Hi,

I'm wondering if there are any fully compatible motherboards that would handle two of the new quad-core xeon CPU's. I've searched around in the forums/google for awhile, but haven't found anything.

buy to cores of them ( 1000 euro each) and you realize you come cheaper buying an apple

Nah, I can get a 2.3ghz quad-core Xeon for around $300. The motherboard is what's giving me trouble. Has anyone had experience with this?

Look for server boards (intel have some good models). But they are very expensive. I think buying a MacPro is more cheaper too...

I'm starting to realize what I've spent could have been towards building the perfect Mac Pro hack would cost just as much or even more than a legitimate Mac Pro, especially what they have now, it's hard to beat...8-Cores is what I'm looking for. If anyone has any motherboards that can benchmark and match a Mac Pro, that'd be nice....but I'm slowly raising my flag up.

The best video editing machine would be the Mac Pro...find benchmarks that convince me to turn back... :,( (I'm hoping i'm not regretting this route quite frankly)

ON the contrary, I already own a MacBook Pro an, iMac and a Mac mini...so yeah.


Closest thing right now? (not too sure):
Intel® 5000X Chipset
http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/5000x/index.htm
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813121044

Hi, I've got an Asus motherboard that supports up to 2 quad core.
The model is DSBV-DX (server motherboard), it costed me around 250€.
The things I don't like about this motherboard, it has no sound, and no PCIe x16. I've got to by an adaptor (PCIe x8 to PCIe x16).


These are the specs for my hacintosh:
CPU Intel Core 2 Quad Xeon 5300
MOTHERBOARD Asus DSBV-DX
MEMORY 4 x 2gb Kingston FB-DIMM
GRAPHICS XFX nVIDIA 5200
AUDIO Creative 5.1 usb
DRIVES 500gb seagate sata, HP 212 DVD-R
OS Mac OS X 10.5.1 Leopard // Windows XP x64-Edition

I'd like to get more info on motherboards for 8-core hackintoshes.

I am getting 2 8-core mac pros, but I am also building a NAS raid box and I have to get a server motherboard for the PCI-X slot needed for the raid card. It would be nice if I could get it to run OSx86, but if it won't I have an unused copy of Windows Server 2008 laying around.

what kind of x8 to x16 pci-express adapter are you talking about? I've never heard of one before, please share. Also, i was eying this motherboard for awhile, do you know if the Mac Pro still uses that intel chipset (5000v)? I'd love to get my hands ona Mac Pro Logic motherboard

nice sig





Yes, i hope this thread opens up more 8-core possibilities. For a NAS Raid box, how many hard drives are you using? Why don't you just buy a NAS Raid box external unit, and sell that PCI-X RAID card, in that way, it can run externally, or backed up however, and be compatible in both Mac Pros you'll have as well as compatible with PCs depending on what kind of hard drive format you choose, but since it's a NAS Raid, shouldn't the drives be available via network? I'm in the process of building a server RAID box myself, and realized it might be cheaper to buy an external solution...let's keep this thread going!

I think with the newest macpros, theres no real way to beat apple with 8 cores.
Asus Board about 350.- Euros here
2 x Intel Xeon 5440 CPU Quad 2.83 GHz about 1200.- Euros
8 GB RAM about 280.- Euros
Videocard (possible with 8x PCIe? Adapter?) about 100.-
Harddrive (if only one) about 100.-
DVD Drive about 40.-
External USB Sound, FireWire Card and so about 50.-
And, not to forget, a good, silent Case with a good PSU, about 250 Euros.
Add a Copy of Leo for 130 Euros and you have 2510.- Euros.


Get a Mac Pro with 8 GB RAM and you have about 2640.-.
Thats only 130.- Euros more than the Self-Built Machine. And you have to built it, fiddle around with the install and have a LOT of woprk to have it work well.
No go, i think. No sense.

Here's the spec's on the latest build I've come up with:
-2x e5405 ($500)
-MBD-X7DAL-E-O ($360)
-PC-V2100BPlus II ($350)
-RocketRAID2240 ($335)
-PC P&C 750w ($170)
-6x 2GB DDR2-667 ($445)
-2600XT ($100)
-16x Seagate 1TB ($4400)

Total = $2260 + $4400 (HDDs)

I suppose I could use a PCI-E raid card and a standard LGA775 mobo, except the PCI-E cards that support this many HDDs are 2x as expensive and don't work with OSx86.
Either way I end up going, it'll still be much cheaper than an xServe RAID + server.

Do 8 cores work just fine it it though? What is not working on board?

I have an 8 core Xeon workstation I just built a couple of months ago, I would be willing to try and get hackintosh to work on it if I thought it were doable.

Here is the mobo I used: Tyan S-2696 (i5000XT)
I have 2 Xeon X-5365 (Clovertown) processors which came directly from Intel (yes these are the ones they put in the Mac Pros)
I also have 8 gigs of fully buffered Crucial Ram
and a nice RAID-0 array consisting of 4 WD RE2 500GB drives for a total of 2 TB (roughly).
Topped off with a BFG 8800 Ultra.

All of this is in an Antec P-190/1200 Chassis which is easily the nicest eatx case I have ever used, it includes 2 seperate power supplies linked together for a total of 1200 watts, very nice setup and insanely good cable management.
See the Case Here

The boot drive is a Raptor-X 150 and I have a nice DVD-r/rw drive installed as well.

