Build Check:- Mountain Lion - GTX 680 - 3x 1440p - Asus or Gigabyte Board

[c0nartiste]

Build Check:- Mountain Lion - GTX 680 - 3x 1440p - Asus/Gigabyte Board

So. I am building another hackintosh under Mountain Lion. I wanted to build something that I can use for my Animation/Motion Graphics I am also going to dual-boot Windows 7 for a little gaming.
I have a i7 2600k/Z68XP-UD3 Build at the moment. I would like to use both, rendering on both machines to spilt up workload.

So.

MOBO - Asus Z77 Sabertooth or Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP5TH (Dual TB Motherboard )
CPU - i7 3770k
CASE - NZXT Switch 810 Matte Black
CPU-COOLER- Corsair H100 until I decide on a water-cooling setup.
FANS - Aerocool Shark 140mm's for Case Cooling and Reeven Coldwings 120mm's for Push/Pull Config on H100
RAM - 32GB Patriot Black Mamba 1600MHz
BOOT/D - Corsair Force GT 240GB SSD
HDD - 2TB Seagate Barracuda x2 RAID0
GPU - EVGA GeForce GTX 680 FTW+ 4GB w/Backplate
PSU - Corsair AX850 Modular Power Supply
CARDS - Lycom Firewire 800 card with a TI Chipset
OPT/D - Sony Optiarc. (Might remove)

Monitors - 1x Yamakasi Catleap Q270SE 27" 2560x1440, 2x Yamakasi Catleap Q271 27" 2560x1440.

I have thought about this a lot. I think everything is okay, but I am intrigued by Gigabyte's new Thunderbolt Motherboard. The thing is I don't own any thunderbolt devices. If anyone has another motherboard recommendations that would be great. I could just go for a Z77X-UD5H board. I heard the Asus boards are behaving nicely with hackintosh environment.

I have another query, I have a 27" 1440p Monitor coupled with a 24" 1080p Monitor at the moment which is fine. But I am planning on buying two more 1440p's and using the 24" for another PC. Will the 4GB GTX 680 be enough to power these monitors? Will I be able to use the HD4000 with the GTX 680 to split the monitor load?

I know the Customac Recommendations for ML aren't out yet. I am in no rush, but wanted to see what everyone has to say about the build.

 

[awer25]

I've got a similar setup, and just went with the Z77X-UD5H. I didn't have any TB devices either, and found that the slight benefit over USB 3 wasn't worth the price. Also, thus far they work, but aren't hot swappable on hackintoshs like USB devices. Go with the Z77-UD5H. It has tons of USB 3 ports, SATA ports, and your GTX 680 will work OOB.

 

[Chaosmint]

I've got a question about your monitors, what's the difference between the 270 and 271? Did you get any dead/stuck pixels with yours, or dust behind the tempered glass? I was looking for these monitors before, but they were in the $400s range for the "pixel perfect" variety, but these seem cheaper and without the threat of dead pixels. I'd like to get one to go with my 24" monitor, probably with a 570, hopefully that can handle 2560x1440 and a 1920x1200 simultaneously.

I checked the specs, you should definitely be able to handle two monitors, I can't give 100% certainty about three, but a 680 with 4 GB of GDDR5 memory is quite a beast, but either way I don't know what quality you want to pull from the card if you're going to be gaming on it. It might run, but I'm not so sure you can use ultra settings on more demanding games.

Also, I don't believe you can use the integrated Intel HD 4000 graphics on these monitors.

 

[c0nartiste]

I've got a question about your monitors, what's the difference between the 270 and 271? Did you get any dead/stuck pixels with yours, or dust behind the tempered glass?

Ultimately, the 271 has a better case design. My 270 wobbles like bobble head toy. Another difference is that the 271 is PURELY an adboard monitor, so you can plug it into your ps3,xbox or what have you. It doesn't require you to have a desktop graphics card to actually help power the monitor. It doesn't come in any other model. Lastly the 271 has a HDMI 1.4a socket which will output 1440p. As I'll be grabbing myself a GTX 680 it will be good to utilize the hdmi socket.

I shopped at AccessoriesWhole for my perfect pixel Monitors. The FIRST ever one I invested in Q270SE bought from bigclothcraft, it was damaged. I had to send it back. I then just grabbed myself a refund and went over to AccessoriesWhole to buy the perfect pixel Q270. It was flawless, no stuck/dead pixels. There was the slight light bleed at the bottom right near the LED power button but to be honest, I've seen Apple Cinema Displays with MUCH more light bleed than that. I am going to order the two Q271's in a few weeks so I'll let you know. If you're buying from ebay, definitely go to AccessoriesWhole. Their Perfect Pixel policy is Absolutely no dead/stuck pixels, they emailed me to say that there was a little light bleeding on the bottom right of the 270, I okayed it.

ps I didn't go for the tempered glass versions, it was another thing to think about if I had annoying dust stuck in between.

 

[c0nartiste]

I've got a similar setup, and just went with the Z77X-UD5H. I didn't have any TB devices either, and found that the slight benefit over USB 3 wasn't worth the price. Also, thus far they work, but aren't hot swappable on hackintoshs like USB devices. Go with the Z77-UD5H. It has tons of USB 3 ports, SATA ports, and your GTX 680 will work OOB.

cheers for the heads up dude. It does look like really good card. I have a comparison table on the attachment. It does seem to be a more sensible board to go for. I wonder whether the customac's guide will include some asus boards.

 

[Jeronimo2000]

I didn't have any TB devices either, and found that the slight benefit over USB 3 wasn't worth the price.

Uhm... twice the speed (& on 2, sometimes 4 channels) is a "slight benefit" these days?

But I get your point, TB devices are still too expensive (and rare) now. While I don't see TB matching USB3's availability anytime soon, I do hope it becomes a "standard" and that prices do down. If you've ever seen a Promise TB RAID connected to a MacBook Pro, you know what you'll want.

 

[c0nartiste]

Uhm... twice the speed (& on 2, sometimes 4 channels) is a "slight benefit" these days?

But I get your point, TB devices are still too expensive (and rare) now. While I don't see TB matching USB3's availability anytime soon, I do hope it becomes a "standard" and that prices do down. If you've ever seen a Promise TB RAID connected to a MacBook Pro, you know what you'll want.

Yeah I was thinking that by the time TB has standardised, a lot more motherboards will be available to choose from with TB ports. I think I'll wait it out. =) I am content heavy but thats why I have a server with a raid card on it. so....yeah