & put your $$ on the Syba low-profile FW400/800 card instead. Any board these days with on-board FW won't be TI 1394 chipset which is "holy grail" for OS X.

Good luck & keep us posted!!

 

[JLIT]

LOL! SMH. Could've sworn I copied and pasted the motherboard in there as well... Regardless... important detail I'd have to agree with including when asking for advice. Thank you for the tip about your friends build you did for him. Definitely won't be needing FW400, but 800 is a must as well as 2 thunderbolt ports I'm guessing at least. Thanks for your Golden Thread build posting, really helped me, being an audio guy, get an audio build to compare to and work off of. I'll keep all posted as I'm sure I'll be needing your help along the way. It'll be happening fairly quickly once I order the parts so til then, thanks again.

 

[tjaudio]

I spent about $2,600 on my Hackintosh for professional mobile audio/video production. So far, I'm thrilled.

http://www.tonymacx86.com/user-buil...rtooth-x79-32gb-ram-gtx670-mountain-lion.html

 

[JLIT]

I've currently got the NVIDIA GeForce GT 640 graphics card and have been a bit underwhelmed with its performance. I currently have 2 monitors hooked up to it but I'm going to be selling them both to get 2 dell ultrawide screens which have 2560x... resolution. Since my currently graphics card is on the lower side of the quality spectrum. Are there any suggestions which might be a good upgrade without turning my rig into a gaming workstation? I would like to have 4 monitors and I understand that'd include adding an additional card. Would I be wise/or at least not at an idiot to just purchase an additional one of the cards that I already have to achieve this or are there better options?