I would seriously consider doing a hackintosh with this machine just for benchies if nothing else.
But I would also love to have it as an FCP workstation if it could be made stable enough.

Where does one begin? and how do we know the chipset can be made to work?

Someone was running an 8-core Supermicro motherboard here, you may want to check those out. Boards are around $500 iirc.

/drool...

It'd be great if you could try your hackintosh with that rig and report back to us I'm in the middle of building mine...I want to finish soon, just need to top it off with a motherboard.

So I found this Supermicro server motherboard that is quite convincing, it fits ATX as well:

SUPERMICRO MBD-X7DAL-E-O Dual 771 Intel 5000X ATX Server Motherboard - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813182101
Manufacture info: http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherb...0X/X7DAL-E+.cfm


^ Could it be that one?


*Also, I stumbled upon your thread regarding the Bad Axe 2, that too, seems quite convincing for me as well, have you read or thought about the Intel BOXDX38BT motherboard? Aren't the hardware pretty close to BX2?


EDIT: A more recent Intel Chipset: 5400


SUPERMICRO MBD-X7DWA-N Dual 771 Intel 5400 Extended ATX Server Motherboard
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherb...400/X7DWA-N.cfm
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...icro-_-13182130

Well, I've given quite a bit of thought to dual-processor and quad-processor motherboards. The main reason for going multi-processor is to improve render and compile times of audio, video, cg, and code. However, it's not a very cost-effective approach. You can build a quad-core single-processor Hackintosh starting at $800, while a dual-processor motherboard starts at $500 alone and requires the more expensive Xeon processors ($1200 for the 3ghz quads, and you need two!). Apple has a great program called Qmaster that allows you to pipe material to be rendered via Terminal, Maya, Compressor, etc. to a network "render farm"...you can build a complete 2.4ghz Quad + 8 gigs of ram render node for about $1,000 in a rackmount case (just use my guide, then get a cheap video card, small hard drive, and rackmount case). Compare that to $3,000 minimum for the dual-processor model and you'll quickly realize that it's just not very cost-effective - you can do $1,000 for a single-processor quad-core workstation plus two render nodes with the remaining $2,000!

It is, however, a very neat concept and if you have the cash and don't want to mess with network rendering then it's definitely a good way to go. If I had oodles of money I would get the quad-processor machine and build myself a monster 16-core workstation and simply not deal with any network render farm setup. The dual-processor model is, of course, a lot cheaper than the quad-processor model and you could save at least a little bit of money over Apple while retaining customization. But then you run into the problems that Hackintoshes have, such as lack of support for dual video cards. You can blow $3,000+ on a nice dual-processor 8-core machine but you can't run 8 monitors like the Mac Pro can, you can only run two. There are a lot of things to think about when spending that kind of money!

Where did you get that price from? With 8 gigs RAM I'm seeing more like Eur 3200.- without taxes. I'd get the standard 2gb RAM and then buy some compatible sticks for more reasonable prices though. For example here: http://www.transintl.com

Hmm...video rendering seems to be one of my priorities in considering a dual-socket processor workstation, how can I go about setting a 'network render farm'? Simply through Qmaster and set it to utilize the per say 8gb ram? I'dl ike to know more info, and am interested (i hope others are as well), I look forward to hearing more about this. And yes, you are definitely right about many points. It's definitely a whole new budget if I were to turn dual-processor and whatnot, though, they've become more affordable...

OK Guys, I am ABSOLUTELY BLOWN AWAY.
News FLASH.
This may not be a big deal to you but it is HUGE to me so here goes:

As I mentioned in my post above I have a working 8 core monster which I dual boot to XP32 and XP64, the system is ROCK SOLID STABLE with Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 which is what I use it for.

I also have a perfectly stable Hackintosh which has been up for 2 days straight since I installed Kalyway 10.5.1 on Saturday.

Just on a whim I decided to try something tonight.
I had a brand new 250GB external USB drive so I installed Kalyway on that drive after booting the Kalyway DVD.
I selected a couple of extra things that were different from my working hackintosh, mainly the nvInject driver since the octa has the 8800 Ultra.
After the installation I plugged the USB drive inot my octa and booted from that USB drive AND IT WORKED!
I got a working Leopard desktop running!
Now, the sound does not work, nor does it see my big RAID-0 but it sees all the other drives, it sees the 8800 even though it only reports as 256MB ram for the video card and it sees all 8 cores.

Now this system currently has a very important project on the RAID-0 so I was really apprehensive about going any further and testing anything out so I played around for a bit and got the hell outta there but it worked, it booted and it seemed stable.

WTF am I going to do?
I really want to try and get this beast up on Final Cut as an 8 core power house but I need help here, I am lost, I would not even know where to begin with trying to figure out onboard sound or anything else.

One other thing that was weird I will mention, is that when I went to shut down I got a panic with the big square screen taking over my display which said I needed to power down my computer by pressing the power button which I did and my system started back up into XP no problem so all is well there.

Start shelling out the ideas brothers, I will risk it and try to make it work, but I should say that this is a very good start that it even booted into Leopard wouldnt you say?

Graymarye

have owned this mobo: Intel S5000 XVN
And I did not like it as a workstation mobo, it was limited for my needs, I found it to be finicky at best, it was the first board I used to build my octa as an XP workstation. I ended up trashing a few of the pins on one of the sockets and I actually threw the board in the trash believe it or not, $500.00 in the freaking trash.

