I've been around almost as long as BoomR; my first rig was a 4ch NuBus system in a Mac IIci. The upgrade paths to Mix, HD and Accel were reasonable, but the PCI to PCIe "cross-grade" was insane. $4500 for a 3-PCIe card swap. Or keep the PCI's and shell out $2k for a Magma boat anchor. Plus $3k+ for a MacPro in either case. For what??? A faster CPU, but the essentially the same digital audio power. So I strayed into the land of Hackintosh, and I've never been happier. My build is 2 years old, but its rock solid, and saved my PCI cards from the junk heap. Its running Mountain Lion 10.8.2 with PTHD 10.3.3 and Melodyne 3.2.2.2. My hardware is Pro Tools HD3 Accel, 3x192 (48x48), Sync I/O.
Here's the build:
Rosewill RSV-R4000 4U Chassis
Gigabyte GA-H55-USB3 Motherboard Rev. 2.0, BIOS F7
i7-870 2.93GHz Quad-Core Lynnfield
16GB Mushkin DDR3-1600Mhz (4x4GB)
ZOTAC ZT-20404-20L 1GB GeForce 240 128-bit DDR3 Graphics
Noctua NH-U9B SE2 CPU Cooler
Samsung SH-243N Dual Layer DVD/CD Burner 24x
LaCie FireWire 800 PCI Card: 3x FW800
Mushkin Calisto 480GB SATA II SSD system drive
COOLER MASTER Silent Pro M700 700W PS
citydog, what Pro Tools hardware and software do you intend to use? You mentioned Pro Tools 8, but what hardware?