19 replies to this topic

[Ericks89]

I will be building a hackintosh pro but I'm going to wait until summer as I'm currently paying off some bills and I also want to see what the new mac pro update holds in store, are they using the x79 chipset and the new xeons?

What I basically want to know is what is the best hardware you can buy for a hackintosh? I have a budget of $5000 so I'm not too worried on price, I juist want to do it right the first time.

Edited by fantomas1, 12 February 2013 - 06:55 AM.
Please remember that you are in a public forum, a bit of courtesy is always welcome. It's always nice to start by saying "Hi" or "Hello" before asking a question or seeking help.

[fantomas1]

hi,

and welcome on InsanelyMac  

pls think about reading the forum rule and posting guidelines

then, you can use the OSx86 Wiki resources to have an idea

Good luck  


Cordially

[WhatTheTech]

Ericks89 - welcome to the forums!

With a little searching, I found this thread:  http://www.insanelym...for-hackintosh/

It's a good start to figuring out dual processor machines, which of course is where you will be starting.

Hope it helps!

[Mr.D.]

Hola!

A little advice from a master mistake maker - don't be afraid to make mistakes the first time, the second time or the 10th time. I can almost guarantee that you wont get it exactly right the first time - and that is OK! With your budget, you could build 4 pretty darn good hackintoshes and still have money left over to buy me a cerveza or 5. So the question you need to ask yourself:

~single or dual socket
~Xeon chip you want
~How much RAM do you want/need

If you just want a single socket - go x79 for sure. You can get some pretty good deals on i7 extreme chips and x79 boards.
If you want a dual socket, you gotta go server boards. Newegg has dual socket2011 boards ranging from 300 to 700 bucks. E5 Xeon procs run from around $1k to $4k, depending on your power/speed requirements.
Need 512GB RAM? gonna need top of the line server board. If you can get by with just 64GB, go x79.

It may be a good idea to wait to see if Apple holds true and updates the Mac Pro line. Everyone thinks they are so over priced, but not really when you spec out what they have and what you have to buy separately. Granted, they are working on a few years old tech now, but if they do refresh the line like they claimed they would, then the price point will be similar - which is a pretty sweet price point.

Good luck with whatever route you take!

[WhatTheTech]

 Mr.D., on 17 February 2013 - 02:09 AM, said:

It may be a good idea to wait to see if Apple holds true and updates the Mac Pro line.

It's a good point, and hopefully some news will come out soon (seeing as release is rumored for the third quarter. My frustration with Apple is the premium they put on RAM, HDDs etc. At $4,999 for the dual 2.66 machine with no additional upgrades, I don't blame Ericks for thinking hackintosh

[Rampage Dev]

I support all x79 systems via my blog:

http://rampagedev.wordpress.com

What is the system going to be used for? Do you want dual socket?

[Ericks89]

 Mr.D., on 17 February 2013 - 02:09 AM, said:

Hola!

A little advice from a master mistake maker - don't be afraid to make mistakes the first time, the second time or the 10th time. I can almost guarantee that you wont get it exactly right the first time - and that is OK! With your budget, you could build 4 pretty darn good hackintoshes and still have money left over to buy me a cerveza or 5. So the question you need to ask yourself:

~single or dual socket
~Xeon chip you want
~How much RAM do you want/need

If you just want a single socket - go x79 for sure. You can get some pretty good deals on i7 extreme chips and x79 boards.
If you want a dual socket, you gotta go server boards. Newegg has dual socket2011 boards ranging from 300 to 700 bucks. E5 Xeon procs run from around $1k to $4k, depending on your power/speed requirements.
Need 512GB RAM? gonna need top of the line server board. If you can get by with just 64GB, go x79.

It may be a good idea to wait to see if Apple holds true and updates the Mac Pro line. Everyone thinks they are so over priced, but not really when you spec out what they have and what you have to buy separately. Granted, they are working on a few years old tech now, but if they do refresh the line like they claimed they would, then the price point will be similar - which is a pretty sweet price point.

Good luck with whatever route you take!

I'm mostly doing cross platform game dev but need a mac obviously for the platform, I'll get by with 64GB heck I have 64GB in my main PC.  
I'm looking at two motherboards.
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16813131817
http://www.newegg.co...ID=g3kyuofv94qh

As for the CPU.
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16819117268 even at 2.3GHZ I think it'll be fine and still be better than the current gen Mac PROs.

As for the gfx card
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814150632 x2 (It was confirmed as of 10.8.2 that nvidia's 600 series and radeon 7000 series have some support.

As for ram
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16820233363 $899 for ram.. yikes, may start out at 32GB...