I also have an AMD dual Opteron 285 workstation that sits gathering dust right now believe it or not.
My point to all of this is that I also have at least 2 and perhaps 3 eATX server chassis that are like brand new which I would be willing to sell cheap just to get them out of my attic.

Here is what I have:
(1) Antec Titan 650
(1) SuperMicro 745
(1) Intel 5299E

The Intel Chassis is absolutely brand new, both it and the SuperMicro chassis come with built in power supplies, I modded the Intel chassis PSU cable to accomodate the Tyan S-2696 because of the placement of the 8 pin power connector (I made it longer) and it worked perfectly.
The Antec will take whatever PSU you want to use.
The SuperMicro chassis has an 8 bay hot swappable SATA unit which is pretty cool.
All of the chassis are black and still in the boxes the came shipped in.

As an added note I also have a $500.00 PC Power & Cooling 1KW PSU which is arguably the baddest ass PSU on the planet, it is just a little loud for my liking, it is also damn near brand new and for sale.

Let me know where you are and I will gladly make this worthwhile for you if you want any of these items, I am done with them and any one of them would make a nice chassis for your project.
The PSU is second to none and comes with certification papers which boast of it's accuracy and stability.
PC P&C TurboCool 1KW-SR

Check it out, let me know and let me know where to beging with my octa....I wanna roll.

So what is working and what is not working now? This board can be had for 280$ on new egg open box right now. So thats not a bad price at all! The audio is ACL888 which many many people have gotten working and there are plenty of patches for *search skippyretard*

Does the networking work though? How is everything running? Give us the skinny.

Ok right now I am doing a major backup of all of my digitized video content to my external MyBooks, it is going to take a couple of hours to get 300 gigs backed up, it was already backed up to one of the MyBooks but I need to make sure I have everything completely safe before I start testing so I am backing it up to another MyBook as well as to my Windows Home Server so it will be in 3 places safely in case the worst happens.

I will then boot back into the USB drive and start some tests.

I can tell you this, Leppard recognized my Firewire 800 card right off the bat because I could see the MyBooks which are connected Firewire 800 so thats a good thing.

Give me an hour or so to get this stuff safe and I will dive in.

Hello all, this is my first post. I have been lurking for a while reading up on what I'd like to build. After going an Apple sponsered Leopard demo for work I got the MAC PRO bug even worse than before. I immeadiately priced an 8-Core system on their website and it was close to $4000.00. I then thought about building my own and that is how i found this forum. My research indicates that a Greencreek 5000x chipset board should be fairly close to what Apple sell. I went about looking for such a board and found a Supermicro Workstation board that someone has already mentioned. Here is the system I priced out on Newegg.com


1-SUPERMICRO MBD-X7DAL-E-O ATX Server Motherboard $360.00
2-Intel Xeon E5410 2.33GHz LGA 771 80W Processors $592.00
2-SAMSUNG SpinPoint T Series 500GB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive $218.00
4-mushkin 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 FB-DIMM Server Memory $331.96
1-BFG Tech GeForce 8800GT BFGE88512GTOCE Video Card $279.00
1-Antec True Power Trio TP3-650 ATX12V 650W Power Supply $109.99
Modded G5 Case (free from work) $0.00

Total $1,890.95

Does anyone know if this combo will work? I would like to build this with my tax return this year. I will watch this thread to see how others do until I buy my hardware.

Right now someone is messing with the Tyan board and we will see how that goes. Its basically the same setup except it doesnt support the processor you chose. If all goes well it could open the door to 1/2 cost Macpro's which would be nice!

Ok here we go, I am actually writing this post from the Octa machine right now.
Obviously Networking is fine.
This thing boots extremely fast even from the USB drive so I can only imagine what it would do with a good install on a fast SATA drive!
Ethernet is only working on one of the ports so far but I am sure there is a way to fix that hopefully.
Both Firewire 800 ports of my add in PCI-X card are workng perfectly, the MyBook 1TB drives are mounted and show as Firewire drives.
I have both monitors lit up right now @ 1280x1024 as these are 19" 4x3 LCD's and that is native max resolution for these monitors.
My DVD drive (IDE) is working perfectly, I can burn a DVD with Toast and DVD's mount just fine.
Aslo the built in Firewire works, I just plugged in a small FW drive I have and it mounted fine.


The hardware tab in System Profiler shows the following.

Model Name: Mac
Model Identifier: Mac Pro
Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 8
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 100 MHz
Boot ROM Version: Hack.int.0sh
Serial Number: YM8659M6W0A



Heres the GPU stuff:

GeForce 8800 GTS:

Chipset Model: GeForce 8800 GTS
Type: Display
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x0193
Revision ID: 0x00a2
ROM Revision: NVinject 0.1.5
Displays:
SENERGY 714:
Resolution: 1280 x 1024 @ 60 Hz
Depth: 32-bit Color
Core Image: Hardware Accelerated
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Quartz Extreme: Supported
Rotation: Supported
SENERGY 714:
Resolution: 1280 x 1024 @ 60 Hz
Depth: 32-bit Color
Core Image: Hardware Accelerated
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Quartz Extreme: Supported
Rotation: Supported

SAS (Serial Attached SCSI)

SAS Domain 0:

Vendor: LSILogic
Product: S2696
Revision: Firmware 1.10.5.0
Initiator Identifier: 63


I have a Creative Audigy sound card in here right now and onboard Audio turned off in Bios but I will pull the Audigy and test the onboard unless someone knows how to get the Audigy working?

