Hi,

I've been scouring the forums and gleaning as much info as I can on building a new core i7 hackintosh. I'm a bit new at this, although I have successfully installed Tiger on an old P4. I'm a professional editor using an Avid DS Nitris system, and although it's pretty powerful, I find myself leaning over and banging out effects on my MBP with FCS3, specifically Motion 4, more and more. The clients are loving what I can do with that, coupled with some Blender 3D goodness. So the short story is, I needs(wants) mo' power. I've narrowed my hardware choices down to a few components. Can anyone assure me that these are the right components to start out with, and recommend the additional parts I need to get a working hack pro? The only thing I'll be running is FCS3, Blender 3D, and CS4 Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects. Hehe...I guess "only" sounds a bit silly, like I'll only be taking over the world.

Here is what I've decided on so far.
CPU:
Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor

Motherboard:
GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD5 LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard

Video Card:
SAPPHIRE Vapor-X Radeon HD 4870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail

Any recommendations for memory, and how much I can practically use?
Also any recommendations for hard drives, power requirements, etc?


I figure I can limp through a SL install from the Digital Dreamer guide. Just wanted to know if I'm starting out on the right foot.

Is there anyone out there who has used Motion 4 on a Hackintosh? It's actually not very stable on a real Mac. I found Motion ran better on my older iMac with the ATI card X1900 than the MBP with the nVidia 8800GT.

I also want to know how well it might handle editing DVCPRO HD footage from my HVX200.

Thanks for all the help!
This is a great site!

UPDATE 11/08/09

Well I went ahead and pulled the trigger on the parts from newegg. Here is how it breaks down:

CPU:
Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor - Retail
Reason for purchase:Wanted to be faster than the core2quad, but not on the bleeding edge. Successful hackintosh builds with this processor.

Motherboard:
GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD5 LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
Reason for purchase: Gigabyte brand seems to be the most compatible. Digital Dreamers script install posts for this particular board seem to be the best around.

Video Card:
SAPPHIRE 100279-1GL Radeon HD 4870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail
Reason for purchase: This was a hard one. I have always used nVidia with my past(way past) PC and Linux builds before switching to Mac(a real Mac, actually 2 real Macs). This might have been more of a gut decision because of stability issues with my laptop(MBP with nvidia) using Apple Motion vs. decent reliability with Motion on my iMac(with ATI). I realize that laptop video hardware is probably not a good comparison, but oh well. Also Mac Pros offer an upgrade to the 4870, and I felt like the 4870 would better suit my motion graphic needs. I've gotten mixed advice on this card, but at the end of the day you gotta choose, and I chose this one. Mother Mary help me in the upcoming install. I did go with the model that is just dual DVI instead of the HDMI, Etc. model.

Memory:
CORSAIR XMS3 12GB (6 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model HX3X12G1600C9 G - Retail
Reason for purchase: Was a combo deal with the motherboard. Have no idea what hexa channel means.

Here is the rest:


I have gone over Digital Dreamers guide and I have a bit to go over again and again. I think things will make more sense during the install, so I'll hold off on posting my particular issues.

UPDATE 11/19/09

Everything works!
Well except my abit airpace(atheros) wlan card.
Have not tested sleep functionality. Don't really care.

Sound
Video with qe/ci and dual monitors running at 1920x1080

This sucker is really responsive.
I have not tested final cut studio yet, but I will report.

The install was so simple, I feel guilty
I did not use DD's method, but instead used lifehacker's snow leopard method and replaced the extra folder with the one from this post...It's Cybex's

I did learn a ton though from research and trial and error with DD's method, so a big thanks still goes out to him.
I never even asked any questions. I was going rogue.

anyway I will report back on final cut studio 3. I'm going to throw some redcam footage at it and see if it sticks.

there is no emoticon for the feeling "like it's Christmas" so I'll just leave it at that.

UPDATE 11/22/09

Well I installed FCS 3, and FCP kept crashing during load up. Found out that FCP looks for "en0" device on the network. Well I had previously disabled the on board LAN in bios on the UD5 and saw that only the firewire network device(fw0) was listed in the system prefs network pane. I had heard of kernel panics with the onboard LAN enabled from another user using DD's method. Just for fun I decided to enable onboard LAN and yank that abit airpace $5 woot deal outta there. Everything is fine. FCP sees "en0" and it loads up and kicks major butt.

