Easy questions.

[Bodega]

Hi all,

I've been toying with the idea of building a Hackintosh for years and I think it's time to finally pull the trigger. I'll be doing audio production in Cubase, Ableton and Logic.

My priorities are:
High CPU speed
Dual drive system
16Gb

I don't plan on doing any kind of video editing so I'm happy to save money by getting a relatively low-end video card.

I've gone through the May 2017 Buyer's Guide and picked the one from each column that looks to best fit my needs, coming up with this:

Intel Core i7-6700K 8M Skylake Quad-Core 4.0 GHz
Gigabyte GA-Z170X-UD3 ATX Mobo
Zalman CNPS8000B Low Profile (Air) CPU Cooler
EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB SSC Video Card
Crucial Ballistix Sport LT (16GB) RAM
Samsung 850 EVO 500GB HD
Seagate BarraCuda ST3000DM008 3TB 64MB Cache SATA HD
Corsair RM 650x Watt PSU
Corsair Carbide 300R Case
Fenvi FV-T919 802.11AC A/B/G/N/AC BT 4.0 Desktop Wifi Card

I have two seemingly easy questions:

1) is it safe to assume that everything in that guide will work with everything else in that guide?

2) Can I save money by getting a lower-end video card? If so, any recommendations?

thanks in advance!
Matthew

 

[Going Bald]

If you are building a sound studio for audio production why not use the on-CPU (iGPU) graphics? Why spend the money on a high end GPU at all? Do you also plan to game on the build? If not, use that money for a couple of 1TB SSDs for scratch disc and sound library instead of a GPU that you do not really need. This will speed up your production a good deal.

 

[Bodega]

Thanks for the reply, Going Bald. I have no plans to game on this machine so if I can get away with just using the on-board graphics, I'll just do that. I can always pick up a GPU later on if necessary.

Otherwise am I right in thinking that anything on that list will work with everything else?

 

[DrBEN]

You should not run into any major problems with that board.

There are a couple of successful builds for that board using Sierra.
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/guide-sierra-on-the-ga-z170x-ud3.202296/

The same person has an earlier guide for El Capitain on that MOBO.

 

[Bodega]

That's great - I'll keep both those links handy.

It's easy to find the mobos that are giving people a lot of problems if I look through the Installation forums. I wonder if there's one that's known to have the least problems, a kind of can't-miss mobo (of the recommended 100-series ones, of course)?