At this point I am over my head guys, so heres a little history on me.

I owned my very first Mac which was a IIc back in 1986 or whatever.
From then until roughly 2004 I owned every single new Mac that came out, my last brand new Mac purchase was a G4 dual 1.24Ghz MDD, at that point I became so pissed that I could not upgrade my Macs more than buying a processor add in card that I gave up on Apple unless they were given to me to use at work (which they were a lot) in favor of PC hardware which I could build to suit my needs.

So suffice it to say, I have very little real world experience in OSX.
I have been into video work for almost 15 years now, and back in 2000 I was actually sent a letter from the (then) head of the QuickTime team at Apple congratulating me on being the first person to acheive full screen 640x480 streaming video online as I was the head of a major television stars web video efforts, Apple was happy with me, and I still have that letter, and people still give me free stuff to play with as a result of those efforts back then.

Now, I am going to need some serious help here if you want to know anything about this system.
I am willing to guinnea pig my pride and joy to help the collective but you need to be willing to help me through this, you also need to assume I know absolutely nothing about the unix kernel, nor do I know anything about code or how to do codec dumps or anything of the sort....I need to be guided.

I did root through the manula for the 2696 and also called tech support to ask a few questions and what I discovered is that virtually everything on the board is controlled by the Intel ESB2 chip, everything except one of the PCI slots and the processors. so the fact that my massive RAID is not showing up may have something to do with the fact that it is a RAID that OSX cant see for some reason?
There are 5 hard drives in this machine that dont show up under Leopard right now, everything else seems to work.
The onboard Audio is a Realtek w/ALC888 as was mentioned.

Let the games begin, and at some point maybe we should do this via chat or some other faster form of communication .?.

Quadros Anyone?!? http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=83090




Which Firewire 800 Card do you have?




as much as this might be going against the thread, For a couple hundred difference, I'd still go for a real Mac Pro...



Again, if it doesn't take too much out of your time, List all your hardware, or you can just update you sig

I'll read more and give feedback when I have time late, good luck with the whole process, this is loooking very good and thanks for sharing this knowledge with us, very appreciated!

This Firewire 800 Card

Sig Updated

Thanks!

Hardware raids never work in OSX it seems... so thats sorta out.

Though you should be able to get the onboard audio working... do a quick search for skippyretard

Mac Pro Part Number: Z0EM One 16x SuperDrive
Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon (8-core)
Apple Mighty Mouse
Apple Keyboard (English) + Mac OS X
4GB (4 x 1GB)
500GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
500GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
Accessory kit
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB (Two dual-link DVI)

Total $3,849.00


1-SUPERMICRO MBD-X7DAL-E-O ATX Server Motherboard







$3,849.00
- $1,890.95
--------------
$1958.05


I think you meant to say a couple of thousand difference......

[size="4"][/size]

Take only the standard 2GB RAM of Apple. Buy the rest @ 3rd party.

I think you forgot some things. A Mac Pro got a very expensive and powerfull PSU (I think about 800Watts, maybe more) that costs around 250-300 euro if u wanna buy it separate. Also the case is very expensive and nice too....
The new Mac Pro's are competitive with non-apple computers for sure...

hmm...for those of you who are new to this thread, we're discussing about an 8-Core Motherboard for OSx86.

Mac Pro
One 16x SuperDrive < Did OP include Optical Drives?
Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon (8-core)
Apple Mighty Mouse < ?
Apple Keyboard (English) + Mac OS X < ?
4GB (4 x 1GB) < 3rd party vendor/distributor
500GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s < Same as above
500GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s < Same as above
Accessory kit < ?
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB (Two dual-link DVI)

Total $3,849.00 (price subject to change...no seriously)

VS.

1-SUPERMICRO MBD-X7DAL-E-O ATX Server Motherboard $360.00
2-Intel Xeon E5410 2.33GHz LGA 771 80W Processors $592.00 < interesting...2.33 GHz vs. 2.8 GHz !?! Find out how much more a 2.8 GHz would cost you.
2-SAMSUNG SpinPoint T Series 500GB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive $218.00
4-mushkin 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 FB-DIMM Server Memory $331.96
1-BFG Tech GeForce 8800GT BFGE88512GTOCE Video Card $279.00
1-Antec True Power Trio TP3-650 ATX12V 650W Power Supply $109.99 < like above mentioned, a higher wattage PSU would be recommended
Modded G5 Case (free from work) $0.00 < Free!?!? Great stuff, too bad not everyone can get a Modded G5 case for Free

Total $1,890.95 < (questionable.)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#1 Rule of thumb: You should know that, when compiling parts, and considering the COST, you should already know that adding hardware or buying hardware from Apple is overpriced. This goes in accordance with RAM (Memory), Hard Drive(s), etc...Take that thought in consideration when you plan to upgrade.

2) Why would include Apple Keyboard, Mouse, Accesory Kit (?), Mac OS X, (regardless that they're free), Superdrive, in this list? The original poster did not include peripheral devices, why should you count that in a factor? Why don't you include displays and software while you're at it? Especially for OS, when you're discussing this in a hackintosh thread?

