Is good this Hackintosh for photo (Lightroom+PS) work?

[hankydysplasia]

Not sure what all the hate on his RAM choice is about. 32GB of RAM is pretty much the most important feature of a Photoshop CS5 running computer. 24GB is about ideal at the current iteration of Photoshop.

SSD will make everything seem faster, and it's a must for the cache in Lightroom/Bridge. I'd recommend at least 80GB. I wanted to have Steam on the drive, so I had to upgrade to 120GB. No music or photos or video stored on the drive.

Source.

 

[angelo.pampalone]

Thanks Tonyloco. In light of all this, this is the new version integrating the very helpful suggestions I received here.
I also forgot a case and a powerbrick that I add there.

INTEL Core i7-2600K (Sandy Bridge) Quad-Core 3,40 Ghz
KINGSTON 6GB 1600MHz DDR3 Non-ECC CL7 DIMM (Kit of 3) XMP (lower latency)
KINGSTON Solid State Disk SSDNow 64 Gb (As suggested a greater size)
SEAGATE Barracuda 7200.12 1 Tb Sata 600 Buffer 32 Mb 7200 Rpm (Data and user HD)
GIGABYTE Motherboard GIGABYTE GA-P67A-UD3P-B3 - chipset Intel P67 Express ATX
SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 5850 1 Gb ddr5 Pci-E Dual DVI HDMI Display Port Toxic Edition
THERMALTAKE Contac 29 per Socket Intel LGA1366 1155 1156 775 AMD AM2 AM2+ AM3 939 754
LG DVD 22x Sata Double Layer
(added now)
COOLERMASTER Case Middle Tower Elite 430
COOLERMASTER Alimentatore 500 Watt Elite Power System Integrator

So that will be all! Then I need to wait for paycheck and I can fire the purchase button!

 

[parkerdenison]

You used a DSDT and a vanilla Snow Leopard install? Or some hard step is needed?
Is all running at 64bit?

Yes, it is running at 64bit. Just follow tony's guide to install. it is easy.

 

[angelo.pampalone]

You used a DSDT and a vanilla Snow Leopard install? Or some hard step is needed?
Is all running at 64bit?

Yes, it is running at 64bit. Just follow tony's guide to install. it is easy.

Super! Thank you!

 

[angelo.pampalone]

Not sure what all the hate on his RAM choice is about. 32GB of RAM is pretty much the most important feature of a Photoshop CS5 running computer. 24GB is about ideal at the current iteration of Photoshop.

SSD will make everything seem faster, and it's a must for the cache in Lightroom/Bridge. I'd recommend at least 80GB. I wanted to have Steam on the drive, so I had to upgrade to 120GB. No music or photos or video stored on the drive.

Source.

Great info hankydysplasia! But I find that 24GB only as 4 sticks
Also what is steam you are speaking of?

 

[Grovestand]

Not sure what all the hate on his RAM choice is about. 32GB of RAM is pretty much the most important feature of a Photoshop CS5 running computer. 24GB is about ideal at the current iteration of Photoshop.

SSD will make everything seem faster, and it's a must for the cache in Lightroom/Bridge. I'd recommend at least 80GB. I wanted to have Steam on the drive, so I had to upgrade to 120GB. No music or photos or video stored on the drive.

Source.

The hate on the RAM was only because he mentioned that he was on a budget and that he was buying a 16GB SSD to run OS X on.

Great info hankydysplasia! But I find that 24GB only as 4 sticks
Also what is steam you are speaking of?

Steam is a piece of software that lets you buy, download, and play games on your mac.

Getting up to 32GB of RAM with 4 slots is going to be very expensive. The cheapest 8GB stick of RAM is very expensive. 16GB would be much more attainable.

 

[hankydysplasia]

The hate on the RAM was only because he mentioned that he was on a budget and that he was buying a 16GB SSD to run OS X on.

Getting up to 32GB of RAM with 4 slots is going to be very expensive. The cheapest 8GB stick of RAM is very expensive. 16GB would be much more attainable.

