Part List for Future Hacintosh, Will this Work?

[jonathanlv7]

CPU: Intel i7 4770k
Ram: Corsair Vengeance 16GB DDR3 1866 Mhz
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z87X-HD3
CPU Cooler: Corsair h100i
SSD: Samsung 840 Pro 256GB (2x)
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 3TB (4x)
GPU: EVGA GTX 760 SC
Case: Cooler Master HAF X

Okay now that I have the part list out of the way I want to explain my plans for setting up these drives. For the Mac OSX side I want to use one of the SSD's as the OS install and programs, then I want to use two of the HDD's in RAID 1 for reliability. Now, I have included 4 HDD's in my build and 2 SSD's to have two of these disk setups, one for Mac OSX and one for Windows. My thinking is put one SSD in at first, install Mac OSX. Then put in two of the HDD and set them up in Mac OSX as RAID 1. Then, put in the second SSD and install Windows 8 on that SSD. After that, put in the two remaining HDD and set them up as RAID 1 for the Windows side.

Please let me know if I have planned something wrong or my parts aren't compatible with Hacintosh.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Thank you!

 

[14republic]

Looks good from a Hackintosh perspective. Out of curiosity, are two 256 SSDs cheaper than one 512 drive? And why are you going all out on CPU, RAM, and drives, but sticking with a GTX760? That seems like a bottleneck in your config, depending on what your plans with the machine are.

 

[jonathanlv7]

Two 256 GB SSD's are about 120 dollars cheaper than a 512 GB SSD. What is more advantageous, to have Windows on one SSD and Mac OS X on the other, or put both OS's on the same 512 GB SSD? And I have a GTX 760 in there because this computer will be used almost exclusively for music production.

 

[Going Bald]

Two 256 GB SSD's are about 120 dollars cheaper than a 512 GB SSD. What is more advantageous, to have Windows on one SSD and Mac OS X on the other, or put both OS's on the same 512 GB SSD? And I have a GTX 760 in there because this computer will be used almost exclusively for music production.

Separate SSDs are best.

 

[jonathanlv7]

That's what I was thinking. So can anyone confirm that the disc setup that I proposed in my initial post, with the two operating systems, will work correctly? And how much wattage do you think this build with 2 top of the industry sound cards, will require? I don't know what soundcards exactly are going to be in this machine since I'm building it for somebody else, but the guy told me that his soundcards are in the $10,000 dollar range and that's all I know about them really.

 

[Going Bald]

That's what I was thinking. So can anyone confirm that the disc setup that I proposed in my initial post, with the two operating systems, will work correctly? And how much wattage do you think this build with 2 top of the industry sound cards, will require? I don't know what soundcards exactly are going to be in this machine since I'm building it for somebody else, but the guy told me that his soundcards are in the $10,000 dollar range and that's all I know about them really.

connect one SSD and install OS X - check.
install 2 HDD and do RAID setup for OS X - check
disconnect OS X drives, connect 2nd SSD and install Windows - check

and here is the sticky part. Are you using windows software to create your RAID array or do you plan to set the SATA ports to RAID? If setting SATA ports to RAID, forget the whole thing - they must remain at AHCI for OS X to work.
Why not just get a NAS and put 5 drives in it in a RAID 10?

For the sound cards, go to the manufacturer's website and look up the power requirements for the cards or check the documentation that came with the cards.
For the PSU - see above. The sound cards might require a direct power connection to the PSU like a PCIe gfx card.

 

[jonathanlv7]

I was planning to use Windows software I guess to setup the Windows array. But keep in mind that being able to transfer files between the Mac and Windows side is not important. Also, would RAID 10 work better than RAID 1? Also, I don't really know what a NAS is. Doing a quick google search it's like a server that multiple computers can get files off, I don't understand how that would benefit me. Let me see if i understand, doing two separate RAID 1 arrays makes 2 different arrays, one for Mac OS X, one for Windows. RAID 10 would make one large array, which means I'd have to install Mac OS X and Windows on the same drives. Wouldn't it be more beneficial to keep the OS's on separate HDD setups? I don't have much experience with RAID so any advice would be appreciated.

 

[Going Bald]

I was planning to use Windows software I guess to setup the Windows array. But keep in mind that being able to transfer files between the Mac and Windows side is not important. Also, would RAID 10 work better than RAID 1? Also, I don't really know what a NAS is. Doing a quick google search it's like a server that multiple computers can get files off, I don't understand how that would benefit me. Let me see if i understand, doing two separate RAID 1 arrays makes 2 different arrays, one for Mac OS X, one for Windows. RAID 10 would make one large array, which means I'd have to install Mac OS X and Windows on the same drives. Wouldn't it be more beneficial to keep the OS's on separate HDD setups? I don't have much experience with RAID so any advice would be appreciated.

NAS = Network Attached Storage.
Raid 10 on 4 drives = 2 drive pairs set up in Raid 1 and then striped RAID 0. Done this way, a drive in each pair can fail and you can still recover.
You still need a separate SSD for OS X and Windows.

 

[jonathanlv7]

Okay so you're proposing that I use two SSD's, for each OS. Then I use 4 HDD for a RAID 10 array, for speed/reliability. If I use 4 3TB drives how much will I have total in the array? I believe it's 6TB correct? Okay well anyways, doing that setup will make the Windows and OS X side use the same exact array for the storage of the two OS's, instead of having two separate RAID 1 arrays for each OS. Wouldn't doing what you proposed cause issues with Mac not being able to write/read to the same type of drive format as Windows? And won't that cause the files to be overlapping? So OS X and Windows files would be intertwined? I don't know much about all this but it seems to me doing ONE RAID 10 array for TWO separate OS's seems like it wouldn't work so well. It seems to me that having each OS have it's own independent HDD setup seems like it would work better, kind of like two separate computers in 1 case. Please tell me if there's something I'm getting wrong.

 

[Going Bald]

Okay so you're proposing that I use two SSD's, for each OS. Then I use 4 HDD for a RAID 10 array, for speed/reliability. If I use 4 3TB drives how much will I have total in the array? I believe it's 6TB correct? Okay well anyways, doing that setup will make the Windows and OS X side use the same exact array for the storage of the two OS's, instead of having two separate RAID 1 arrays for each OS. Wouldn't doing what you proposed cause issues with Mac not being able to write/read to the same type of drive format as Windows? And won't that cause the files to be overlapping? So OS X and Windows files would be intertwined? I don't know much about all this but it seems to me doing ONE RAID 10 array for TWO separate OS's seems like it wouldn't work so well. It seems to me that having each OS have it's own independent HDD setup seems like it would work better, kind of like two separate computers in 1 case. Please tell me if there's something I'm getting wrong.

I was proposing that in a NAS, not in your build. In your build you would probably do better with 2 pairs in RAID 1 - a pair for each OS, but I am not sure how that will work out - never tried it myself.
I do wish you good luck with it, though. When you do your build and get it all set up, post in the User Builds with a How-To for other users.