3) 2.8 GHz Intel Xeon Prcoessor vs. 2.33 GHz Intel Xeon Processor...hmm...what's wrong with this picture? of course if you want to buy a less expensive processor, slower speed,etc...the cost will be cheaper. ($300 x2 difference)


MY point is, if you really want to knitpick every single word, try a bit harder and at least validate what you're posting. Was it really worth posting that? For the money the original poster is spending, I'd rather spend it on a Mac Pro, hands down, my personal opinion/preference? sure, but it's only whats suggested. If the original poster wants to take the other route...awesome!


...so back to 8-core motherboard for hackintosh, I updated my second post with 2-new Supermicro motherboards. One includes a later chipset, Intel 5400 Chipset. Not that many feedback on the performance however, since it's still considered new.

Hi, this is a link to the page that have this kind of adpaters

http://www.orbitmicro.com/global/pciexpres...pter-p-755.html


Have fun.

I decided to post up what I did in the Genius Bar here is a link: Click This Link

ALC888 Drivers

The Video card, just do a search. Since 10.5.2 is not officially out you will need to use the beta drivers and there is a special string you need to put in natit for 640MB

You can do RAID via a PCI Express card (do a search for SI3132 here).

I've been keeping an eye on the Harpertown systems but it doesn't seem worth it to do a new build for 8-cores, at least for the higher-end stuff...the 3.2ghz Penryns are roughly $1500 each and the board is around $400, so you're looking at $3400 right off the bat. Adding in a quality case that will fit the large motherboard ($300) plus a good power supply ($200), then all the little details that the Mac Pro includes (2gb ram, DVD burner, keyboard, mouse, 320gb hard drive, 2600xt video card) and you're just about even with the Mac Pro. At best you save a few hundred dollars, but for a few hundred dollars more you get a perfectly-working real Mac Pro with zero problems, the ability to use ALL internal Mac cards, multiple graphics cards for more than 2 monitors, and so on. The cost/benefit ratio right now is geared more towards single-processor systems or older dual-processor or less-power dual-processor systems.

With that said, I really, really wish someone would release a quad-processor board with a 16x PCI Express slot

Great points as usual Weaksauce!


If you mean quad-socket processor motherboard with PCIe x16, this one has two:

TYAN S4881G2NR




...too bad it's for AMD!??!


RAID, I have a Sonnet Tempo e4i 4-Sata Port PCie x4, looking forward to trying it out, once I find that motherboard that is!

^looks like there is one

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherb.../7300/X7QC3.cfm

• Supports up to four Intel® 64-bit Xeon® MP processor(s) of the same type below:
• Quad-Core Intel® Xeon®
  Processor 7300 sequence
• Dual-Core Intel® Xeon®
  Processor 7200 sequence

1 (x8) PCI-e (using X16 slot)


whats interesting is that the E5410 (2.33 GHz quad-core, 12MB L2) is $290 compared with the 2.83 GHz bein $710, so you could build a dual 2.33 for less than a single 2.83. i was planning on building a Q9450/x38 setup but assumin you could get a 771 mobo that works good in osx86 i wonder how a dual xeon would perform against a Q9450. obviously it would cost you a few hundred more but i might think about going that route. the Q9450 will probably be over $300 when it comes out and by that time the 5410 should be around 250.

if i could get the money id try buildin a quad core xeon setup with the supermicro mobo up there and xeon 7300 series processors. i need to build the fastest hackintosh ever

The key think people forget is you can kick it down to Quad 2.33 which doesnt hurt that bad and be in a far far better place money wise... also can kick the video down and ram to 4 gigs for even MORE saving... getting the machine below 2000... I was able to build a nice machine for about 1700 including shipping with octo-core and 4 gigs of ram. Which is not that much more then people using Q6600's!

1 Antec TITAN650 Black 1.0mm SECC Server Case $170.00
1 TYAN S5396A2NRF Dual 771 Intel 5400 SSI / Extended ATX Server $420.00
1 XFX PVT88PYDF4 GeForce 8800GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 $259.99
2 Intel Xeon E5410 Harpertown 2.33GHz LGA 771 $590.00
4 CORSAIR 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 FB-DIMM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) ECC $319.96
1 SAMSUNG SpinPoint T Series HD501LJ 500GB 7200 RPM SATA2 $109.99
1 Pioneer 20X DVD±R DVD Burner Black IDE Model DVR-115DBK $29.99
________
Subtotal: $1,899.93


All From Newegg.com, All easy to buy right now. It still hands down kills the mac at the same stats. Apple would sell such a machine for about 2799 then add 200 for the video and well 320 for the ram ;P and you can see it would beat apple price by almost 1/2. So See na sayers! It is possible!

P.S. Can I borrow 2K from someone?

The two Mac Pros I am buying will be upgraded for 2x 3.2 GHz Harpertowns with AppleCare and then upgraded with 12GB of ram, 3TB of storage, and a compatible raid card (for each) from Newegg. Add in 4x Dell 3007wfp-hc monitors at the total comes to: $16,270.
I got that by doubling the total of these numbers:

~4,400 for each Pro
~250 for AppleCare
~540 for 6x 2GB FB-DIMMs
~620 for 4x 750GB hdds
~225 for RocketRaid card
~2100 for 2x 3007WFP-HCs

I could build the workstations myself, but the only place I'd save money would be (at most) a few grand on the actual Mac Pro, but if you're going to spend this much money anyways why skimp out of a few hundred extra bucks to get the full system?

