Hachintosh for Photography

[mjaworga]

New to Hackintosh.
Hi, I’m interested in getting a new Desktop, Right now I have a Win XP from ten years ago. It’s time for an update. I wanted to buy a iMac, but I can not justify the $$$$$.

So I’ve been looking at Hackintosh options, I quality as a POWER USER, my main use is Photography.
I like to have multiple programs open at a time. I manage to use all 8GB of my Macbook pro’s memory continually.
I plan to us OSX and WIN 7 on the computer. I’m planing to have 2 SSD one for each OS.Then install OS X 10.10 following the guid.
I looked at the costomac pro build options to choose my parts.
**parts list at amazon: http://www.amazon.ca/registry/wishlist/176S6PUNHB3RKAmazon&tag=tonymacx86c0c-20 list has more parts than I’ll use.
Does this hardware make sense/ work together well?

Parts ListTP-Link TL-WDN4800 Dual Band Wireless N900 PCI Express Adapter, 2.4 GHz 450 Mbps/5 GHz 450 Mbps, IEEE 802.1a/b/g/n, WEP, WPA/WPA2

Iogear Bluetooth 4.0 Usb Micro Adapter (Gbu521)

Seagate Barracuda 3 TB HDD SATA 6 Gb/s NCQ 64MB Cache 7200 RPM 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive ST3000DM001

Corsair 500r Black Mid Twr W/

Samsung 840 EVO Internal Solid State Drive (SSD), 2.5-Inch, 120GB, SATA III, TLC

Crucial Ballistix Tactical Tracer 16GB Kit 8GBx2 DDR3 1600 MT/s PC3-12800 CL8 at 1.5V UDIMM 240-Pin BLT2KIT8G3D160​8DT2TXRG

Evga Geforce Gtx760 Superclocked W/Evga Acx Cooler 2Gb Gddr5 256Bit, Dual-Link Dvi-I, Dvi-D, Hdmi,Dp, Sli Ready Graphics Card 02G-P4-2765-Kr

Intel Core i7-4790K Processor (8M Cache, upto 4.4 GHz) FC-LGA12C

Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD5H LGA 1150 Z97 with Killer E2200 and Intel Gaming Networking SATA Express M.2 SSD ATX Motherboard

 

[jginsbu]

I just built my first hackintosh with photo editing in mind as well. Since I was on a budget, I did some research on what's most beneficial for that purpose. According to what I found, apps like Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop benefit from RAM (especially PS, less so LR), single core performance, and SSD speed for catalogs and swap/cache (but not so much for image files); they don't take particularly good advantage of multiple cores or GPUs for most operations (though there are exceptions). Many other photography apps are similar, but of course not all.

Bearing that in mind, I went with the following build:

• GIGABYTE GA-H97N-WIFI (supports Wifi & BT via mini-PCIe slot)
• Intel Core i5-4690
• Intel HD 4600 (integrated graphics)
• Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) -- max for my board
• SAMSUNG 840 EVO 250GB SSD
• TOSHIBA DT01ACA300 3TB 3.5" Internal HDD
• Cooler Master V550 PSU
• Corsair Obsidian 250D case

A few comments on my build:

• Most of the performance advantage of the i7-4790K over my i5-4690 is multicore; for single-core performance they're not too far apart (though the i7 is ahead). I wasn't willing to pay the premium for the i7 and felt the i5 had better bang for my buck.
• I don't plan to overclock so I went with the cheaper H97 chipset, non-K processor, and RAM.
• 16GB RAM is fine for what I do, but if I did more heavy PS work on large files I would have gone with 32GB (and would have had to go with a different board).
• I went with a 250GB SSD to make sure I had plenty of room for cache/swap and any large image files I'm actively working on when there might be an advantage to having them on the SSD. Larger SSDs generally have better performance as well.
• I skipped the GPU as the gains for my workflow would be pretty marginal right now [EDIT: and I don't need it to support my current monitor resolution.] When Adobe apps can take better advantage of a GPU (or I start using other apps that do), [EDIT: or I get a larger monitor than the integrated graphics can support], I'll upgrade my build with a suitable GPU at that time.
• I specifically wanted a compact build, hence mini-ITX.

That said, if you can swing the higher-end components, your build looks good to me. One change I would consider is taking advantage of the M.2 slot on your proposed board for a really high-speed SSD -- I'm not sure about any hackintosh compatibility issues with doing that though. Depending on exactly which apps you're using (and how), I'd guess that more RAM and faster (and perhaps larger) SSD would benefit you more than the GPU.

Good luck with your build!

 

[inc]

My experience is that Lightroom certainly benefits from a GPU but I am not certain if it matters much on newer hardware.

I don't know that I'd go out of my way and drop $200+USD on a GPU when the real bottleneck on Lightroom is memory and I/O.

Keeping catalogs on flash storage goes a long way and Smart Previews really help a lot with responsiveness too. If you're somewhat budget constrained I'd consider dropping the GPU and sticking with integrated video and bump to 32GB of memory personally, but that's just based on my anecdotal observations.

Grain of salt, etc.

I boot and keep Applications on one dedicated SSD, and keep my home directories (including Catalogs) on a Fusion Drive (intel 120GB + Seagate 1TB) and my images live on a zpool (2x3TB + 2x3TB) and my original from-camera images are archived to a NAS. My working tree gets archived to Amazon Glacier via Arq along with the catalogs and Smart Previews in Lightroom seem to help a lot with browsing large catalogs.

My working catalog has about 38k images in it and I think in my largest "archive" catalog there are ~50k images. I tend to break things up by spans of time rather than projects, YMMV.

 

[Connie Mac]

[*]Intel HD 4600 (integrated graphics)

[*]I skipped the GPU as the gains for my workflow would be pretty marginal right now [EDIT: and I don't need it to support my current monitor resolution.] When Adobe apps can take better advantage of a GPU (or I start using other apps that do), [EDIT: or I get a larger monitor than the integrated graphics can support], I'll upgrade my build with a suitable GPU at that time.

What is the maximum resolution that you can get with this board? I.e., does it support dual-link HDMI or DVI for driving 27"/30" displays at native resolutions? Or is it limited to 1920x1200 of most 24" displays?

Also, can you put a genuine Apple Airport Extreme mini-PCIe card in the wifi slot for fully-functional OS X wifi?

 

[jginsbu]

What is the maximum resolution that you can get with this board? I.e., does it support dual-link HDMI or DVI for driving 27"/30" displays at native resolutions? Or is it limited to 1920x1200 of most 24" displays?

Sorry for the long delay in replying to you; I've been busy with other projects and not keeping up with the forums.

Here are the specs of Gigabyte's website:

Integrated Graphics Processor - Intel® HD Graphics support:

1. 1 x DVI-I port, supporting a maximum resolution of 1920x1200@60Hz
2. 2 x HDMI ports, supporting a maximum resolution of 4096x2160@24Hz or 2560x1600@60Hz
   * Support for HDMI 1.4a version.

I'm running a 24" display at 1920x1200 over DVI. I think others have higher resolutions working over HDMI, but anyone interested in doing that should confirm first. Dual-link DVI would require a graphics card.

Also, can you put a genuine Apple Airport Extreme mini-PCIe card in the wifi slot for fully-functional OS X wifi?

IIRC you need an adapter to use the Apple cards; I'm pretty sure Stork went this route with his Hector build and posted details in his thread on the build.