Solid Solution for visual operations (editing, VJ-ing, live shows)

[Benack]

Hello everyone,

I am fairly new to this forum as well as to the whole hackintosh universe. For the last 10 years I’ve been a mostly happy mac-user, but the relation of prices and what I would like my computer to be able to do eventually got me looking for alternatives.

So far I am operating on a mid 2012 Macbook Pro, which slowly but surely is reaching it’s natural limits. So I need a replacement or rather a drastic improvement. So far I am using OS Sierra but an upgrade to High Sierra before I swith to a hackintosh could also be possible.

Working as a visual artist I am pretty much moving around on the user side of things.
However over the last 15 years of work and projects I have developed a pretty unscrupulous and hands-on attitude towards everything techie. So I think I should be more or less capable of building, setting up and running a hackintosh with all the restrictions or time and energy investments that requires.

Before posting Ive already gone through pretty much all the basics and through the regular monthly buyers guides. All very helpful stuff and I understand a lot more already.
Nevertheless rather sooner than later it gets so highly specific and the benchmarks are so cryptically close together that I am having a really hard time in deciding what could work best for me. Here I am simply lacking expertise and experience.

So first I am looking for a general guide for the build, the parts I need to get and what would best suit my needs.

These are as follows:
With the planned hackintosh I would like to go into the direction of a MacPro.
Mostly I am planning to use the hackintosh for visual applications in the areas of film(editing), VJ-ing and for running theatre shows.
This means I would like it to be powerful with rendering as well as live-rendering.

Software I would like to run on the hackintosh:

Final Cut Pro X
After Effects
Resolume 5
QLab 3 or 4, respectively
Isadora
Photoshop (right now still CS5 - due for an upgrade)

In addition I would like to be able to address several projectors at once ideally combined with a live-camera (especially for performance shows and VJ-ing). Right now my natural limit with full HD resolution is one cam and two projectors (via Matrox Dual-Head).
I would like to extend that to 4-5 projectors plus live cam (best without using the Matrox ad-on).
Is it possible to have 4-5 thunderbolt interfaces or maybe a combination of HDMI and thunderbolt interfaces that would make this feasible?

As a harddrive I would need 1TB SSD and 2 TB HDD, in order to get around the monthly archiving and cleaning up

It’s not like money isn’t an issue but compared to a fully fledged MacPro all hackintosh options seem fairly affordable. I would like the hackintosh to be my main work station with my Macbook Pro as backup. So I am absolutely willing to spend 2 - 3 thousand on a solid solution for the next couple of years.

What do I need to pay attention to? Which benchmarks would be important?
How much RAM is important? VRAM? What should the GPU be able to do?

Thanks in advance for all advice and hints and how-tos!

 

[trs96]

If you can wait a month or so to start your build, Intel has announced release of Coffee Lake 6 core desktop chips this October.
The I7-8700 or 8700K if you overclock, will work quite well for your needs. Best part is that the 8700K retail price will be $350 or less. You'll have to match one with a motherboard that is Thunderbolt capable. Then find an ATX size case that is portable enough for taking with you wherever you'll go with it. You should also look at threads related to AMD graphics cards that have support in High Sierra. They are the best choice for FCP X and will be natively supported.

 

[Jamesbond007]

If you can wait a month or so to start your build, Intel has announced release of Coffee Lake 6 core desktop chips this October.

The I7-8700 or 8700K if you overclock, will work quite well for your needs. Best part is that the 8700K retail price will be $350 or less. You'll have to match one with a motherboard that is Thunderbolt capable. Then find an ATX size case that is portable enough for taking with you wherever you'll go with it. You should also look at threads related to AMD graphics cards that have support in High Sierra. They are the best choice for FCP X and will be natively supported.

View attachment 278572

Are you certain about the highlighted part about the price of these 6 core CPUs being the same as the current 4 core CPUs? If so it will be a nice gesture from Intel for once, although it is still not cheap. No doubt it is being forced by the Ryzen competition.

 

[Benack]

nice idea. thx.
I won't be able to start before October anyhow. and the first show I would like to test the new setup in is mid December.
so that sounds like a plan. and everything I found so far supports the 350-retail price.

finding a motherboard that is thunderbolt capable, I can manage.
but what I couldn't figure out so far:
is it possible to somehow have more than 2 thunderbolt interfaces? daisy chaining devices unfortunately doesn't work for projectors and cameras ...
as far as my reading goes, thunderbolt 3 is still to much of an issue to run smoothly, right?
or would the solution rather be to have several HDMI interfaces?

 

[trs96]

I won't be able to start before October anyhow. and the first show I would like to test the new setup in is mid December.
so that sounds like a plan. and everything I found so far supports the 350-retail price.

Intel sells more of their I7 "K" chips than any other consumer CPU that they make. If they were to raise prices above say $450 because it's got 6 cores, there will be an even larger exodus to Ryzen than there already has been. It would be like Apple pricing their iPhone 8 at a starting price of $1,000. There would be a lot more Android phone users !

As far as your TH3 and projectors questions, I don't have any experience in those areas. Try posting in threads more specific to those topics and get some feedback from others. The only way I know of to have 2 or more TH3 interfaces that work with no issues and a 6 core or higher CPU as well would be to buy a new iMac Pro in December/January. The prices of those look to be prohibitive. Apple said they will start at $4,999 for the entry level model. That makes sense as it will probably use the 6 core Xeon W-2135 chip according to Piker Alpha https://pikeralpha.wordpress.com/2017/08/29/imac-pro-comes-with-xeon-w-processor/

The cost of that 6 core Xeon to computer manufacturers is $835 per chip when 1000 are purchased ! The specs are very similar to the I7-8700K soon to be released. The main difference is ECC memory support and a toasty 140W TDP. Apple had to design a completely new cooling system for the new iMac Pro. I'd wager that the base model will have the $1,100 + W-2145 8 core Xeon instead of the 6 core W-2135. We will likely see the regular iMacs upgraded to the Coffee Lake I7 chips sometime in 2018.

See all the info at Intel's site:
https://ark.intel.com/products/126709/Intel-Xeon-Processor-W-2135-8_25M-Cache-3_70-GHz
https://ark.intel.com/products/126707/Intel-Xeon-Processor-W-2145-11M-Cache-3_70-GHz

 

[Benack]

thanks. I'll try sourcing that question out to a more specific thread then.
the new iMac would be slightly above my price range and I am hoping to manage a more powerful build below that price range.
by overclocking you mean the turbo speed of 4,3GHz?

 

[VincentWalsarie]

Hi Benack, I've found this old thread, I'm now running into the same in 2020. I was wondering if you went with the Hackintosh path and what are your findings on VJ/Live performance on a Hackintosh. I'm looking to use it with madmapper/modul8 my current Mac Pro 2013 is lacking power. And I'm now required to use 2 4k outputs on a massive led wall setup/pixelmap.