The SuperMicro X7QC3 is good but it uses an 8x PCI Express slot electrically in a 16x PCI Express physical port - you can fit 16x cards but you can only use them at 8x. HOWEVER, from my recent research it seems that modern cards don't use nearly the full bandwidth that 16x PCI Express has to offer, so we should be okay running 8x cards in a 16x slot. I'll wait until they release 8-core processors before I pick up one of these beasties, however (should be later this year!).

In one sentence you said "save a few grand" and in the next sentence you said "why skimp for a few hundred extra" a "few grand" is a lot more than a "few hundred".

That being said,
If I were acquiring equipment for mission critical applications or work flow, I don't think I would consider a hackintosh at all, the cost is far too high to build an 8 core machine that you would have to "tinker" with all the time or even be faced with the possibility of having to "tinker" with it at all.
I would evaluate the cost vs. ability elements and buy accordingly.

However, now that I have had this 8 core hackintosh up and running for a few days testing out it's usability as an NLE, I am incredibly impressed so far.
Everything seems to work just fine, it now shuts down perfectly, sleeps perfectly, time machine works perfectly and I have not had one single problem with any of the core applications I work with on a regular basis.
But since the build is less than a week old, I cant possibly conclude that it is a reliable, stable workstation platform.

I do love it, don't get me wrong.

Back to discussing about an 8-Core motherboard, I've just learned (I think, might've mentioned it before) that the latest Mac Pro update (early 2008), its' motherboard uses an Intel 5400 chipset (Thanks Nagal for the info)

For starters, here's a few:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList....name=Intel+5400

So here is an Intel 5400 chipset solution for an 8-Core motherboard:




Prodcut:
TYAN Tempest i5400XL (S5392)

Product Site:
http://www.tyan.com/product_board_detail.aspx?pid=564

Price Range:
Roughly around $400 at most retailers

Key Factors:
After doing some reaseach, It's in CEB Form Factor, 12" x 10.5" < Will fit in most ATX Cases, however, CEB may require a proprietary PSU. My case for example, is the Lian Li PC-A10B, its motherboard tray has width up to 11.5" (with extra room of ODDs)
- Also, an x16 and x8 pci-express slot!

Specifications:
Processor
• Dual LGA771 sockets
• Supports up to two Intel® Xeon® Woodcrest
Processors( 5000/5100 Series Dualcore);
Clovertown Processors (5300 Series, Quadcore);
Wolfdale-DP Processors (45nm, dual-core);
Harpertown Processors (45nm, quad-core)
• 1.33 / 1.06GHz FSB
• VRD 11.0

Chipset
• Intel 5400 MCH + 6321ESB chipset
• Support for 1.33 / 1.06GHz FSB
• Winbond W83627EHG Super I/O Chip

Memory
• Four 240-pin DDR2 FBDIMM sockets
• Four memory channels
• Supports ECC DIMMs
• Maximum of 32/16 GB DDR2-533/667

Expansion Slots
• Two (2) PCI Express x16 slots
– from MCH (PCI-E Gen2)
• One (1) PCI Express x8 slot
– X8 signal from 6321ESB
• Two (2) PCI-X 133/100MHz slots from 6321ESB
• One (1) PCI 32-bit 33MHz slot
• Total six (6) expansion slots

Integrated I/O Interface
• One 9-pin 16550 UART serial port (header)
• One LPT Header
• Four USB 2.0 ports (via two headers)
• Six Standard/integrated SATA2 connectors
• One IDE and one Floppy connectors
• One 4-pin CD-in header and one 4-pin Aux
header
• One 9-pin front panel audio header

Back Panel I/O ports
• Stacked PS/2 keyboard and mouse connectors
• Stacked (2)USB 2.0 ports
• One Serial port
• One SPDIF in /out
• Stacked USB 2.0 (2) and RJ-45 (1) connectors
• Stacked Line-in, Line-out, Mic-in audio
connectors

System Management
• ADI Hardware Monitor w/ PECI circuit
• CPU thermal & voltage monitor support
• Five (5) fan headers (4-pin configuration)
Power
• EPS12V/SSI (24+8+4 pin) power connectors

Integrated LAN Controllers
• Intel GbE from 6321ESB (single port "Gilgal"
82564)
• One RJ-45 ports with LED

Integrated Audio
• HDA link
• RealTek ALC888 controller (High Definition
Audio)
• Line-in, Line-out, Mic-in rear ports
• Front panel audio header
• CD-in, Aux headers (4-pin configuration)

Integrated Serial ATA II
• Six (6) SATA-II ports
• 3.0 Gb/s per port
• RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 support in Windows

Server Management
Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) from
daughter card M3291
• Tailored for IPMI 2.0 specification
• Supports remote power on/off and reset
(IPMIover-LAN)
• Server Management Daughter card via built-in
2x25 header

Trusted Platform Management (TPM)
• Infineon SLB9635TT 1.2

BIOS
• PhoenixBIOS® on 8Mbit Flash ROM
• Support APM 1.2, ACPI 2.0
• Serial Console Redirect
• PXE via Ethernet, USB device boot
• PnP, DMI 2.0, WfM 2.0 Power Management
• User-configurable H/W monitoring
• Auto-configuration of hard disk types
• Multiple boot options
• 48-bit LBA support

Form Factor
• CEB (12" x 10.5")

Regulatory
• FCC Class B (DoC)
• European Community CE (DoC)



I feel like I've taken over this thread sorry

Ok,
Well it has been a couple of weeks now since I committed my Octa to Hackintosh.
This system is 100% FLAWLESS so far, I upgraded to 8 gigs of RAM that I just installed today, I also used netkas method of fixing my video card so that it shows and probably now uses the entire 640MB of ram onboard, I have been using Final Cut S2 for the entire time and I have ZERO problems.
Adding the memory and NVinject updated kexts, and fixing the VRAM hook yielded a MAJOR boost in benchmark results which are now at 7249 (geekbench), everything else is absolutely perfect so far and I am really happy that I did this.