Thought I'd do some more research on this for me and for this board. I found this very helpful document straight from Adobe. RAM is the best bang for your buck in terms of overall Photoshop performance up until 16GB. The reason red flags went up in my head is because people had suggested 8GB. My final recommendation on the matter is 16GB - probably the G.Skill 4x4 kit.

As for 16GB SSD - I'll bet he'd be happy with a 20GB SSD and a Z68 motherboard with SSD caching or just using the SSD as the dedicated Cache drive for Photoshop and Bridge. There is no inexpensive way to have a fast storage drive for the photos. A wedding of RAW photos with a couple 5D Mark II's is 60-80GB. Even if you're not doing it professionally, the pictures add up. Therefore if your goal is to make Photoshop run faster for less money, getting more RAM, a cheaper SSD for caching, and a cheaper video card would be the most effective method. Early recommendations in this forum weren't actually considering how Photoshop worked, they were just about how to build a well-rounded system.

As for what Steam is - it's the best multi-platform game distribution system. Made by Valve, it allows you to download and install game that would normally be on a DVD or Blu-ray. Portal 2 was a good example of a recent game - it's about 10GB.

 

[Grovestand]

Definitely if you are using the SSD for caching that would be a different matter (though I had no idea photoshop was that read intensive aside from accessing the photos themselves).

I feel like the best way to get a good amount of speed and storage combined is to do a software RAID 0.

It's portable from one system to another. It's fast. It's great. The only thing is that you have to back up frequently in case one of your drives fails. That can be solved with a RAID 5, but I don't think that software RAID 5s exist in OS X.

I currently run the following (I use aperture, because I find that I get the same results with less time than I do in photoshop, but I understand that it's not nearly as robust. I do like CS 5 a lot).

80GB SSD for OS X, Programs (Logic, Aperture, random Apps)
1TB drive = Users Folder
2 x 1TB drive in a RAID 0 = Music, Photos, Videos, Install Files, Documents, Logic Projects that I am currently working on.
1TB drive = Backup of OS X/Windows 7 Partition (in case I feel like gaming)/Miscellaneous partitions for other purposes

2 x 1.5 External USB 3 HDDs to backup the contents of my RAID 0 or bring media/projects from home to work and back.

It took me a while to get it setup just how I want it, but I'm happy with everything other than the OS drive. I wish I had a 120GB drive for OS X + Programs.

 

[hankydysplasia]

I have a Hackintosh and a MacBook Pro. I have an 80GB Intel SSD in the Hackintosh and a 120GB Corsair SSD in the MacBook Pro. Neither drive has any native storage. I have a Synology DiskStation 409+ with 4x2TB Drives running in RAID5 for 6TB of storage with the speed benefits of RAID0 and 1 disk parity.

Fortunately, Synology's work very well with OSX and have an AFP mount and Time Machine backups. Working on photos pretty much only works at a reasonable speed over Gigabit ethernet. 802.11n works, but painfully. I can edit photos with both computers simultaneously with no problems. This setup also allows me to work without needing to keep the desktop running. The speed isn't ideal. It's about 50MB/s. That's not bad though.

 

[angelo.pampalone]

Not sure what all the hate on his RAM choice is about. 32GB of RAM is pretty much the most important feature of a Photoshop CS5 running computer. 24GB is about ideal at the current iteration of Photoshop.

SSD will make everything seem faster, and it's a must for the cache in Lightroom/Bridge. I'd recommend at least 80GB. I wanted to have Steam on the drive, so I had to upgrade to 120GB. No music or photos or video stored on the drive.

Source.

The hate on the RAM was only because he mentioned that he was on a budget and that he was buying a 16GB SSD to run OS X on.

Great info hankydysplasia! But I find that 24GB only as 4 sticks
Also what is steam you are speaking of?

Steam is a piece of software that lets you buy, download, and play games on your mac.

Getting up to 32GB of RAM with 4 slots is going to be very expensive. The cheapest 8GB stick of RAM is very expensive. 16GB would be much more attainable.

Ok , Then I think that I will set the machine with 16GB ram.