Hackintosh for photo editing : no tricks ?

[colinstudio]

Hellllloooo lads,
I have been dealing with windows issues for ages. I'm done with it.
I mean, i will still use windows8 on this laptop for surfing web but nothing more.
I am able to build a computer, i've done it many times under windows or linux.

I want to go Mac for photo editing. I wanna get a step up in my photography production and printing.
I will do and need a few things.
- Lot of photo editing with photoshop, maybe lightroom or aperture.
- a lot of photo negative scanning (firewaire 400 and/or usb2.0).
- A little bit of video editing (mostly family video currently stored on a minidv).
- i will use a 27" Nec Spectraview monitor and i will need to calibrate it.

I am actually looking on 2 solutions : MacbookPro + Nec 27" OR MacPro + Nec 27".
Macbook pro advantage is to be handable.
But those machines are very expansive and after a discussion with a friend, i'm wondering about going hackintosh.
But i would like to be sure, that once it's built up, it will be bugs free.
I don't wanna switch to mac os and need to tweak the system every month because something is not 100% functional.

So would it be stable for this kind of use ?
And how cheaper than a "Mac pro" would it be (with nearby specs) ?

Many thanks.
Colin

 

[tokugawamac]

Hellloooo yourself,

From what I've seen, you can never be 100% sure that a hackintosh will be bug free. If you want to build a hackintosh for yourself, I think you should be willing to do a lot of tinkering and troubleshooting, at least at the beginning, and you should be willing to do some amount of tinkering and troubleshooting throughout the life of your machine as you get new software and software updates. However, you'll probably have the best chance of a hassle-free hackintosh if you follow the Golden Build (http://www.tonymacx86.com/golden-builds/) or User Build (http://www.tonymacx86.com/user-builds/) guides on this site.

To give you a small summary of my personal experience, I had my mac pro equivalent up and running within a day or two of building (but after months of research). My computer would lock up from time to time, but I fixed that within a few weeks. Other small bugs (e.g. waking up from sleep by itself, memory card not working after sleep) I squashed after a few more weeks. 6 months since building, there are still some bugs that I haven't been able to solve (e.g. the system locks up when I use handbrake when I'm using an otherwise-stable overclock, the game War Thunder won't load).

That being said, I spent around $2,500 on a machine that I think is comparable to a Mac Pro configured to around $4,000. I have a 6-core processor, but based on Geekbench performance alone, my computer beat 8-core Mac Pros, which are at least $5,500. So, for my purposes (e.g. not needing the extra reliability of workstation grade hardware, not needing ECC memory, not needing face-meltingly fast PCIe-based flash storage), I'd say building a hackintosh was a pretty good deal.

 

[healio]

Agree with Tokugawa. You'll never be 100% but if you pick a popular golden build, and you are willing to tinker from time to time, it can work out very well.

My biggest issues have been audio related. E.g., losing on an update, losing randomly, switching between black/green ports. Hardly a deal breaker for a machine that cost 1k and outperformed the 3k mac pros they were selling at the time.

 

[AndyAndreas]

Ehi Colinstudio,

nice topic.
I would like to talk about my experience.
I use Final Cut Pro X and the software works really great with my needs. I don't want to change.

For three years I worked very well with an iMac (Mid 2011, 21,5", i7, 24GB of RAM). Everything worked, I experienced only minor issues once in a while (trackpad not responding, black monitor when I turned the computer on, slow USB 2.0 ports, etc.).

My mainly complain was that I wasn't able to upgrade my machine and insert multiple drives to the SATA ports. The CPU is great for my needs, but I wanted a new graphic card and a SSD for OS X. Plus, the iMac was very hot after an hour of intense work.

This week a Hackintosh arrived. I sold my iMac to buy it. A friend of mine helped me with it, so I wasn't alone in the process.

The new computer worked great, I inserted three new drives (one for Windows 7, two for my data). It's faster than the iMac.
Two days later I had my first problem: audio wasn't working anymore. My friend wasn't available. I had to complete a couple of works. It took me an entire day to figure out the way to solve the problem. It works again, but I lost a day of work.

My only issue, now, is to transfer large files to my NAS. Sometimes the network card freeze and I can't complete my upload. I have to reboot with Windows 7 to deal with the issue. I installed the latest drivers, maybe I'll try a dedicated network card instead of the integrated one.

This forum is full of gentle people happy to help you. A lot of them helped me. But no one warned me about this net issue.

What I was looking for when I decided to buy an Hackintosh? An upgradable machine. You can't change the iMac, since it's not upgradable. You can't access the new Mac Pro to insert the drives you need.

Now I see at my Hackintosh and I have a machine that is partly upgradable. I can insert the disks I want, I have a huge case that keep the temperature down thanks to the efficient fans, I chose a dedicated graphic card and I have a new CPU. I can decide which monitor to connect. But I think I'll leave it like it is, I am worried that it won't work again and I can't complete my projects. I cloned my SSD where OS X is installed, so I am sure to have a backup plan in case something goes wrong.

After a long post I don't have a solution for you. If you buy a Mac you'll save a lot of time that you can use for your work. If you build a Hackintosh you'll spend a lot of time in research and there will be some risks.

My second choice was the leasing option: spend a little every month and you decide to keep the item or not at the end of the contract with a small fee (in Italy it's 10% of the original price) or start the leasing again with a new model. The MacBook Pro Retina would have costed me about 69€ + VAT every month for 2 and a half years (one of the high end configuration). It would have been a good solution.

Please, feel free to ask any questions.