I would imagine that you can build a similar system for less than you think as the new Intel 5400 chipset is out now which should bring the cost of this i5000 chipset based board down considerably.

Yes it would be nice to have the new penryn, and yes it would be nice to have the newer chipset, but this thing works 100%, and until I see a MAJOR difference in rendering speed between my system and someone elses, this will remain as the coolest thing I have done in my computing career so far.

Let me know if you guys need any information from me.
I say build one.

Gosh, do you really have to tempt me?!?! I already told myself during the past few weeks of silence in this thread to not drop the ball ona Dual-Socket, OCTOCORE. grr...now i'm back to the drawing board. Anyway, thanks for the confirmation and reassurance, and the ZERO problem reply. It really makes it so much more tempting...y'kno that feeling?


BTW: Awesome GeekBench results! Is everything included in your SIG? ANd what what the total cost of it all?



Is this your motherboard with blue-dye (kind of like the mac pro logic motherboard)? http://www.phoronix.net/image.php?id=490&a...5000xl_mobo_lrg

Heya Gramarye,
let me take it a step further for you.

I just got finished installing the 10.5.2 update and everything still works perfectly, I also installed the additional graphics update and it works perfectly as well!

My geekbench scores are up to 7279 now which is a slight increase, however I think thats because in profiler it still shows the NVinject 0.2.1, so I may have missed something there, I am not sure if any of the release drivers are actually working or not?

I am lost there and will need to do some more reading, but yes everything workls still, my pro apps are still fine after the update.

The only thing not working now is my PS-2 keyboard, so I am typing this from a USB keyboard, other than that it is still flawless.

That picture you posted is NOT my motherboard.

This one is:Click This for Pic

Also YES everything I have is listed in my signature, and as afar as costs are concerned, thats a tough one.
I paid $500.00 for the mobo about 6 months ago, I paid well over $400.00 for 4 gigs of FB Ram, I paid over $400.00 for the video card, and the processors were close to $1000.00 each when I got them, the Antec case was about $300.00 with the dual PSU's which total 1200 watts combined but this case is so well worth the money as it has a large 200mm fan on the side cover which is silent and blows air directly on the entire mobo, it also has (2) 150mm fans on the top of the chassis which draw air into the case and it has (2) 120mm fans on the rear of the case for removing air, all of the fans have a 3 speed switch on them and I run all fans on low, finally it has a 120mm fan that draws air in directly in front of the hard drive cage as well as a 120mm fan which blows air over the PSU's.
It is by far the best case I have ever seen anywhere and was easily the best money I have spent.

Keep in mind I have a dual opteron system sitting next to me as well that I also put into one of these chassis so that should say something about the build quality.

So far this is one hell of a system, I imagine I have well over $4000.00 into it but I still think that you can build one for way less than I did now that the newer stuff is out.

One last thing,
This Antec P-190/1200 chassis allows you to power the motherboard, DVD drives, and hard drives off one of the PSU's and ALL of the fans and video cards off of a separate PSU, the PSU's are linked with a special cable which is supplied, and the cable management is the most superior cable management I have seen to date......and I build a LOT of computers.

The image you posted doesn't seem to work, but i'll assume it's either yellowish colored dye or the green one. I got the image from what I've googled which lead to this result: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=arti...m=490&num=1
Your sig says, Tyan S2692, then I've realized there are several models and revisions with that number.

The Antec P-190 is a nice chassis, and the biggest feature to me is the E-ATX capabilities. However, I've settled for the Lian Li PC-A10B, which also has chamber managing system like P-190 and has Dual-PSUs as well: http://www.lian-li.com/product/product06.p...ex=4&type=b
(With the 7 Drive Bays, I hope to achieve a Media Duplication system along with my Video Production Workstation. Its ATX motherboard tray allows enough room for a CEB 12" x 10.5", eventhough it can go up to 12" x 11.5" with still enough clearance)

It has pretty much everything I wanted, except the E-ATX capabilities, but there is a similar model that has it, and is quite a bit bigger: http://www.lian-li.com/product/product05.p...&ss_index=8


Anyway, thanks for sharing your marvelous setup, and it gives much hope of success in the build process. That is great Geekbench score as well.

Hi Gramayre

In my signature I have the motherboard listed as the Tyan S2696 not the S2692
Mine is DEFINITELY the S2696.
I pulled that image frmo Tyans site and hosted it on my website so you can see it below.

Enjoy!, I hope you take the plunge and build one up.!

Just remember this and notice the holes where you mount the CPU coolers that the Xeon processors use a completely different style of HSF's

You should make sure that you get the factory Intel Xeon HSF's with your proc's as NONE of the conventional C2D style (socket 775) aftermarket HSF's will work.

There are a few companies that make water blocks for Socket 771 and my next step with this system is completely silent via H2o.

