Contribute
Register

Hackintosh with 8GPUs? Possible

Status
Not open for further replies.
Joined
Apr 23, 2020
Messages
1
Motherboard
MacBook Pro 16
CPU
i9
Graphics
RX 5700
Mac
  1. MacBook
  2. MacBook Pro
  3. Mac mini
Sorry if this is a silly question, but I am considering doing my first hackintosh and have seen the Rackmount cases designed for crypto mining that are build around and ATX motherboards. My question is if I use hackintosh compatible hardware and use a case loaded down with GPUs. Do you think it would support render farming and crush final cut timelines. This is the reason why I want so many GPUs. I work with epic 4K timelines and with compressor can it truly take advantage of all the 8 GPUs built in a system like this? Sorry if this is a noob question but I couldn’t find any resources online anywhere. Thanks!
 
There are really two questions, here. How many GPUs does OS X support? And what can applications take advantage of.

On the latter, you're only going to be able to do this with software that's written and optimized to such an extreme scenario. The info on Puget Systems' site, for example, indicates IIRC that dual GPUs increase performance by double digit percentages, maybe 20-30%, and the third one perhaps only a single digit percentage. That's with Premiere Pro or similar, which is kind of a worst case scenario because Adobe sucks at writing scalable code. On the other hand, say you're doing password cracking or something like that, it should scale alright.

I don't know the definite answer to the first question. The most I'd probably attempt would be 4 via PCI-e and 2 via Thunderbolt.

Do you have outrageous amounts of money? I'd be happy to help! :lol:
 
On second thought, It'd probably be simpler to leave Thunderbolt out of it and, as you say, use riser cables and one of the open frame cases designed for mining. The ASUS WS X299 SAGE is a board that some folks use.

Note that the memory relocation process that's used in Clover and OC very early on, before the kernel starts, gets complicated and buggy when huge amounts of PCI-e resources are used up. 4 GPUs and an SSD can probably be made to work. Beyond that it's kind of anyone's guess.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top