Hackintosh as Primary machine???

[mattpitts74]

Hi There,

I've been reading the forums here for a number of years, and finally almost ready to take the plunge on my own build.

I've build plenty of windows based PC's over the years, so happy with that part and installation of yosmite seems ok provided you follow the steps carefully.

My primary use of the Hackintosh will be for video editing with FCPX, and I was and still am considering the iMac 27" with the 4GB GPU, but if I can get the same sort of performance from a Hackintosh for less many that would be amazing, so I'm up building one if that's the case.

I'm thinking i will build the standard CustoMac Pro, based around one the GB motherboards, unless anyone tells me any different. with the Core i7-4790K and 32GB of RAM, I'm alittle unclear about the most compatible GPU which will work best with FCPX??

I also want the most straight forward build and install with the least tweaking required, so I assume using parts from the lists will give me that?

I'm also concerned about the stability of these systems, will it be stable enough to be used for real work?

I would love to build a system build around the X99 and haswell-E which I see a few people have managed, but sadly my budget cannot quite stretch and being my first hackintosh build its a lot money to spend if it requires days of fiddling to get working.

Any advice on parts for a Hackintosh equivalent to a iMac 27" would be very much appreciated.

One final question, will I be able to update a hackintosh via apple software update or can that cause problems?

 

[at0z]

So I ran a Hackintosh for over a year when I found I couldn't (easily) upgrade my cheese grater Mac Pro (1,1) to anything later than Lion. No Mavericks for me I consulted the build list and ended up with a Gigabyte motherboard with a Haswell i7 clocked at 4.0GHz an SSD and a GTX 770. Following the guide to get me to a Mavericks build was pretty straightforward, Apple's AppStore worked just fine (I have a couple of other Mac laptops and iDevices in the house) and generally point releases just required a rerun of Multibeast to restore missing sound.

However it seemed that once Yosemite came over the horizon, with it's additional iOS integrations, the kernel panics seemed more frequent and a restart to apply either a point release or install a driver software didn't always guarantee a trouble free time.

In addition, all the additional security Apple put in place around iMessage with talk of "borrowing" valid serial numbers just seemed too much maintenance for me. I just want it to work. So lucky me getting a bonus from work meant by selling the former Hackintosh bits I bought back into the genuine Apple hardware and frankly breathed a sigh of relief.

I would say if your livelihood depends on working Mac systems then don't go for the Hackintosh unless you can really spare the time to keep it running. If you're someone who dabbles with a dual boot system and likes to drive a Mac from time to time, or it's a pure home machine then have at it.

Bang for the buck, your Hackintosh won't disappoint on the benchmarks. But I just got tired of the increasingly high maintenance and frankly I suspect that is only going to increase at the next OS X release from Apple....

I'm glad I travelled but it's nice to be home ;-)

YMMV

 

[HiDEFF]

I wonder if others feel the way at0z feels..

With Apple tightening its OS with Yosemite, is it worth going the Hackintosh route anymore?
And I hope mods don't kill me for asking the question--I understand the handwork everyone puts in! But I believe it's a fair question to ask; especially from a consumer/builders PoV.

 

[rwillett]

The best cards for FCPX are the AMD cards. Even old 5770s work very well. You can put dual 5770s in a hackintosh and it will beat most nVidia cards at any price point. 7970 cards work even better and can also be paired up for even more performance. the 280x cards are basically 7970's in a new dress.

The situation is reversed if using Adobe Premiere though.

Don't mix and match your cards e.g. Don't try and use the on board graphics as well as FCPX gets confused and things work slowly.

I like the 5770s as they are also cheap. I would assume any 2nd hand 280x or 7970 has been used for Bitcoin mining and would avoid.