One last thing my friend, if you are going to pull the trigger and build one of these I would be happy to talk with you on the phone, PM me if you want to exchange numbers and give me a call!

You are too kind! Your wonderful build and your offer of help and support has only gave me more hope and confidence in starting this project. I've been keeping up with this thread along with others for awhile, and have made quite a bit of research. But, my knowledge of everything would not go as far if it weren't for users like you contributing your experiences and being so kind with support. Your help has only encouraged me to perservere at this project more and more than before. Thank you for this.

You've mentioned about HSF for each XEON cpu. Yes, I agree, I'd rather have the Retail kit (or Intel OEM) of each Xeon processor, so they come with the HSF, but for Xeons, they're hard to come by, since they're vastly sold in the OEM majority. If I could find some Retail versions of the Xeon processors, I would go with it, if not, I have found some alternatives. Thanks to the "Building a Mac Pro" thread, I've learned about these 3rd party Thermalrights that work quite well, this may interest you or others, and can be found here:
http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/thhrforinxe5.html

I have never really tried any 3rd Party brand yet for anything, meaning, I've always used whatever was stock, for example, my CPU was an intel Retail kit, and I've been using the stock cooler, as well as my video card, it is an OEM from NVidia, so I usually try to stay that way, however, I've heard great reviews and words about Thermalright, and have only heard beneficial results. Anyway, it's great to deam about this, Let's hope it comes to reality one day.

By the way, Your board is a beauty, my apologies for reading your sig wrong. (The numbers are pretty close!) I've seen Tempest i5000XT in the greenish-yellowish fade dye in almost every site. The blue one you have looks very nice, and I'd have to admit I admire that one a lot. It even has SAS capabilities. I'm about to spend around $400 for a SAS Controller...I've reallized I minus well spend sub-$400 (can be had for even $350ish) on an 8-Core server motherboard (like the Tempest i5000XT (S2696), or maybe even Supermicro X7DAL-E+ ). Too bad, I'd still have to invest in processors though, and the final cost my be pushing it close. Anyway, we'll see, a part of me still feels like the new Octo-Mac Pros are more affordable now...which makes those even more tempting :\

One more thing, like I've just recently mention in the Mac Pro thread, Kingston is having their own sale right now, if you have happen to be interseted in some FB-DIMMS for a pretty awesome price: $330 for 8gb set (2 x 4gb modules), that makes a 4gb stick for $165! [http://shop.kingston.com/partsinfo.asp?promo=PRCGRBR&ktcpartno=KVR667D2Q8F5K2/8G]

Let's keep this thread alive!

hmmm the tyan tempest looks interesting........looks like it doesnt have firewire but gigabit ethernet, ALC888, x16 slot, SPDIF. only 6 PCI-E/PCI slots but thats not the end of the world. i wonder if tyan or supermicro will be comin out with any new octo mobos?

im wonderin if a system with dual E5405 or 5410 would be a good investment over a Q9450 all other specs equal. the motherboard is a lot more and FBDIMM RAM is expensive. will there be problems with certain video cards?

theres some Q6600s (overclocked) scorin in the 9000 range on geekbench.......how overclockable are xeons? i figure a Q9450 might come close to lower end mac pros in a lot of benchmarks

what about this mobo?

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherb...400/X7DWA-N.cfm

has 7 expansion slots, dual gigabit, 2 firewire ports, ALC883

also of note, future quad-core xeons:



"Yorkfield" (45 nm)

• Based on Intel Core microarchitecture
• All models support: MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology (EIST), Intel 64 (Intel's x86-64 implementation), XD bit (an NX bit implementation), Virtualization Technology
• All models support uni-processor configurations
• Die size: 2 × 107 mm²
• Steppings: TBD

Model Number sSpec Number Frequency L2-Cache Front Side Bus Mult Voltage TDP Socket Release Date Part Number(s) Release Price (USD)
Quad-Core Xeon X3320
2500 MHz 2 × 3072 KiB 1333 MT/s 7.5x
95 W LGA 775 Q1 2008
$266
Quad-Core Xeon X3350
2667 MHz 2 × 6144 KiB 1333 MT/s 8x
95 W LGA 775 Q1 2008
$316
Quad-Core Xeon X3360
2833 MHz 2 × 6144 KiB 1333 MT/s 8.5x
95 W LGA 775 Q1 2008
$530


"Harpertown" (low-voltage, 45 nm)

• Based on Intel Core microarchitecture
• All models support: MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, Demand Based Switching (Intel's Server EIST), Intel 64 (Intel's x86-64 implementation), XD bit (an NX bit implementation), Virtualization Technology
• All models support dual-processor configurations
• Die size: 2 × 107 mm²
• Steppings: TBD

Model Number sSpec Number Frequency L2-Cache Front Side Bus Mult Voltage TDP Socket Release Date Part Number(s) Release Price (USD)

Quad-Core Xeon L5410
2333 MHz 2 × 6144 KiB 1333 MT/s 7x
50 W LGA 771 January 2008
$320
Quad-Core Xeon L5420
2500 MHz 2 × 6144 KiB 1333 MT/s 7.5x
50 W LGA 771 January 2008
$380
Quad-Core Xeon L5430
2667 MHz 2 × 6144 KiB 1333 MT/s 8x
50 W LGA 771 Q1 2008
$519

i dont think any of those are out yet