Hackintosh for the Pro Audio professional

[BoomR]

I think audio-codec is not that important for a build with an external audio-interface, right? More important, in terms of support for motu 828X TB would be the TB chipset...i've seen builds on this forum with the Z77 board with working TB displays but couldn't find anything on audio-interfaces..Of course there are more differences between the 2 boards(€260 for the Z87 vs €130 for the Z77 here in Holland, to name one) but TB functionality is crucial.
Any idea which TB chipset would be the best? Does it matter?

Hope you'll be able to help me decide...

Once again, thanx very much in advance!

Ciao!

Lucky you are where you are in the EU and can get the Z77MX-D3H-TH. I would LOVE to be able to get that board here in the US to use in my HTPC. Having said that...

If you are looking to save $$ and do not care about being on the "bleeding edge" of technology with a Haswell build (& an Ivy Bridge build will be perfectly fine for you), get the Z77MX-D3H-TH. The reason you are not seeing a lot of posts from guys who have TB-equipped audio interfaces is that, up until this latest NAMM show, there really have only been very high-end audio interfaces with TB (UAD Apollo series, plus a Thunderbolt box for Pro Tools|Native, and Apogee's ThunderBridge for the Symphony I/O).

I'm pretty sure there are a couple guys who have CustoMacs and are using the AVID Thunderbolt interface with their ProTools rigs - and as I recall, everyone's rigs are working perfectly. FWIW, **ALL** current Thunderbolt-equipped audio interfaces/bridges are Thunderbolt v1.0. The GA-Z87X-UD5 TH simply uses an updated version of a Thunderbolt v1.0 technology, so no real advantage from speed/performance for your TB by going this route.

 

[soyasoo]

Hi,

I'm planning to build a Heckintosh for home studio recording purpose and I had these specs in mind.

GA-Z97X-UD7 TH
i7 4790k
EVGA GeForce GTX 760
Samsung 840 EVO 500GB SSD for OSX & Apps
Seagate 3TB HHD 7200rpm for data

Since I have Apogee Symphony 64 Thunderbolt Bridge and UAD2 Satellite Thunderbolt Octo, was wondering can the GA-Z97X-UD7 TH work well with these two TH devices?

Thanks!

 

[BoomR]

Hi,

I'm planning to build a Heckintosh for home studio recording purpose and I had these specs in mind.

GA-Z97X-UD7 TH
i7 4790k
EVGA GeForce GTX 760
Samsung 840 EVO 500GB SSD for OSX & Apps
Seagate 3TB HHD 7200rpm for data

Since I have Apogee Symphony 64 Thunderbolt Bridge and UAD2 Satellite Thunderbolt Octo, was wondering can the GA-Z97X-UD7 TH work well with these two TH devices?

Thanks!

That looks to be a good build for what you want to do.

Make sure to review the user builds section for people who have successfully gotten that motherboard to work (including the Thunderbolt ports). You might also search on the GA-Z87X-UD7 TH and read how to activate TB.

With these motherboards, I believe there are some steps you must take to fully activate Thunderbolt so that Mac OS X will see it. This is done via Windows, though. So you will first have to do a Windows install, then load Windows TB drivers, and plug in a TB device to "activate" the TB firmware.

 

[soyasoo]

That looks to be a good build for what you want to do.

Make sure to review the user builds section for people who have successfully gotten that motherboard to work (including the Thunderbolt ports). You might also search on the GA-Z87X-UD7 TH and read how to activate TB.

With these motherboards, I believe there are some steps you must take to fully activate Thunderbolt so that Mac OS X will see it. This is done via Windows, though. So you will first have to do a Windows install, then load Windows TB drivers, and plug in a TB device to "activate" the TB firmware.

Hi BoomR, thanks for your quick reply! Really appreciate it!

Actually I just built my Heckintosh last night until this morning! I'm running 10.9.4 Mavericks successfully, except the TH ports.

In this stage, since I missed your reply, I have no choice and need to try out with installing Win8.1 to activate the TH firmware, and see will it work or not.

Thanks again!