As for the case
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16811112390

As for the power supply
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16817139014

Obviously this is around $3900 without tax and without any ssd and any other hdd, so add another $300 for a 256GB and another $400 for 3 1TB 10,000RPM drives.   So yea, $4,000 + tax is a good estimate.

I obviously do more than write code, I also edit video work with 3D images and models and I heavily use adobe photoshop and illustrator. However.. I do not have a mac to go and buy the current version of OSX so this may be a problem...  I kind of want to use the official dmg instead of iAtkos if possible...  Or do you guys recommend just using a vmware image, buy OSX mount and burn to a disk?

I wish apple didn't give up physical media...

I've built PCs for years but also don't want to run into any issues, you think this setup would work?  I'm obvioiusly going to add a secondary sound cound as I never trust onboard audio.

[Rampage Dev]

Most of the components you listed are not even compatible with each other let alone with mac. The RAM can not run at that speed because there is no OC with LGA 2011 Xenons. 1600 is the max speed. The AMD card is Beta at best at this time. Also your spending all your money in the wrong areas.

I will make you a shopping cart for you.

Finished the cart. Added all components that work properly. Look around for the AMD 7970 what works best. XFX has been working but just make sure. Get the Asus Dual MB as the EVGA MB has issues with Lan and Audio at this time.

Added SAS raid that works OOB with Mac OS X so that you can have real raid. As well as a SSD. Startech: SAS8087S450 cables are the cables that you will need to get for the SAS card as Newegg does not have it.

1 SSD for Mac
1 SSD for Windows
1 RAID0 for Mac
1 Raid 0 for Windows

See the PDF for the cart.

Attached Files

•  Newegg.com - Once You Know, You Newegg.pdf   139.61K   25 downloads

[Ericks89]

Well thank you kind sir, yea after reading reviews on the asus it seems like the best choice for me atm.

[Rampage Dev]

 Ericks89, on 18 February 2013 - 01:50 AM, said:

Well thank you kind sir, yea after reading reviews on the asus it seems like the best choice for me atm.

And like I said I support all x79 systems on my blog.

Asus x79 support page:

http://rampagedev.wo...loads/asus-x79/

I have 2 users with that MB. Has issues with BIOS 32xx but that was it.

[Mr.D.]

Ericks89 said:

I'm mostly doing cross platform game dev but need a mac obviously for the platform, I'll get by with 64GB heck I have 64GB in my main PC.

What is your main PC? Sounds like you might already have a killer machine...

[Ericks89]

 Mr.D., on 18 February 2013 - 07:05 AM, said:

What is your main PC? Sounds like you might already have a killer machine...

ASROCK X79 EXTREME 9
Intel core i7 3820 quad core sandy bridge e
64 GB 1600MHZ DDR3 Corsair Dominator Platinum
Cooler Master Cosmos II case (love it, very easy to work with... just don't have the space for two of them...)
Nvidia GTX 680 (reference model as I bought it on launch...very hard to get at the time)
Rosewill Lightning 1000W Modular Power Supply ( not a huge fan as it's a pain adding on to especially in a tight space...)

And I have Windows 8 loaded onto it (it's nice, just add start8 and forget about metro, never cared for aero to be honest...)

I technically want to build the same machine but with compatible parts and thanks for the list of suggestions, except I will be going with xeon instead of a core i7.
I will wait until the specs of the 2013 mac pro are released, if I like them I will just buy from apple like I usually do as the price point won't differ that much and actually may save some money and spend on a better sound card.

Last mac pro I bought was a G5 and is maxed out at this point, I do want the new imac but may just buy it as a monitor though.

[Rampage Dev]

It appears that you threw a lot of money away with your current system. Corsair Platinum by corsairs own admission is a failure and has worst OC ability then the Corsair Vengeance Series. Also Rosewill PSU are a waste of money due to poor efficiency when tested in the real world.

[Ericks89]

 Rampage Dev, on 18 February 2013 - 06:34 PM, said:

It appears that you threw a lot of money away with your current system. Corsair Platinum by corsairs own admission is a failure and has worst OC ability then the Corsair Vengeance Series. Also Rosewill PSU are a waste of money due to poor efficiency when tested in the real world.

I've never had any stability issues so it's not a big deal to me, but the platinum ram just fit the color inside.
I bought the PSU mainly to save cash at the time and honestly never had an issue at all, have a 9.2 on the windows rating system which is worthless to be honest.
I actually wanted a better PSU at the time but kind of went with price over performance and I wasn't working at the time either.

Have you had issues with rosewill or dominator platinum?  I've personally had none, they do have a 5 star rating on newegg which I always read reviews before I buy.