Also, I never thought working with motion graphics could be like this. My work will get the extra edge when working with Motion 4 etc. I had many layers of hi res stills in 720p animating in realtime in Motion. iLife seems to be ok, I don't use anything other than Gband, itunes, and iphoto. All seems to be ok. Have not done a 4k redcam color correct yet.

I bought a generic xbox/ps3/computer game adapter which is no more than a wireless ethernet bridge. Got internet, but I can't access my other "real" macs. They show up on the sidebar though. Internet seems a little slow.

Created a test install and did the 10.6.2 combo update. No problems. It has been reported that SleepEnabler.kext has given users kp problems. I never had it since I don't care about sleep(in both paradigms). Updated t.he apps and the download speed dramatically increased after the 10.6.2 update. Maybe a fluke? Still no shares.

I think the original Extra folder link was wrong I think. I updated that link above as well.

From everything I've read you'll be far, far better off with a dual DVI video card instead of the DVI/HDMI/VGA combo card, at least if you want good compatibility & dual monitor support. Apple has used dual-DVI cards exclusively for the better part of a decade now, and I've seen people complaining about the Vapor-X cards by name, as well as someone else last week complaining about a DVI/VGA 4870.


also... "the MBP with the nVidia 8800GT"... how did you manage to shoehorn a 8800GT into a Macbook Pro?
Could we get some pics?

My bad...it's the GeForce 8600M GT that comes stock.

Thanks for the advice. I think I was just throwing darts at the different 4870 flavors.

I'm glad to see you've got yourself a decent machine How has Final Cut treated you in this transition?

When I first installed it, it kept crashing after the splash screen. I had disabled the onboard lan in bios, and OS X was id'ing the firewire lan device as FW0. Actually I disabled it because of what you said about kernel panics. After a bit of research, I learned that final cut pro looks for the first lan device as en0. I re-enabled onboard lan, and that fixed the issue. Actually, I just bought a wireless game adapter and hooked it up to bridge the internet out to my detached garage(man cave) and I'm writing this on the new system. Onboard lan hasn't given me any problems. The fact that I can now edit in DVCPRO HD now comfortably is the best. Haven't done any 4k color correction yet. I'm hoping the 1gb 4870 will handle it ok. I'm still in shock at how well the system runs. One issue I have discovered tonight was the lack of connection to my imac in the house. It showed up in sidebar, but haven't been able to connect. I got rid of the atheros card. No luck in finding anything that would make it work.

the onboard ethernet on many gigabyte motherboards requires a bit of fiddling to get working 100% with real macs with stuff like bonjour

oh, and I've read about some new Atheros wireless drivers for 10.6.2 x64 that might be useful, I believe they were over at netkas.org?

I'll fiddle with it in the future. If the atheros works that'll let me hook up my game adapter to my blu-ray player. Dumb question, but I'd like to clone my boot drive to do tests with updates and what not. What's the best method? Yes I'm too lazy to do a search right now.

I've followed your method and I'm running into a strange problem.

After following the lifehacker instructions on how to extract the Snow Leopard image onto the USB disk, I ran the custom install script that was also provided (instead of doing the manual terminal work).

Then, I deleted the "Extras" folder at the root of the USB disk and replaced it with the Extras folder that exists in this dmg.

When I boot off of the USB stick I am unable to see my hard drive in the "Select disk to install os x" screen in the installation wizard. Chameleon bootloader sees both my USB stick and the hard drive when I boot up, but the installer fails to completely.

I've reformatted my destination drive several times to a GUID partition, Mac OSX extended (journaled case-sensitive) without any luck of it showing up in the screen.

My instincts tell me that I'm missing some kind of driver for the SATA controller, but I don't know how to go about trouble shooting that.

Any suggestions?

Did you hit any key when the lizard shows up? Hmmm... I'd do the manual terminal work, if I were you. I'm a bit of a noob myself, but he lays it down pretty simply. I chose not to use "case sensitive" when formatting for fear of conflict with Adobe products. Try this Extra folder it's from this post

Could be a bios setting as well? I don't know. I don't want to give you any bad advice.