 

[BoomR]

Hi BoomR, thanks for your quick reply! Really appreciate it!

Actually I just built my Heckintosh last night until this morning! I'm running 10.9.4 Mavericks successfully, except the TH ports.

In this stage, since I missed your reply, I have no choice and need to try out with installing Win8.1 to activate the TH firmware, and see will it work or not.

Thanks again!

If you've got a spare hard drive laying around, simply swap that out for your current OS X boot drive. Install Win8 on the spare drive, activate the TB ports, then switch back to your OS X boot drive. Actually, think about installing Win8 on your 3TB Seagate drive and do the activation?

 

[soyasoo]

YA, THATS MY PLAN NOW!!! Hopefully can get it done by this week.. My MBP just can't live longer and getting worse and worse even just mixing in the ProTools10.

Thanks again! Will respond to here again once i tested out!

 

[soyasoo]

If you've got a spare hard drive laying around, simply swap that out for your current OS X boot drive. Install Win8 on the spare drive, activate the TB ports, then switch back to your OS X boot drive. Actually, think about installing Win8 on your 3TB Seagate drive and do the activation?

Hi BoomR or whoever can help me out.

I have the Win8.1 ISO file, can I still straight away install it w/o following the Steps that provided and activate the TH firmware?

 

[BoomR]

Hi BoomR or whoever can help me out.

I have the Win8.1 ISO file, can I still straight away install it w/o following the Steps that provided and activate the TH firmware?

You need to install Windows...then you need to download & install your motherboard's Thunderbolt installer with the drivers & control panel. Once you get the Windows TB software installed, you then need to connect a TB device to complete the "activation" process....

Please review this post - while it is for the ASUS ThunderboltII EX card, the basic driver installation & Windows activation process should be the same:
http://www.tonymacx86.com/general-h...pansion-card-testing-thread-3.html#post912116

 

[soyasoo]

You need to install Windows...then you need to download & install your motherboard's Thunderbolt installer with the drivers & control panel. Once you get the Windows TB software installed, you then need to connect a TB device to complete the "activation" process....

Please review this post - while it is for the ASUS ThunderboltII EX card, the basic driver installation & Windows activation process should be the same:
http://www.tonymacx86.com/general-h...pansion-card-testing-thread-3.html#post912116

Hmmm.. ok, to be clarified, the Win8.1 ISO is only for installing on a Mac OS so that you can run like parallel desktop to switch in between Mac OS and Win OS. That means, even I install it, it will not helping me out to activate the firmware.

So, I need to get a totally-just-for Win8.1 installer (maybe get the DVD?) to install from the beginning?

I download the Win USB/DVD tool from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/windows-usb-dvd-download-tool
But I have no Win OS to complete the steps to boot my USB, and my friend passed me a Win8.1 Pro 64-bit ISO.

In addition, is ExFat same as 32 FAT/MBR? Or I should use MS-DOS (FAT)?
And I'm having a Win8.1 Pro 64-bit.

Am I right? Please correct me if I'm wrong. Kinda lost (more likely frustration) & confused.

 

[Going Bald]

Hmmm.. ok, to be clarified, the Win8.1 ISO is only for installing on a Mac OS so that you can run like parallel desktop to switch in between Mac OS and Win OS. That means, even I install it, it will not helping me out to activate the firmware.

So, I need to get a totally-just-for Win8.1 installer (maybe get the DVD?) to install from the beginning?

I download the Win USB/DVD tool from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/windows-usb-dvd-download-tool
But I have no Win OS to complete the steps to boot my USB, and my friend passed me a Win8.1 Pro 64-bit ISO.

In addition, is ExFat same as 32 FAT/MBR? Or I should use MS-DOS (FAT)?
And I'm having a Win8.1 Pro 64-bit.

Am I right? Please correct me if I'm wrong. Kinda lost (more likely frustration) & confused.

The problem you are going to run into using a Win8/8.1 ISO is that Win8 requires a license key to even get it to install.
ExFAT is not same as FAT32. Suggest you use a completely separate drive to install Windows on. Then you don't have to worry about formatting it with OS X disk utility.