But since I'm buying a second GTX680 and going to a new motherboard and cpu I will be buying more efficient ram and a power supply but that's way after I either A build the hackintosh pro or buy the 2013 if it ever comes out mac pro.

[Rampage Dev]

 Ericks89, on 19 February 2013 - 05:34 AM, said:

I've never had any stability issues so it's not a big deal to me, but the platinum ram just fit the color inside.
I bought the PSU mainly to save cash at the time and honestly never had an issue at all, have a 9.2 on the windows rating system which is worthless to be honest.
I actually wanted a better PSU at the time but kind of went with price over performance and I wasn't working at the time either.

Have you had issues with rosewill or dominator platinum?  I've personally had none, they do have a 5 star rating on newegg which I always read reviews before I buy.

But since I'm buying a second GTX680 and going to a new motherboard and cpu I will be buying more efficient ram and a power supply but that's way after I either A build the hackintosh pro or buy the 2013 if it ever comes out mac pro.

The PSU failed real world testing and does not perform as designed. Not the worst PSU but when put into testing to see what the outputs really are the voltages range all over. Not a stable power feed.

As for the platinum ram Corsair has admitted that it is a failed product and removed 40% of the models offered and canceled any future plans for it. They just do not under clock or over clock as corsair said they would prior to release. Waste of money.

[Ericks89]

 Rampage Dev, on 19 February 2013 - 05:43 AM, said:

The PSU failed real world testing and does not perform as designed. Not the worst PSU but when put into testing to see what the outputs really are the voltages range all over. Not a stable power feed.

As for the platinum ram Corsair has admitted that it is a failed product and removed 40% of the models offered and canceled any future plans for it. They just do not under clock or over clock as corsair said they would prior to release. Waste of money.

 Rampage Dev, on 19 February 2013 - 05:43 AM, said:

The PSU failed real world testing and does not perform as designed. Not the worst PSU but when put into testing to see what the outputs really are the voltages range all over. Not a stable power feed.

As for the platinum ram Corsair has admitted that it is a failed product and removed 40% of the models offered and canceled any future plans for it. They just do not under clock or over clock as corsair said they would prior to release. Waste of money.

I'm not finding anything that it shows it's a failed product, plus I overclocked my ram from 1600 to 2133 without any stability issues.
Of course I bought the ram after christmas.

[Rampage Dev]

 Ericks89, on 19 February 2013 - 06:21 AM, said:

I'm not finding anything that it shows it's a failed product, plus I overclocked my ram from 1600 to 2133 without any stability issues.
Of course I bought the ram after christmas.

I can get 2133 on a set of corsair vengeance and the following will explain why. I talked to a corsair technician back in late October when I was purchasing my 64 Gig kit. He informed me that the IC came from the same bins as the vengeance and that they were not sorting out the high bin versions but just using the same. This was the start of the issues that they had. He went on to tell me how many users including reviewer were reporting limited or no OC ability. The reason was because corsair was being cheap but perhaps they are now properly binning the chips and have addressed this issue. But I know that the kits they pulled will never be back on the market.

Also what are your timings at?

[Ericks89]

 Rampage Dev, on 19 February 2013 - 06:56 AM, said:

I can get 2133 on a set of corsair vengeance and the following will explain why. I talked to a corsair technician back in late October when I was purchasing my 64 Gig kit. He informed me that the IC came from the same bins as the vengeance and that they were not sorting out the high bin versions but just using the same. This was the start of the issues that they had. He went on to tell me how many users including reviewer were reporting limited or no OC ability. The reason was because corsair was being cheap but perhaps they are now properly binning the chips and have addressed this issue. But I know that the kits they pulled will never be back on the market.

Also what are your timings at?

I'll have to check, honestly haven't rebooted the machine since last summer, and yea that is possible as I did find articles stating they were doing callbacks as Newegg was out for for literally an entire month.

[Rampage Dev]

 Ericks89, on 20 February 2013 - 05:33 AM, said:

I'll have to check, honestly haven't rebooted the machine since last summer, and yea that is possible as I did find articles stating they were doing callbacks as Newegg was out for for literally an entire month.

They really dropped the ball. Gskill is way ahead of them currently in high frequency dimms but I like Corsair.

Timings are everything. For example if you take the first number of timing (latency) and convert it into ms of a 7-7-7 @1600 kit it is:

(7/1600)(2000) = 8.75

Which means a 9-10-9 @ 2000 kit is slower latency in the real world and it would be 9.

(9/2000)(2000) = 9

[Ericks89]

Wow, when I bought them they had a lot of 5* reviews.  I have money to burn but this sucks...  Still good ram though... just won't use them in a hackintosh.