Best motherboard for my Home Workstation?

[raj47i]

I have been planning a new Core i7 build for a while now. I want to use OS X as my main OS. I already have bought the following:

> Sony 32EX520 LED Display (HDMI)
> Cooler Master Cosmos II
> Cooler Master Seidon 120M Liquid CPU Cooler
> Corsair AX1200 Power Supply
> Samsung 256GB SSD 540 Pro
> Apple Wireless Keyboard
> Apple Magic Trackpad
> Apple Magic Mouse
> ATi Radeon HD 4350 ( very low-end graphics card to begin with - I have made it work on Hackintosh before so no issues there )

I will be adding these later this year:
+ Areca ARC-1224-8i Areca 8-Ports PCI-E 2.0 (x8) 6GB/s SATA RAID Controller
+ Western Digital Red 3TB HDD x 8 in RAID 6 (SATA III)
+ Overclocking wi/ Custom Liquid Cooling


I might be adding
+ GTX 7xx/Titan or Quadro 4000/5000 graphics card
+ Another LED Display

I will be installing these Platforms in the build (different Hard disks (internal SSD or Hot-swap)):
+ OS X as main OS
+ VMWare vSphere Hypervisor ( for running my cloud development servers )
+ Windows ( Absolutely games only )


+ Processor - I am inclined to Core i7 4770K (Avoiding AMD FX 8350 only to achieve 100% hackintosh compatibility )
As I will be working with Virtual Machines alot, more CPU Cores means better performance for me - so if I could have Hackintosh on AMD, I would opt for AMD FX 8350 in a second.
+ RAM - 32GB+ based on the motherboard ( Corsair / Gskill )

My question is what is the best Motherboard for this build?
What I want from the motherboard is
@ 100% compatibility for OS X
@ Overclocking options
@ PCIe 2.0/3.0 future expansion
@ I will not need VGA / DVI / PS/2 ports so, but will prefer many USB 3.0

 

[Going Bald]

I have been planning a new Core i7 build for a while now. I want to use OS X as my main OS. I already have bought the following:

> Sony 32EX520 LED Display (HDMI)
> Cooler Master Cosmos II
> Cooler Master Seidon 120M Liquid CPU Cooler
> Corsair AX1200 Power Supply
> Samsung 256GB SSD 540 Pro
> Apple Wireless Keyboard
> Apple Magic Trackpad
> Apple Magic Mouse
> ATi Radeon HD 4350 ( very low-end graphics card to begin with - I have made it work on Hackintosh before so no issues there )

I will be adding these later this year:
+ Areca ARC-1224-8i Areca 8-Ports PCI-E 2.0 (x8) 6GB/s SATA RAID Controller
+ Western Digital Red 3TB HDD x 8 in RAID 6 (SATA III)
+ Overclocking wi/ Custom Liquid Cooling


I might be adding
+ GTX 7xx/Titan or Quadro 4000/5000 graphics card
+ Another LED Display

I will be installing these Platforms in the build (different Hard disks (internal SSD or Hot-swap)):
+ OS X as main OS
+ VMWare vSphere Hypervisor ( for running my cloud development servers )
+ Windows ( Absolutely games only )


+ Processor - I am inclined to Core i7 4770K (Avoiding AMD FX 8350 only to achieve 100% hackintosh compatibility )
As I will be working with Virtual Machines alot, more CPU Cores means better performance for me - so if I could have Hackintosh on AMD, I would opt for AMD FX 8350 in a second.
+ RAM - 32GB+ based on the motherboard ( Corsair / Gskill )

My question is what is the best Motherboard for this build?
What I want from the motherboard is
@ 100% compatibility for OS X
@ Overclocking options
@ PCIe 2.0/3.0 future expansion
@ I will not need VGA / DVI / PS/2 ports so, but will prefer many USB 3.0

With 4770K, go with Asus Sabertooth Z87. Bios is unlocked, so no patch required for native power management.

 

[raj47i]

With 4770K, go with Asus Sabertooth Z87. Bios is unlocked, so no patch required for native power management.

thank you for the reply.

I love the backplate & features of Sabertooth, Anyone hackintoshed on it yet?
I was expecting someone to suggest a Gigabyte Z87 OC or OC-Force -- I prefer Asus boards over Gigabyte, but I want full compatibility for Hackintosh

Also what about other Asus boards like Maximus VI ?

 

[Going Bald]

thank you for the reply.

I love the backplate & features of Sabertooth, Anyone hackintoshed on it yet?
I was expecting someone to suggest a Gigabyte Z87 OC or OC-Force -- I prefer Asus boards over Gigabyte, but I want full compatibility for Hackintosh

Also what about other Asus boards like Maximus VI ?

One reason the Gigabyte boards are recommended is that the MSR in the BIOS is unlocked and allows native power management in OS X without patches or modified kext.

Any of the Asus line will work, the problem is that until someone actually buys one and installs we don't know if the BIOS is going to be locked or not. If not, works as well as a GA board. If locked, needs a patched BIOS to unlock the MSR.