Custom top of the line iMac 27 inch

[AdamInNi]

Hey guys. At the minute, I have a core i3 hackintosh with 8gb ram and a z77-ds3h motherboard and a GT520 graphics card. It's fine but just not quite the performance I am after. It served perfectly as an upgrade from my 2011 Mac Mini 2.3ghz i5 but just isn't cutting it anymore. I am ready for an upgrade and was looking at the 21.5" iMac. After finding out you can't even upgrade the RAM on it (Apple, what are you thinking?!?) I am considering the following build which I hope to be at the same level of performance as the £1858 i7 27 inch iMac

-Intel Core i7 3770 3.4ghz Ivy bridge with 8MB L3 Cache
-Gigabyte Z77-Ds3h (Keeping the same board, have no need to upgrade it)
-8GB 1600mhz Ram (Keeping my ram and will get another 8GB when the price drops as the current 8GB I have was £28 and has now went up to £50!)
-Sandisk 120GB 6GB/s SSD ( I had an OCZ Vertex 2 and it died after a few months, so I'm using a 500GB HDD)
-Bitfenix Outlaw Case
-EVGA GeForce GT640 2GB

Anyone see any problems with this build? Will it be able to compete with an i7 iMac? This will cost me £442 thanks to reusing my 500w OCZ Psu, ram and motherboard. Any suggestions welcome

Thanks!

 

[zaptoons]

Hey guys. At the minute, I have a core i3 hackintosh with 8gb ram and a z77-ds3h motherboard and a GT520 graphics card. It's fine but just not quite the performance I am after. It served perfectly as an upgrade from my 2011 Mac Mini 2.3ghz i5 but just isn't cutting it anymore. I am ready for an upgrade and was looking at the 21.5" iMac. After finding out you can't even upgrade the RAM on it (Apple, what are you thinking?!?) I am considering the following build which I hope to be at the same level of performance as the £1858 i7 27 inch iMac

-Intel Core i7 3770 3.4ghz Ivy bridge with 8MB L3 Cache
-Gigabyte Z77-Ds3h (Keeping the same board, have no need to upgrade it)
-8GB 1600mhz Ram (Keeping my ram and will get another 8GB when the price drops as the current 8GB I have was £28 and has now went up to £50!)
-Sandisk 120GB 6GB/s SSD ( I had an OCZ Vertex 2 and it died after a few months, so I'm using a 500GB HDD)
-Bitfenix Outlaw Case
-EVGA GeForce GT640 2GB

Anyone see any problems with this build? Will it be able to compete with an i7 iMac? This will cost me £442 thanks to reusing my 500w OCZ Psu, ram and motherboard. Any suggestions welcome

Thanks!

If you're ready to shell out for an i7 iMac, then you'll certainly get better bang-for-buck by upgrading your current system. You should easily be able to match and even beat the iMac level of performance.

You probably can't overclock with that board, but depending on how much more it costs, I'd consider the 3770K CPU. In future if you do decide to upgrade the motherboard, having the ability to overclock can bump you up into an even higher performance range. (A 3770K bumped up to 4.3 to 4.5Ghz with a decent third party heatsink approaches MacPro levels of speed and is one of the best bang-for-buck ratio's possible with a desktop CPU.)

If it's within your budget, I'd also look into a GTX650 card vs. the GT640. The 640 is a decent bump-up from your 520 card, but the 650 would be a much bigger step up. The 650 with 1GB of GDDR5 will blow away the GT640 with 2GB of DDR3.

Don't get me started on the untrustworthiness of OCZ SSDs! I certainly hope they've gotten better since my nightmare with one and 6 (!!) faulty replacements, but I no longer trust that brand.

Stepping up to 16GB of RAM is a good move.

Overall, you should see very good results. End of the day, the i3 is an entry-level CPU- it'll do for light duty computing, but if you're getting into a real performance need, the i7 3770 will definitely deliver.

This CPU chart should give you a good idea: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-3770+@+3.40GHz&id=896

By comparison, I'm guessing this is the i3 you have, less than half the performance rating:

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i3-3225+@+3.30GHz&id=1474

 

[AdamInNi]

I wish I were able to shell out for an i7 iMac. I can't otherwise I probably would. I am looking to reach the same performance levels for as little as possible. I was looking at entry macbook airs and macbook pros but doubt either would fit my needs at all.

As for overclocking, it isn't really something I am interested in. I much prefer having a stable system than a fast, unstable system. I would likely fry my cpu due to lack of experiance. The most I have ever overclocked is from 2.4ghz to 2.8ghz on my old Q6600 Core 2 Quad.

For the graphics, they are pretty unimportant to me. If I can play basic games the odd time then I'm fine with that. The GT640 should be fine for my needs. If I can play saints row the third on anything above basic settings then the card is good enough for me! Haha.

Also, OCZ are awful. After my SSD failing, I'm worried about my OCZ power supply, lol. Will never buy another OCZ SSD again. I was horrified to find that it wasn't fast at all. It was only slightly faster than my HDD and according to benchmarking tools, it was slower!!!

16GB of ram is something that I will definitely do soon after I build the thing. I will just stay with the 8GB that I have now for getting it set up etc. I have driving lessons and insurance to save for, for when I start in 2 months so am having to cut corners where possible.

I am expecting to see a major difference in performance and thanks to those benchmarks you found me, I'm sure I won't be disappointed.

Thank you so much for taking your time to give such a detailed answer It has really helped